Police Use of Firearms Research Paper

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Police forces around the world are mostly routinely armed. Even those countries, such as the UK, New Zealand, and Norway, where police officers are unarmed, exceptions exist in the form of special armed units. Police use of firearms is always under scrutiny, especially in the aftermath of a high-profile incident of shooting where the police are accused of either overusing or abusing their power to legitimately employ deadly force. Nevertheless, there is a growing demand for paramilitarization of the police in a world increasingly perceived as being at risk from terrorism and growing insecurity. Further arming of the police as a result of increasingly risky working conditions, in turn, multiplies risk for police officers themselves, as well as affecting police-public relations adversely. It engenders distrust and suspicion of the police, especially among ethnic and minority communities. The resulting public disorder and antipolice demonstrations increase the gulf between the police and the community it serves and are detrimental to police fulfilling their primary functions.

Explanations for police overuse or misuse of firearms are provided at the individual, organizational, and structural levels in the literature. Accordingly, policy recommendations for eliminating misuse or abuse of firearms are focused on better training, stricter administrative, and legal policies and increasing public awareness. The movement of a civil police force towards becoming increasingly armed and paramilitarized seems inexorable and is irreversible. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, even unarmed police in the UK are increasingly moving away from a “restraint paradigm,” which focused on minimum use of force, to a “military paradigm,” adopting a shoot-to-kill counterterrorism policy. How the changing face of the civil police will affect police-public relations is a matter for police leaders and policy makers to incorporate in their vision for policing in the future.

Police Use Of Firearms

Modern policing was introduced in Britain and in the USA based on the premise that in opposition to the military, the police would intentionally be an intensely civil and democratic institution. However, while the police in Britain were routinely unarmed, paradoxically, the gun as the most overt symbol of police power became synonymous with the American style of policing (Waddington 1999). The colonial model, a distinctive militarized form of policing, where the main role of the police was to subjugate the rebellious population by force is the precursor to many of the policing models in ex-colonies (Waddington 1999). Despite the type of policing model envisaged, police work, almost universally, is characterized by features such as danger, authority, and the mandate to use coercive force that is nonnegotiable (Bittner 1975; Skolnick and Fyfe 1993). As the governmental law enforcement agency, the police see themselves as the “thin blue line” that separates anarchy from order (Skolnick 1975), and the use of violence to maintain that order is deemed legitimate and necessary. Deadly force as the most extreme form of police violence has attracted its fair share of attention from criminological scholars and the public alike. Deadly force can be employed either through the use of firearms and other lethal and nonlethal weapons or through the improper use of holds or restraining techniques, but here the focus is limited to the use of firearms.

The police use firearms in the course of their official duty, either in a situation of direct confrontation between the police and alleged criminal(s) or in a riot control or public disorder situation. The circumstantial and situational factors precipitating the use of deadly force in both these scenarios are quite different. Policing civil disorders often engenders fear, anger, frustration and heightened anxiety for police officers who are too close to the actions to be objective; additionally, heightened emotions on the part of the public make the situation more volatile. Therefore, stricter supervision, command, and control of such operations are required (Waddington 1991). Only when the crowd turns uncontrollably violent does the police resort legitimately to the use of deadly force, ideally and theoretically, in a controlled and methodical manner. In contrast, a sudden confrontation between police and “suspects” can be more fluid, with greater discretion on the part of individual officers to use firearms. Though admittedly, some riot situations may flare up, and some confrontations with criminals may be planned operations. However, principles that ought to govern the use of firearms by the police are universal and not contingent upon the situation under which it has to be employed.

