The 74-year-old Newton County woman called 911 threatening suicide.
Deputies arrived to find Shirley Joyce Brown inside her home. She eventually emerged, armed with a rifle. When she ignored deputies’ demands to put down her weapon, according to the Newton sheriff, she was shot multiple times and died.
Three more times since that March incident, metro Atlanta law enforcement agencies have used deadly force against civilians — that is, enough force to likely cause serious injury or death.
Last year, metro Atlanta police agencies used deadly force on 56 occasions, the highest total in the past seven years, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. There’s also been a rise statewide.
GBI Director Vernon Keenan — whose agency investigates the majority of such incidents in Georgia — acknowledged the increase, attributing it to a rise in violence against law enforcement officers.
“Talking to counterparts in other states, all of us are seeing an increase (in use of deadly force),” Keenan said.
Sweeping conclusions are difficult to come by. There is no national or state clearinghouse that tallies the use of deadly force. And the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, which tracks everything from public drunkenness to theft of livestock, does not include police use of force. The last time the U.S. Justice Department conducted a national survey, Georgia, along with Maryland and Montana, didn't submit records. There was no mandate to do so.
That survey, which analyzed data from 2003-2009, revealed a 32.2 percent rise in the number of homicides by law enforcement. Minorities were disproportionately affected; 52.5 percent of the victims were either black or Hispanic.
The GBI, which only investigates the use of deadly force by police when asked by a law enforcement agency, looked into 33 cases in fiscal year 2007 (July ‘06 through June ‘07). In FY 2012, that number leaped to 54, and fell only slightly in 2013 to 52.
In metro Atlanta, the figures have been up and down since 2007. That year, deadly force was applied 47 times. That total dipped to 36 in 2009 and rose incrementally each year before jumping sharply in 2013. The numbers are on pace to drop this year.
Meanwhile, in the city of Atlanta proper, there have been highly publicized cases, but the numbers have actually decreased, according to internal statistics. The totals are down significantly from 2001 and 2002, when a combined 55 cases were reported, as opposed to a combined 29 in 2012 and 2013.
The Atlanta Police Department was one of five agencies with whom The Atlanta Journal-Constitution filed open records requests for this article. Others were Cobb, Marietta, Gwinnett and DeKalb, all agencies that handle their own investigations into use of force. The AJC combined those numbers with GBI data to try to get an overview of the use of deadly force in the metro area and statewide.
While it’s generally agreed that the use of deadly force is on the rise, explanations vary. Some critics question whether law enforcement has become too aggressive in its dealings with the public, saying local agencies have become over-militarized in the post-9/11 world.
According to a recent report by the Justice Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank focused on judicial reform, “Drug task forces, S.W.A.T. teams, gang task forces and other militaristic styles of policing have resulted in corruption, deaths of innocent people, wrongful convictions, and the disproportionate arrest of people of color.”
But law enforcement officials say increasingly belligerent criminals deserve the blame for the rise in the use of deadly force.
Marietta Police Chief Dan Flynn points to a overall “lack of respect” for law enforcement. “Just the way society looks at authority,” said Flynn, adding that drugs have also emboldened criminals.
But Flynn, formerly with the Miami-Dade Police Department, said that a lack of officer experience is also a factor.
“We are losing the craft of being a good police officer,” he said. “The way a police officer carries himself, the way he looks. … It’s very important to maintain psychological edge. The way an officer controls his body language and speaks to a person has an enormous impact. We’re losing that.”
A 2013 study by the Law Enforcement Executive Forum journal pointed to a lack of training, but opinions on that are mixed.
“They’re better trained,” said the GBI’s Keenan. “They’re getting training on how to handle violence toward them.”
He said officers are simply “doing a better job of protecting themselves” and added that the use of deadly force is justified in a “vast majority” of cases.
All agencies track the number of officers killed in the line of duty. “But the true measure is the number of times they’ve had to use force. Officers are trained [to] prevail in these armed encounters,” he said.
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 535 officers were killed nationwide between 2003 and 2012 — 20 from Georgia. That’s one of the higher totals in the nation, more than New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
Concerns about police safety often leads to courts giving officers the benefit of the doubt when they do use deadly force.
“The gray area keeps getting grayer,” said Atlanta attorney Brian Spears, a board member with the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
“Only in exceptional cases are officers’ actions deemed excessive,” Spears said. “That dynamic is happening as the level of professionalism and training has improved. You can’t attribute [the increase in use of deadly force] to a lack of training.”
Athens attorney Lance Lorusso, a former Cobb police officer, said cops don’t take the use of lethal force lightly.
“I interviewed one guy who had shot someone while in the line of duty 20 years ago, and he’s still dealing with it,” said Lorusso, author of “When Cops Kill: The Aftermath of a Critical Incident.” “These guys are haunted by this.”
While juries may be more forgiving of police, internal reviews have become tougher, said civil rights attorney Bill Mitchell.
“If you never sanction anyone, you just open yourself up to greater liability,” he said.
The line between appropriate and excessive can seem arbitrary, but there are unwritten guidelines, Mitchell said. If suspects have deadly weapons, even knives, the onus is on them — if they are within, say, 20 feet of the officer. If the suspect is 100 yards away and is shot by police, “it’s complicated,” Mitchell said.
But Spears said that, often times, all an officer has to say is he or she felt threatened to justify deadly force.
“If you accept that as the beginning and end, you’ll never limit the use of force,” he said. “An officer is always going to say they felt threatened.”
With good reason, according to Keenan.
“We’re seeing an increase in the number of people who will resist authority and will direct violence toward [law enforcement],” he said. “Officers stand a good chance of being injured or killed.
“… On a few occasions, officers will overreact,” Keenan said. “There are a few of these that occur each year, but they are very much in the minority.”
About the Author
