11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail
Published: May 8, 2008
New York City police officers fire their weapons far less often
than they did a decade ago, a statistic that has dropped along with the
crime rate. But when they do fire, even at an armed suspect, there is often
no one returning fire at the officers. Officers hit their targets roughly 34
percent of the time.
When they fire at dogs, roughly 55 percent of shots hit home. Most of
their targets are pit bulls, with a smattering of Rottweilers and German
shepherds.
Officers’ guns go off unintentionally or by accident for a variety of
reasons: wrestling with suspects, cleaning the weapons, leaning on holsters
— even once, in 1996, when a gun was put in an oven for safekeeping.
While the drop in police shootings was already clear, the details were
among the myriad facts included in 11 years’ worth of annual New York Police
Department firearms-discharge reports that were, without fanfare, handed
over to the City Council this week and earlier to the
New York Civil Liberties Union.
Both groups have been examining the department’s methods of stopping and
arresting suspects, sometimes for possession of illegal guns.
The reports cover the years 1996 to 2006, and are used as a training tool
and to help officials develop “lesson plans.”
“Patterns and possible hazards are identified” from the statistics, the
report adds.
Over all, the numbers show that the department’s use of deadly force has
decreased along with the city’s historic drop in crime, and the drop in
threats against police officers.
Picked apart closely, the reports provide a remarkable portrait of how
the nation’s largest police force, with 36,000 officers, uses its guns.
Every shot, from gunfight to accident to suicide, both on and off-duty, is
accounted for.
The findings include:
 | The number of bullets fired by officers dropped to 540 in 2006 from
1,292 in 1996 — the first year that the city’s housing, transit and regular
patrol forces were merged — with a few years of even lower numbers in
between. Police officers opened fire 60 times at people in 2006, down from
147 in 1996. |
| The police fatally shot 13 people in 2006, compared with 30 people a
decade before. |
| In 77 percent of all shootings since 1998 when civilians were the
targets, police officers were not fired upon, although in some of those
cases, the suspects were acting violently: displaying a gun or pointing it
at officers, firing at civilians, stabbing or beating someone or hitting
officers with autos, the police said. No one fired at officers in two
notable cases — the 1999 shooting of
Amadou Diallo and the 2006 shooting of
Sean Bell.
|
| In such shootings, the total number of shots fired in each situation
edged up to 4.7 in 2006. However, the figure is skewed by the 50 shots fired
in the Bell case. Excluding that case, the average would be 3.6 shots. |
| The average number of bullets fired by each officer involved in a
shooting remained about the same over those 11 years even with a switch to
guns that hold more bullets — as did officers’ accuracy, roughly 34 percent.
This figure is known in police parlance as the “hit ratio.” |
“The data shows that the
New York City Police Department is the most restrained in the country,”
said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman. “What these reports
don’t show are the thousands of incidents where police were confronted with
armed criminals, and they did not return fire.”
John C. Cerar, a retired deputy inspector who was the commander of the
Police Department’s firearms training section from 1985 to 1994, said the
accuracy rate is comparable to that of many other major police departments.
In some cases, it is better.
In Los Angeles, which has 9,699 officers, the police fired 283 rounds in
2006, hitting their target 77 times, for a hit ratio of 27 percent, said
Officer Ana Aguirre, a spokeswoman. Last year, they fired 264 rounds,
hitting 76 times, for a 29 percent hit ratio, she said.
So far this year the hit ratio in Los Angeles is 31 percent, with 74 of
237 bullets fired by officers hitting the target.
In the New York reports, the hit ratio of officers who committed suicide
with a firearm — and, therefore, hit their target 100 percent of the time —
is included when the overall average is calculated, bringing it up.
Forty-six police officers committed suicide in the 11 years from 1996
through 2006, an average of four a year. The highest number came in 2003,
when seven officers committed suicide.
Inspector Cerar credited the department for studying its shootings.