Punch (2010) describes four facets of police use of firearms:

Shoot to prevent – traditional understanding of the use of firearms in the UK and the USA is to prevent or incapacitate and not to kill. Thus, the police are mainly operating under the “restraint paradigm” where the governing principle is “minimum force necessary.” However, Waddington (1991) raises concerns about shooting to injure since shots intending to injure are likely to miss as limbs are more difficult to hit than the torso; a wounded person is unlikely to be incapacitated totally or immediately; and as the result of the first two, officers would be inclined to shoot at a much lower level of threat; the result often is an increase in serious injury and death.
Shoot to kill – informal cop code advises that a firearm should not be deployed unless the intention is to kill. If the intention is stopping and immediate incapacitation – and if in the process the person dies, then the officer must be prepared for that. A failure to totally incapacitate can prove costly to the police or other innocent people.
Shoot to kill as murder – police use of firearms in some countries and in some circumstances amounts to illegal executions. In some contexts, shoot to kill has come to mean summary executions, such as in Northern Ireland (Waddington 1991), India (Belur 2010), various countries in Latin America (Chevigny 1995), and the Caribbean (Bowling 2010).
Shoot to eliminate – where the aim is not only to kill but also to shoot until all possibility of recovery or retaliation is eliminated. This is especially the case during covert counterinsurgency operations and is a clear move from the restraint paradigm to a military paradigm where the civil police operate with the intention of eliminating the target as a matter of policy.

The principle governing any use of force is that it should be necessary and reasonable. The question then arises regarding who determines what is necessary and reasonable and what is the benchmark for judging this. For example, the US Supreme Court ruled in the Graham v. Connor (1989) case that the use of force must be “objectively reasonable” and went on to specify that every instance of use of force will be judged to be within the constitutional limits on a case-by-case basis from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than retrospectively on hindsight (Klinger and Brunson 2009).

Geller and Scott (1992) examine use of deadly force as a result of police shootings of civilians and shootings of police officers by civilians and other police officers in the USA. They acknowledge problems associated with police shootings, such as whether incidents occurred while an officer was on duty or off duty and whether they were officially or personally motivated. Geller and Scott (1992) suggest that the most common type of police shooting involves an on-duty, uniformed, white, male officer and an unarmed black, male civilian between the ages of 17 and 30 in a public location within a high-crime precinct at night in connection with a suspected armed robbery or a “man with a gun” call.

Researchers have found that in Western democracies race was a crucial element in shooting incidents and that black people were more likely than their white counterparts to be involved in police-related shootings (cf. Belur 2010, Chapter 2). Some research studies found this to be rooted in systematic racism. Others suggest the possibility that blacks and Hispanic minorities were disproportionately involved in violent crimes and therefore were represented in higher numbers in police shootings. They also displayed disproportionately higher unemployment, thus likely to spend their time on the streets, thereby exposing them selectively to confrontation with the police and involvement in shootings All these factors reflect wider structures of racial inequality. Other researchers observed that race was not a controlling factor in a patrol officer’s decision to shoot, nor were there significant differences in the race of the victim given similar situational factors. Various findings regarding the connection between police shootings and race are highly contradictory and do not conclusively show any correlation between the two.

Fyfe (1981) describes a continuum from elective (the officer decides whether he wants to shoot or not) to nonelective shootings (where the officer has no choice but to shoot). Research shows that officers’ reasons for shooting range from gun use threat to use of threat of other deadly weapons, fight without other resistance, other reasons for intentionally shooting, accidents, mistaken identity, a stray bullet, warning shots, shots to summon assistance, and felonious shootings (Geller and Scott 1992). However, the worst abuses occur when the police, impatient with the workings of the courts, take it upon themselves to dispose of suspects in bogus “shootouts” (Chevigny 1995).

Clearly, gender, race, and age of the police officer and of the “suspect” as well as the situational factors and circumstances that lead up to the incident appear to be important. Also important are structures of race and class inequality and the culture of racial antagonism that flows from this.

