Law Enforcement–Perpetrated Homicides. Tom Barker

man confronted Silver Springs, Florida, police officers responding to a call about a suicidal person with a gun in his hand. They shot him and found out the weapon was a replica—2012.

      In what is considered an act of suicide by cop, a Martinsburg, West Virginia, woman called 911 and made a false report. She said another woman was holding her hostage at gunpoint. When the police arrived, the woman who called in the false report came out of the house with a gun in her hand and approached the officers. The officers shot and killed her (Ains & Umstead, December 28, 2012).

      In what appears to be a suicide by cop incident, a Tucson, Arizona, woman called 911 and said she was going to kill herself. The responding officers found her outside her residence with a man. She took her gun out and refused to drop it. The police fatally shot her and wounded the man—2013.

      A Manheim, Pennsylvania, man called 911 and announced that he would not be taken alive. When officers arrived to investigate, he pointed a Daisy Powerline air gun with a scope at them, and they fatally shot him thinking it was a real rifle—2013.

      A Sunnyvale, California, man stabbed his wife to death and then called 911. When the officers arrived, he charged at them with a knife and was shot multiple times—2013.

      A twenty-one-year-old female was shot and killed by responding officers after her boyfriend called and said she was suicidal—2014.

      An Espanola, New Mexico, man called 911 about a suspicious and possibly armed man. He described the man with the clothes he was wearing. He presented a gun to the responding officers and was shot and killed—2014.

      A Jacksonville, Florida, murder suspect was shot and killed by the Sheriff’s Department SWAT team after he confronted them while holding a box stuffed in a black sock to resemble a gun.

      In-Custody Homicides: Jails and Lockups

      Custody officers at the Brooklyn Central Booking Jail ignored a female inmate’s call for medical attention for seven hours before she died.

      An Eastern Oregon Correctional Institutional Corrections officer shot and killed an inmate who would not stop beating another inmate—2014.

      A Jefferson County, Alabama Jail inmate died after being shocked with a Taser by a corrections officer—2014.

      An inmate was shocked three times in eight hours by officers in the New London, Connecticut Police Department Jail before his death—2014.

      Murder

      A Las Vegas Police Lieutenant killed his wife and five-year-old son and then set fire to the house. He called 911 and waited for the officers. When they arrived, he shot and killed himself—2013.

      A female Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer was murdered by her ex-husband also a sergeant with the same department. He committed suicide after the murder—2014.

      A Natchitoches, Louisiana, police officer kidnapped and beat another man to death in 2013 in a dispute over a woman. He was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2015 and sentenced to life in prison (Roy, October 17, 2015).

      In January 2014, an on-duty Border Patrol Officer drove 160 miles to murder his wife’s lover. He was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison after pleading guilty in 2015.

      

      A Santa Fe, New Mexico, deputy sheriff was charged with murder for killing his partner after a drunken argument in a motel room. They were staying in the room after extraditing a prisoner—2014.

      A Rocky Ford, Colorado, police officer was sentenced to sixteen years in prison after his second-degree murder conviction of an unarmed man in 2014.

      A female Memphis PD officer was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty years for killing her wife, also Memphis Police officer in 2014.

      A Midland, Texas, police sergeant killed his wife and then committed suicide—2014.

      A Delaware County, Pennsylvania, deputy broke into his former girlfriend’s house and killed her and shot her teenage daughter—2014.

      A New Jersey State Corrections killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide—2015.

      A white Montgomery, Alabama, police officer was charged with murder after tasing, beating, and shooting an unarmed black man—2015. He is still waiting for trial.

      Typology of Law Enforcement Perpetrated Homicides

      Zimring (2017), a leading authority on police killings, confines his discussion to police shooting deaths. However, he is aware that the shooting-only distinction of police killings results in some police homicides being omitted. He cautions that including other police-caused deaths from the police use of force or misadventure may be misleading. Zimring uses the example of deaths from the use of Tasers and argues that the officer did not intend to kill when he stunned his victim. This example shows the error of not including Taser deaths. His academic opinion is disputed by legal decisions. For example, a former Michigan State Trooper was sentenced to five to ten years in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for his reckless use of a Taser (Anderson, May 13, 2019). The trooper who was riding as a passenger in the police vehicle reached out the window and stunned a fifteen-year-old boy driving an ATV, causing him to crash into a parked truck. The teenager died of his injuries. Also, in 2016, a former East Point, Georgia police officer was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an unarmed black man who was shocked with a Taser more than a dozen times while he was in handcuffs (Hawkins, December 22, 2016). His police partner during this incident was acquitted of murder but convicted of involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct. He was sentenced to eighteem months in prison.

      The narrow approach advocated by Zimring and others does not reflect the real world of police homicides. As indicated in the selected examples, some LEO homicides are intentional, such as justified shooting, some are accidental—friendly fire deaths or driving while distracted, others are victim precipitated as in suicide by cop. Other police homicides result from careless and reckless action when performing a legal objective. Finally, some police homicides are murders for sex, to conceal a crime, to profit from crime and other personal reasons. From a criminal justice perspective, we examine the homicide type from the outcome of the act.

      The incidents cited earlier document the complex nature of police homicides. There are multiple patterns or types of homicides indicated in the open-source data. Moreover, we know from official sources, open-source data, and research that LEO-caused homicides still occur.

      Police-perpetrated homicides involve different patterns of police behaviors and police actors, and include accidents, friendly fire deaths, use of less-than-lethal weapons, motor vehicles, victim-precipitated deaths, and intentional murders. The book’s purpose is to present a Typology of Police-Perpetrated Homicides based on archival information, official statistics, open-source materials, scholarly studies, and the author’s personal experiences as a working police officer, police academy instructor, and police deviance researcher for over forty years (see Text Box 2.2). Prevention and intervention strategies are facilitated by the identification of types with similar characteristics.

      Text Box 2.2 Typology of Law Enforcement–Perpetrated Homicides

      • Accidental Homicides

      ⚬ Fatal Shootings

      ⚬ Friendly Fire Deaths

      ⚬ Vehicular Homicides

      • Justified Shooting Homicides

      ⚬ Clear and present danger homicides and fear-driven homicides

      ⚬ Non-lethal Device Deaths—Tasers

      • Suicide by Cop

      • In-Custody Homicides-Jails and Lockups

      • Murder

      Conclusion

      The proposed Typology of Law Enforcement Perpetrated Homicides is a heuristic device to move from a description of police homicide by patterns to theoretical developments and prevention. Different types suggest different causes, correlates,