“Everything is down, the number of shots fired by officers is down, the
number of subjects that we shot is way down,” said Inspector Cerar. “The
number of total times when a police officer fires his weapon is down.
Statistically, anecdotally, in any way you put it, the New York City Police
Department is not a cowboy department.”
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we are human beings who do make mistakes. We
make them. There were mistakes in the Diallo and Bell shootings. But that
doesn’t make the department murderous.”
He added: “We have to make split-second life-and-death
decisions and sometimes we make the wrong ones.”
As the numbers have changed, so have the reports that have categorized and
collected them. Inspector Cerar said that firearms statistics were first
seriously compiled by the department beginning in 1971.
There is a marked shift in the way the data is presented, beginning in 1998.
For instance, the reports in 1996 and 1997 include the race of the officer and
the person who was shot, facts that do not appear in the 1998 report.
The 1996 and 1997 reports said that 89.4 percent of those shot by the police
were black or Hispanic. The racial information has not been included since then.
Testifying before the City Council’s Public Safety Committee on Monday,
Deputy Chief John P. Gerrish downplayed how much understanding could come from
releasing details on race.
“Every firearms discharge must be judged in light of the unique circumstances
in which it occurs, and any conclusion drawn from the purely demographic data
involved is fatally flawed,” he said.
The individual reports also used to contain information on civilian
bystanders unintentionally shot and killed or injured by the police, but that,
too, disappeared. In 1996, no civilians were killed by police but five were
injured, including one hit by a ricochet.
While officers hit their targets about a third of the time over all, far
fewer bullets generally found their mark during gunfights. In 1999, only 13
percent of bullets fired during a gunfight were hits.
By contrast, in 2006, 30 percent of the shots fired during gunfights were
hits, an unusually high percentage. That year, a total of 19 officers fired
their weapons in 13 separate gunfights.
The 2006 report made it clear that even when officers did all the firing,
they often faced a threat. In that year, in 47 shootings when only officers
fired, a gun was pointed at them in 26 instances, and in 21 others “subjects
were armed with weapons other than firearms.”
A parenthetical note breaks those 21 down: 6 cutting instruments, 6 motor
vehicles, 4 miscellaneous weapons. Five others used “physical force/furtive
movement,” the report said.
Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, said that he considered the five cases citing “physical
force/furtive movement” as the police shooting at an unarmed person. He said he
counted about five similar cases in every year since 2002.
“That the number of shooting incidents is down since 1996 is good for
everyone,” Mr. Dunn said. “At the same time, the likelihood that nearly everyone
being shot at is black or Latino, and the fact that in most incidents only the
police are shooting, raise serious concerns that were highlighted by the Bell
and Diallo shootings.”
A year after the Bell shooting, the civil liberties group filed a request
under the freedom of information law seeking the department’s annual discharge
reports, as well as documents on the race of everyone the police fired upon. The
department turned over the discharge reports in February, but denied the other
request last month.
The civil liberties group said it wanted the data to better understand the
role of race in police shootings, not as information to back up any lawsuit.
The report used to be called the “Firearms Discharge Assault Report.” In
1996, it noted that 76 officers were fired upon, in 42 shootings, and did not
return fire. In 1999, the title changed to “Firearms Discharge Report,” and the
“assault against officers” category was eliminated.
Inspector Cerar said that that data should have continued to be reported.
In the 1996 report, there were 22 reasons given for the accidental
discharges, including: struggling with a perpetrator (13); tripping, falling,
slipping or running (10); unloading or cleaning a gun (7); removing a weapon
from its holster (2); attempting to clear a jam (1); an officer startled (1).
Officer Aguirre, the spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said it
produces an annual Officer Involved Shooting Report that is similar to the one
in New York. “We do all the analyses,” she said, “It is quite extensive.”
She said that parts of the report are not made public. She said that the
chief,
William J. Bratton — a former New York police commissioner — instituted a
policy under which he receives a report within 72 hours of each shooting about
what occurred, with an eye toward making tactical improvements or modifying
training.