Explanations For Police Use Of Firearms

The only legally acceptable and morally justifiable reasons for police shootings are self-defense or defense of another person’s life. In some countries, it is legally permissible for the police to use firearms while arresting a dangerous and armed suspect who is avoiding arrest. The police in these countries are thus legally entitled to use force in the pursuit or arrest of a dangerous “criminal,” but not in the UK or the USA, where the Supreme Court ruled in the Tennessee v. Garner (1985) case that the police may not use deadly force in pursuance of a fleeing felon if there is no imminent danger to a person’s life.

Three main types of explanation for police violence available are individual and situational, organizational and subcultural, and sociological and structural (Green and Ward 2004). Theoretical explanations for police violence are pitched at different levels and can be classified as micro, meso, and macro theories and are interconnected.

Micro-level theories explain police violence in terms of individual officers’ psychological makeup and/ or the situational exigencies in which they have to exercise their judgement. There are two types of individual theories. The “rotten apple theory” states that the attitudes and personal characteristics of some officers make them prone to use more violence than others, and it rests on the assumption that a majority of police officers are not violence prone but work within the limitations of law. The other strand of individual theories, the “fascist pigs theory,” suggests that only people with certain dispositions, such as authoritarian personalities, are attracted to police work due to its nature so that a majority of officers are violence prone (Uldricks and van Mastrigt 1991). The individual theory espouses that “violence-prone” or “problem” officers manifest a propensity to use force and account for a majority of use of excessive force incidents (Toch 1996).

Meso-level theories explain police violence in terms of the organizational culture that encourages or tolerates such use. In turn, the organization and its culture, rules, procedures, and allegiance to rule of law and accountability affect an individual officer’s attitudes and “dispositions” to act in certain ways, varying according to individual officer’s personality. Organizational level theories are grounded in the explanation that the police, like other organizations, have their own subculture, which on the one hand can create a “violent” officer and on the other protect the officer’s actions from external censure. Key cultural characteristics of police officers have been identified as follows: mission, action, cynicism, suspicion, machismo, isolation, solidarity, loyalty, pragmatism, and conservatism (Reiner 2000). These characteristics are core elements of the central police culture, caused by the structural features of police work such as authority, danger, and pressure for results, which gives rise to a certain “working personality” (Skolnick 1975).

The nature of the organization and the emphasis on factors such as loyalty and secrecy protect officers who are violence prone. “Closing ranks” or erecting a “blue wall of silence” are techniques by which the organization shields its officers from being under scrutiny or being prosecuted or punished by outside investigating agencies. It can also be argued that certain police organizations appear to either have an overt or a tacit policy or have specialist units that support the use of force by police officers in certain situations.

Macro-level theories, essentially sociological and structural explanations, take into account social, political, economic, and cultural factors that create circumstances that allow and legitimize police use of force. Sociological theories aim to develop understanding of the problem of police violence beyond the micro processes of individual action and organizational culture that ask the question: “Why do the police do it?”

These theorists aim to answer the question “why are they allowed to do it?” by referring to a broader sociohistorical framework. Police violence tends to increase in proportion to the elite’s fear of disorder, and the more fearful the elite, the more likely they are to tolerate illegal violence against potentially dangerous groups. The police use of violence as informal punishment for defying police authority or as “street justice” or vigilante justice has been reported by researchers (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993; Chevigny 1995). This penal character of police shootings is of particular concern especially when it enjoys a degree of popular support in societies where such summary justice is not considered inappropriate (Chevigny 1995; Belur 2010).

Another social trend in some Western democracies has been the growth of paramilitary policing to control social disorder. The demand for and subsequent creation of specialist elite units, whose training and culture emphasizes features of the police culture most conducive to violence: the perception of danger, fear of outsiders, isolation, secrecy, intense group loyalty, and pleasure in “warrior fantasies” (Green and Ward 2004). The increased threat of terrorism globally has meant that this trend has intensified. Historically, it has been demonstrated that measures originally justified on the basis of countering terrorism are quickly absorbed and translated into everyday policing (Green and Ward 2004).

