Thursday, January 28, 2021

Why the #txlege should add point-and-report to statewide police shooting data

In a roundup a few weeks ago, Grits pointed to a new academic study analyzing Dallas police shootings which associated a "point and report" policy with a reduced number of people shot because the officer falsely thought they were armed. Now, the authors have written an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News about their findings. Here's a notable excerpt:
According to the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, police reform falls into two categories: front-end vs. back-end accountability measures. The former includes strong policies and practices to create a culture of organizational accountability before things go wrong, while the latter reflect after-the-fact, methods for holding individual officers responsible for their misdeeds.

Back-end accountability mechanisms are important and they deservedly receive much attention. Yet they are not enough to produce real change. Police reform requires more of the often-neglected front-end mechanisms that target institutional and organizational issues that lead to unnecessary and excessive use of force. A prime example of front-end accountability is implementing stricter departmental policies that limit the circumstances when officers can use force, coupled with documentation and review protocols. There is a rich history of more restrictive administrative policies effectively reducing officer-involved shootings and other types of less lethal force, such as the use of Tasers and pepper spray.

Starting in the 1970s and following the lead of the New York City Police Department, agencies began amending their deadly force policies to only allow officers to shoot in “defense of life” situations, when there is a risk of death or serious bodily injury to themselves or others. Additionally, departments began requiring officers to report when they discharged their firearms, and some departments created review boards to investigate such shootings. These policy changes not only led to significant declines in officer-involved shootings (especially of unarmed citizens), they also reduced racial disparities in police shootings.

Point-and-report policies are front-end accountability efforts that require officers to document all instances of pointing their guns at citizens. This kind of policy is not new. For example, the Charleston, S.C., and La Grange, Georgia, police departments incorporated such a policy in the 1990s. The Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas and New Orleans police departments have all adopted similar policies in recent years.

However, these departments are more the exception that the rule, as many police officers in the U.S. are not subject to point-and-report policies. Moreover, there’s been little research on the impact of a point-and-report policy. Does such a policy reduce police shootings? In a new article published in Injury Prevention, we tested the impact of the Dallas Police Department’s point-and-report policy on police shootings of citizens. It took effect on Jan. 1, 2013, and we used publicly available shooting data from DPD to investigate. We examined the total number of shootings as well as specific characteristics of those shootings before (2003 through 2012) and after (2013 through 2018) the policy change.

Before the policy, DPD averaged 15.3 shootings per year. That average dropped to 13.0 post-policy change (a 15% decline). Our statistical analysis showed that the policy was associated with a significant, gradual reduction in police shootings of citizens that began in late 2015 and continued through the end of 2018.

Perhaps more importantly, the policy was also associated with a decline in the shootings of unarmed citizens (that is, they had no weapon such as a gun or knife), especially citizens who the officers thought were armed when they were not — a “threat perception failure”). Such a failure occurs when officers mistake an item in a person’s hands, such as a cellphone, for a gun. The proportion of threat perception failure shootings declined by nearly 80% after DPD adopted the point-and-report policy (from 18% of all gun or perceived gun cases before the policy change to 4% after).

Last, we also found no increase in the proportion of these incidents in which an officer was injured. Officer injuries actually declined slightly.

These findings are very promising, though we can only speculate on the mechanisms driving those effects. Perhaps the policy adds another layer of organizational accountability. It might also limit the occasions when officers draw and point their weapons, prompting them to take more time to differentiate real threats from threat perception failures.

It may also reduce the potential for officers to escalate a situation unnecessarily, or it might lead them to consider more options for resolving the encounter peacefully (rather than painting themselves into a corner once the gun is drawn). Five decades of research tell us that administrative policy is an important front-end mechanism for controlling police officer use of force. Clear, detailed use of force policies that are enforced shape officer decisions to use their firearms. Our study suggests that a point-and-report policy can do the same.
In 2015, Texas passed legislation to require departments report police shootings - fatal or otherwise - to the Attorney General, giving us a dataset helpfully gathered and organized by our friends at the Texas Justice Initiative. It would be simple to add a provision requiring reports whenever officers point their weapon but don't fire, and if this study from Dallas is any indication, the measure could save lives.

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