As unrest over officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody takes center stage in conversations about policing and the criminal justice system, Guidelines for Investigating Officer-Involved Shootings, Arrest-Related Deaths, and Deaths in Custody addresses critical investigation components from an expert witness perspective, providing the insights necessary to ensure a complete investigation. Investigating a custodial death or an officer involved in a shooting presents unique and complex issues: estate, community, judicial, agency, involved officer, and public policy interests are all at stake. These types of deaths present various emerging medical, psychological, legal and liability, technical, and investigatory issues that must be addressed through a comprehensive investigation. This book is ideal for students in criminal investigation, death investigation, crime scene investigation, and special topic courses in custodial deaths and officer-involved shootings, as well as for death investigators, law enforcement officers, police administrators, and attorneys.

Develop easy-to-follow policies that apply to your department's needs. Every time an officer discharges his weapon, whether or not anyone is hit, there is an investigation. However, most police agencies have allowed their investigations to evolve and change as each incident occurs, causing public distrust, unnecessary litigation, and great h

Officer-Involved Shootings and Use of Force: Practical Investigative Techniques, Second Edition continues to provide sound and sober models, protocols, and procedures to handle the highly charged fall-out from officer involved shootings. Written by cops for cops, it is designed to address the needs of the agency, the rights of the employee, and the

There is tremendous controversy across the United States (and beyond) when a police officer uses deadly force against an unarmed citizen, but often the conversation is devoid of contextual details. These details matter greatly as a matter of law and organizational legitimacy. In this short book, authors Jon Shane and Zoë Swenson offer a comprehensive analysis of the first study to use publicly available data to reveal the context in which an officer used deadly force against an unarmed citizen. Although any police shooting, even a justified shooting, is not a desired outcome—often termed "lawful but awful" in policing circles—it is not necessarily a crime. The results of this study lend support to the notion that being unarmed does not mean "not dangerous," in some ways explaining why most police officers are not indicted when such a shooting occurs. The study’s findings show that when police officers used deadly force during an encounter with an unarmed citizen, the officer or a third person was facing imminent threat of death or serious injury in the vast majority of situations. Moreover, when police officers used force, their actions were almost always consistent with the accepted legal and policy principles that govern law enforcement in the overwhelming proportion of encounters (as measured by indictments). Noting the dearth of official data on the context of police shooting fatalities, Shane and Swenson call for the U.S. government to compile comprehensive data so researchers and practitioners can learn from deadly force encounters and improve practices. They further recommend that future research on police shootings should examine the patterns and micro-interactions between the officer, citizen, and environment in relation to the prevailing law. The unique data and analysis in this book will inform discussions of police use of force for researchers, policymakers, and students involved in criminal justice, public policy, and policing.

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What's it like to have the legal sanction to shoot and kill? This compelling and often startling book answers this, and many other questions about the oft-times violent world inhabited by our nation's police officers. Written by a cop-turned university professor who interviewed scores of officers who have shot people in the course of their duties, Into the Kill Zone presents firsthand accounts of the role that deadly force plays in American police work. This brilliantly written book tells how novice officers are trained to think about and use the power they have over life and death, explains how cops live with the awesome responsibility that comes from the barrels of their guns, reports how officers often hold their fire when they clearly could have shot, presents hair-raising accounts of what it's like to be involved in shoot-outs, and details how shooting someone affects officers who pull the trigger. From academy training to post-shooting reactions, this book tells the compelling story of the role that extreme violence plays in the lives of America's cops.

The Psychology of Police Deadly Force Encounters: Science, Practice, and Police is a fascinating look into the reality of police work. The author integrates noted theories into a “street-wise” understanding of being a police officer. The focus of this book is on the use of deadly force by officers—a topic of considerable importance. The author discusses the psychosocial aspects of deadly force use, stemming from the individual officer, the situation, organizational influences, and the police culture. Expanding further into social issues, the controversial topic of race and use of deadly force is discussed. This depiction looks at both sides—that of racial victimization and that of the police—which helps to provide a rather unique perspective on this important issue. Of interest, the author breaks down the different dimensions of cognition as a factor in decision making among police, including the perception of the situation, the action taken depending on that perception, and the role of present and past memory. This will make for a useful training topic to alert officers to the cognitive processes that go into deadly force use—processes that they have the control to change to make a better decision. Next, the book delves into the biological factors that may be involved in police decision making—again where deadly force is involved. The various negative psychological impacts that a deadly force situation may bring about are identified and explained. This book will be useful as a tool for both law enforcement practitioners and researchers to better understand the intricacies of deadly force by the police. For researchers, the book has a multitude of references available for further exploration. It will prove to be a useful guide and reference volume for police managers and supervisors, mental health clinicians, investigators, attorneys, judges, law enforcement educators and trainers, rank and file police officers, including expert witnesses.