Thus, the reasons an officer shoots or does not shoot result from the interplay of personality traits, proximal and distal situational and structural factors, and within a complex matrix of social forces such as the police department, legal context, and larger social culture (Scharf and Binder 1983).

Policing involves situations where the use of force is legitimate and necessary. However, there are other situations that are perceived as requiring the use of dirty means, including the use of force as a last resort in order to achieve a good end. Another way of approaching the problem of understanding use of force decisions is by viewing it as a “classic police dilemma” – the “Dirty Harry problem” (Klockars 1991). The Dirty Harry problem originates from the film Dirty Harry (1971) where Inspector Harry “Dirty Harry” Callahan is placed in a series of situations where he has to make decisions about whether “bad” means can justifiably be used to achieve “good” ends. The troublesome aspect of this problem is not whether a right choice can be made, but that any choice is between two wrongs and in choosing either, the policeman is inevitably tainted or tarnished (Klockars 1991). Thus, by choosing either to act or not act, the police officer is guilty of wrongdoing. The policeman often tries to solve the dilemma by denying the dirtiness of its means, justifying its use for achieving good means. The only way to put an end to the moral problem is by punishing officers who adopt dirty means regardless of the ends they aim to achieve, though this by no means is an easy moral choice either (Klockars 1991).

While police officers in some countries like the UK may be held individually accountable for serious events, even while they were acting under orders of their superior commanders (Punch 2010), officers in Nordic countries are exempt from criminal liability when they use firearms in the exercise of “lawful authority” (Knutsson and Noree 2010). The police are often in effect allowed to get away with blatant abuse of force. Prosecutions of officers may be rare even in cases of excessive use of deadly force in many countries, and convictions rarer still (Uldricks and van Mastrigt 1991; Geller and Scott 1992; Belur 2010). Factors responsible for low rates of culpability for police officers in many instances of excessive use of force are as follows: frustration with the criminal justice system which appears to provide a magical cloak of immunity for police officers; the relatively small number of complaints made against the police; difficulties in substantiating complaints; complete control of investigation by the police themselves; the “code” of silence that ensures officers go to great lengths to protect fellow officers; the greater credibility commonly attached to a police officer’s account of events as opposed to that of an accused criminal; and jurors frequently feeling more sympathetic to an officer than the complainant and sometimes even intimidation of witnesses, lawyers, and magistrates. One of the most effective ways in which the aftermath of a controversial police shooting can be managed is a credible independent investigation, whether it is by an internal or external agency (Geller and Scott 1992).

Proper use and supervision of police use of force is essential not only to maintain state order and legitimacy but also as it affects public perception, attitude, and behavior towards the police and the government.

Police Use Of Firearms And Police-Public Relations

The traditional policing model based on the restraint paradigm that emphasized containment, minimum casualties, and apprehension of suspects for criminal justice processing rather than summary execution is increasingly being replaced by a militarized version of mainstream policing based on secrecy, overwhelming force, uncompromising tactics, and military solutions post-9/11 (Squires and Kennison 2010). The fatal nature of shootings ensures their prominence in any discussion about police violence. Public discourse on shootings has focused on the strict legality of the shootings, their necessity, their moral and ethical parameters, the training of police in the use of force, and the speculation of racism in a culture of violence (Coady et al. 2000).

Police shootings can be socially divisive, threatening to damage the fabric of trust, legitimacy, and accountability which are the founding principles of civil policing (Squires and Kennison 2010). Many communities have been torn asunder following a perceived abuse of force incident resulting in urban riots and profound political unrest. The police, as custodians of the state’s monopoly to legitimately use force, are entitled to use deadly force. However, as the executive arm of the law and government, their actions involving deadly force cause considerable disquiet and are under close scrutiny from the public, the media, politicians, and NGOs as well as the organization itself, at times.

Often scrutiny of police actions results in one or more of the following 5 reactions: public protests, public riots, hearings by government bodies, organizational reform, and civil litigation (Klinger and Brunson 2009). Each of these is potentially problematic for building public confidence and trust in the police. Racial disparity is often the main cause of such discontent, particularly where white officers allegedly target black or minority ethnic men disproportionately, even in the use of deadly force. These racial disparities in shooting statistics might be explained by differential involvement in criminal activity, that is, more black men are likely to commit serious crimes and are therefore more likely to be shot either by white of minority ethnic officers. Locke’s (1996) examination of relevant research fails to establish an unequivocal relationship between race and police use of excessive force; however, this does not deny the racially linked outcomes for law enforcement: outcomes such as complaints and civil damage suits, which cause significant problems for police-minority community relations. Minority citizens have especially charged the police with abusing their power in the use of deadly force, an issue which has often polarized “blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, and police officers and civilians” (Scharf and Binder 1983).

It has been recognized that public attitudes towards the police use of force can be sometimes pretty raw, often ill-informed, occasionally easily influenced, subject to personal biases and prejudices, and more likely to be fueled by sensationalist reporting than by an accurate reflection of the overall picture. Since the media pays too much attention in instances where the police have allegedly used excessive force, these comparatively rare events have nonetheless prompted a perception of police volatility, thus encouraging renewed reform of policies, training, supervision, and accountability structures (Alpert and Dunham 2004). Not all use of force incidents are deemed newsworthy and get more than a passing coverage in the media. Lawrence (2000) proposes that only when journalists find “critical story cues” do they deem a story to be newsworthy. Some of these critical cues are “accounts of family, witnesses and other sources that challenge the police or official version”; coroner’s report or when a legal proceeding is initiated against the officers; availability of evidence of wrongdoing; when there is a strong citizen reaction; racial identities of the officer and citizen, especially white on black incidents; when officials make a public pronouncement or initiate special investigation; or when police policies are reformed.

It is unclear whether these critical cues reinforce media interest or whether media interest reinforces critical cues that maintain the newsworthiness of a story. Managing public perception and engaging with the media in productive ways is one of the biggest challenges facing police leaders in the aftermath of a police shooting. If handled poorly at this stage, it can have serious consequences for the organization and police officers involved.

Police-public relations are worst affected not only when the police are ill-trained and ill-disciplined to the extent that they injure or kill the innocent but also when they, due to their incompetence, fail to protect the public from dangerous offenders. So the police are damned if they do [shoot the “wrong” person] and damned if they do not [shoot the “dangerous” offender]. The trick is in the balancing act – shooting those who cannot be dealt with in any other way and protecting life in situations where the use of firearms is uncalled for. The problem is that the decisions regarding who is the right and wrong person are always made on hindsight, which can be problematic.

Public reaction to police use of firearms is ambiguous, depending upon whether the use of force is perceived as being legitimate and justified or not. There have been many early attempts to measure public attitude towards the police, asking questions in public surveys about “satisfaction” with the police or “approval” for local police and even “confidence” in the police. By and large, most of these studies have found that a majority of the public are generally satisfied with the police, but there are differences based on the characteristics of the citizens, the characteristics of the neighborhoods, and the frequency and type of citizen-police contacts (Flanagan and Vaughan 1996).

Since use of deadly force incidents are relatively rare, public attitudes towards them are reflected more in the immediate protests, or public disturbances following such an incident, than in the large-scale public opinion surveys on confidence in the police. Especially since it has long been recognized that public opinion is very sensitive to events and pressures, each survey should be taken to reflect the immediate opinion at that particular point of time. Flanagan and Vaughan (1996) cite the example of public opinion polls taken in various cities in the USA which showed that public opinion regarding police brutality and excessive use of deadly force fluctuated sharply within and between various ethnic communities depending upon whether it followed a much publicized police brutality case or not. They conclude that public opinion definitely acts as a vehicle of social control on abusive police practice and that regardless of whether public perception that the police use excessive force commonly is justified or not, there is a need to educate the public about the realities of police work and concerns about use of deadly force as well as introduce police reforms for the benefit of both.

Controlling Police Use Of Firearms

Prescriptive studies on police use of deadly force offer solutions to curb the phenomenon at the individual, organizational, situational, or social level depending upon the particular theoretical approach adopted. Scharf and Binder (1983) suggest that various solutions are guided by different theories of how the interventions will work and are based on certain assumptions about police behavior. For example, those who assume that excessive shooting occurs because officers are poorly or inadequately trained advocate better training to allow officers to use finer discrimination and tactics to avoid using deadly force. Similarly, those who advocate an intensification of shooting review procedures and increased accountability assume that the police use excessive force because of low levels of sanctions in the organization and society. Thus, if scrutiny and punishments are increased, avoidable shootings will be reduced.

Reforms at the level of the individual officer include attitude and psychological tests as part of the recruitment process to ensure only the most “suitable” candidates are chosen to be able to use firearms. Better training and sensitizing programs are also part of the solution to ensure that individual officers are given an opportunity to renew their commitment to the rule of law and human rights (Grant and Grant 1996). However, Worden (1996) found little consistency between both, officers’ attitudes and behaviors, and an individual officer’s behavior from one incident to another. Thus, solutions that sift out “unsuitable” candidates at the recruitment stage (via psychological tests) and emphasize training and sensitizing officers though useful are not the whole solution to curbing excessive use of force.

Research that locates the source of violent behavior of officers in the police subculture and organizational ethos either put forward solutions that emphasize training and placing administrative controls to ensure no abuse of force is tolerated or suggests that real change can come about only when police culture can be changed to ensure that tolerating or encouraging deviant behavior is prohibited (Reiner 2000). Some studies concluded that introduction of administrative controls via new guidelines and procedures succeeded to a large extent by bringing down use of deadly force in New York, Kansas City, and Atlanta (Fyfe 1978; Sherman 1983). Sherman’s (1983) research showed that the reduction in shooting was only in dubious cases, but shots fired in more serious, life-threatening circumstances (what might be termed as “nonelective” shootings in Fyfe’s terminology) remained the same. There is, nevertheless, general agreement among policing scholars that cultural change possibilities are very limited without structural change.

Studies that focus on analyzing the situational aspect of the violent police-citizen interaction advocate solutions whereby officers have better control on the nature of the encounter and are able to process information better to enable them to take adequate precautions to ensure that the outcome of a chance encounter is not violent (Scharf and Binder 1983). Fyfe (1986) suggests that in order to reduce unnecessary violence, the police role must be defined as one of a diagnostician, and they must learn that role thoroughly as well as use principles of tactical knowledge and concealment to reduce the likelihood of having to resort to deadly force, before they actually confront someone who may be armed and dangerous. By keeping things simple, involving as few people as possible, and not getting too close, cops can avoid unnecessary shootings.

Tackling the problem of police abuse of deadly force has been attempted by developed countries like the USA, the UK, and Canada as well as developing democracies like Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. The difference in the approach has been at the various levels at which the problem is perceived and addressed. For example, in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia, which have more established democratic traditions, accountability mechanisms exist, but the emphasis is on fine-tuning them or making them more refined to suit the purpose.

In developing countries in Latin America or South Africa, the problems are more fundamental, of propagating a culture of democratic accountability to the rule of law and the people, of setting up proper accountability mechanisms in the first place, and also of reforming management and supervision practices to ensure greater independence from political interference and ensure more professionalism. Such reforms would require changes in the wider social context and problems facing the police.

Current Issues And Controversies

There are 4 issues that are currently the subject of research and controversy in the area of police use of firearms:

Establishing a standard of “reasonableness” for use of firearms decisions: Shooting incidents are considered suspicious either because the police fired too many shots, police accounts conflicted with each other or with the facts, or witness accounts contradicted the official version of events. Furthermore, officer decisions to shoot are generally judged on the basis of hindsight, by people with inadequate technical know-how and often under pressure from public opinion and dissatisfied minority ethnic communities.

However, research into use of lethal force by police officers has demonstrated that perception, judgement, and reaction times of police officers in stressful situations can be hugely complex (cf. Belur 2010, Chapter 2). Testing officer reaction times under laboratory conditions demonstrated that the more stressful the situation, the slower a person is likely to respond to changes in the situation. Thus, once officers begin shooting under perceived stressful conditions, while doing many other activities simultaneously and sequentially, their reaction time to stop shooting will be longer This might explain the large number of bullets fired in some of these cases.

Research has indicated that hindsight bias (i.e., perception of an incident is influenced by outcome knowledge) plays an important role in the way an incident is perceived by the actors involved and others observing or commenting on it. In incidents where the “victim” was not found in possession of a weapon, observers perceived less danger to the police officers on the scene, and police use of deadly force tends to be considered less justifiable under those circumstances. Research has also lent support to the contention that stressful situations such as shooting incidents can distort officer’s perceptions in different ways, leading to accounts conflicting with each other and with the facts. Additionally, graphic visualization techniques and expert testimony were used to explain consistency between officer’s accounts and forensic facts in particularly contentious shooting incidents. More work needs to be done in this area in order to place officer’s decisions to shoot in perspective given the stressful nature of the experience and concomitant distortions in perception and decision making this can induce.

Arming the unarmed police: The British police have traditionally been unarmed, and there continues to be significant support for this position. However, Punch (2010) traces developments in arming the British police from what he calls hazardous amateurism in the early 1950s to the emergence of armed force support units in some police forces in the 1970s, to the growth of armed response vehicles nationally in the late 1980s, towards a more professional deployment of armed units, culminating in the shoot-to-kill counterterrorism policy called Operation Kratos following the London bombings of July 2005. The main reasons why police have become armed is because they have felt unsafe and vulnerable to attack in certain areas so that they have readily available means at hand to deal with armed crime and terrorism and more recently as a public reassurance exercise. The creation of SWAT teams, first by the LAPD, followed by other elite squads of armed and trained officers for special operations has become a trend in various parts of the world, including the UK, showing a move towards the militarized end of the spectrum (Waddington 1999).

Research in Australia showed that in areas with comparable rates of violent crimes the risk of police officers being killed are significantly higher in areas where the police are armed than in those where the police are unarmed (Hawkins and Ward 1970). Another unintended consequence of paramilitarization of policing is the transfer of police issued weapons into the hands of antisocial elements. The Maoist-inspired insurgents in India have become a formidable guerrilla force to reckon with after they began arming themselves with weapons looted from government armories, state police, and security forces from the 1980s onwards (Ramana 2006).

Given the “incident-driven” nature of the introduction of greater arming of the British police, there is a danger that a particularly horrific incident can escalate arming of the police, but there are few events that can prompt a compensating de-escalation especially given the rising threat of terrorism (Waddington 1991). The decision of arming an unarmed police force requires careful consideration as this can only be a one-way path – the experience of many countries, for example, postwar Germany and Japan, shows that disarming an armed police force remains no option once the level of societal violence has escalated to accommodate an armed police force (Phelps 2010).

Use of alternative nonlethal force: Given the pressure of performing under increasingly challenging conditions as well as from the human rights groups regarding the use of firearms, police forces are exploring alternative means of less than lethal force in order to achieve incapacitation of target without loss of life. Innovations in weaponry such as stun guns, incapacitation sprays, disorientation instruments, directed energy devices, and acoustic technologies which are being tried and tested are themselves not totally guaranteed to be nonlethal or free of controversy (Summers and Kuhns 2010). Many impact, chemical or electrical weapons have limitations in terms of accuracy, distance, or effect. They all work if used within the parameters placed upon them by their manufacturers. However, police work involves fluidly dynamic and totally unexpected situations often precluding the manufacturer’s parameters, in which case they are often useless. Less lethal technologies are still in the stage of development and testing. Police officers are often reluctant in placing their trust in such equipment to overcome someone with a gun, though the first steps are being taken. Clearly there is need for further research not only in the area of development of less lethal technology but also in their performance under a wider range of situational and circumstantial factors, as well as their impact on police-public relations more broadly. Policy analysts, police leaders, practitioners, technologists, and theorists need to work together in developing more acceptable and less lethal weapons of force fit for purpose.
Terrorism and public insecurity: The gap between the police and the military is being significantly jeopardized by terrorism (Waddington 1999). The threat of terrorism and aftermath of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, and Mumbai have led to police forces in many countries adopting a military approach or a widened criminal justice model (Greene and Herzog 2009) towards terrorism by raising specialized units with training, capacity, and equipment to deal with terrorist threats of the most violent kind. The growth of special tactical groups and the resulting paramilitarization that are targeted towards countering possible terrorist activity have increased police violence in Australia (McCulloch 2000). Involvement of the civil police in covert counterterrorist activities might lead to an increase in the distrust and suspicion between the community and the police and drive a wedge in policepublic relations. This has been demonstrated in Israel where shift in emphasis from low (community) policing to high (covert, antiterrorist) policing, where among other covert activities, special units have been empowered to shoot a suspected terrorist dead to prevent an attack, has led to a gradual distancing of the civil police from the community it polices (Weisburd et al. 2009).

Conclusions And Future Directions

Police use of firearms has been subject to intense debate, controversy, and scrutiny in many parts of the world. While the police are armed in a majority of countries, there is very little clarity on the subject of when and how they are to wield firearms uncontroversially. The law usually only permits police officers to use firearms to kill in self-defense or to protect someone else’s life, or in a few countries while arresting an armed and dangerous offender. A police officer’s decision to use firearms in real-life situations is thus based on her/his judgement of the situation and the danger they perceive to their own or someone else’s life. However, this decision is subsequently subject to review with the benefit of hindsight, and often the officer’s judgement is questioned or found wanting. Police shootings have caused public discontent and anger especially among ethnic minority communities who perceive the disproportionately high number of shooting incidents involving minority ethnic citizens to be racially motivated. Public riots, disorder, and demonstrations against perceived misuse of or excessive use of lethal force put a strain on police-community relations, which in turn has a detrimental impact on the police role of maintaining law and order. We need further research to understand and improve police decision making under stressful situations. This would also be beneficial ineducating the public about the dynamics of the decision-making process and also explain why police actions that appear to be racially prejudiced might not actually be so in some cases.

Various explanations have been put forward to explain police propensity to abuse or use excessive force. These explanations account for police violence at the individual level, at the organizational level, and at the social or structural level. To maintain harmonious police-public relations, police use of force – especially firearms – has to be made transparently accountable and subject to administrative control and review. We need further research to evaluate the effectiveness of these various interventions aimed at different levels and under different circumstances and contexts in order to understand what works best, under which circumstances, and why.

Growing terrorist threats and increasing public insecurity have led the civil police in many countries to adopt a more paramilitary role, with specialized units armed and trained to deal with emerging terrorist threats. The inevitable and inexorable paramilitarization of the civil police under these circumstances has placed additional strain on police-public relations. We need to understand how police counter terrorist responses can be inclusive of community policing rather than alienating the community via “high policing” tactics. A related issue is the demand for arming of unarmed police especially in the UK. The agenda for arming the police, or specialized police units, is driven by a perception of wider social violence in general but more specifically by particular incidents. We need a better understanding of what the outcomes of the incident-driven nature of further arming the police might be with an eye to the possibility of embarking upon an ever spiraling cycle of violence, given the fact that disarming an armed police force is rarely ever an option.

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