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Bang / Guns Title: When Atatiana Jefferson Pickup Up Her Gun, Officer Dean's Requirement to Issue a Warning of Attempt to Deescalate Disappeared When Atatiana Jefferson Picked Up Her Gun, Officer Dean's Requirement to Issue a Warning or Attempt to Deescalate Disappeared
nolu chan
Regarding Use-of-Force, the Fort Worth PD adopted PERF ICAT training in 2018. While it requires issuance of a warning and attempting deescalation before using lethal force, it explicitly does not apply to situations where the subject is armed with a gun.
A subject with a firearm is treated differently from all other situations. In such situation, the Fort Worth PD Use-of-Force policy does not require the officer to issue a warning, or to attempt deescalation, prior to using lethal force.
Let us review the Use of Force policy of the Fort Worth PD, beginning with PERF ICAT, adopted in January 2018, and proceeding to the general Forth Worth PD policy of 2017 as reviewed by The Use of Force Project.
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PERF ICAT TRAINING
Police Executive Research Forum
Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics De-escalation Training
http://fortworthtexas.gov/news/2018/01/police-perf-training/
Posted Jan. 31, 2018
Every officer in the Fort Worth Police Department has completed training that encourages them to use a new way of thinking when it comes to crisis intervention, communication and tactics.
The training is called PERF ICAT— Police Executive Research Forum Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics De-escalation Training. The nationally-recognized training educates officers on the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to manage non-firearm threats, influence behavioral changes and gain voluntary compliance whenever possible. The training is a key to the department’s mission to safeguard the lives of residents and enhance public safety through building trust with the community.
The PD has recently made changes to how officers approach use-of-force situations and amended policies to incorporate de-escalation tactics. Biannual in-service training and training for new recruits have been modified to provide more tools to resolve police encounters that emphasize the safety of residents and officers.
The PD has invited city officials and members of the Chief’s Advisory Board, Policy Advisory Committee, and the Race and Culture Task Force to an ICAT training session so they can realize what is expected of officers and have a better understanding of the situations officers face each day.
Well, that sounded impressive. However, PERF ICAT training mainly benefits Officer Dean and the defense.
https://www.policeforum.org/about-icat
Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics, or ICAT, is a use-of-force Training Guide designed to fill a critical gap in training police officers in how to respond to volatile situations in which subjects are behaving erratically and often dangerously but do not possess a firearm. The Training Guide includes model lesson plans and support materials (including Power Point presentations, videos, and other resources) in the key areas of decision-making, crisis recognition and response, tactical communications and negotiations, and operational safety tactics. ICAT then integrates these skills and provides opportunities to practice them through video case studies and scenario-based training exercises.
Read the ICAT Mission Statement and Training Goals
Four Areas of Focus
The ICAT Training Guide focuses on four key areas:
Patrol officer response. In almost every situation where a subject is behaving erratically (often because of mental illness or behavioral crisis), it is a patrol officer—a “beat cop”—who is the first to respond. ICAT provides these officers with the skills and options needed to safely and effectively manage these encounters, especially in the critical first few moments after officers arrive. In many instances, the goal is for the first responding officers to buy enough time so that additional, specialized resources can get to the scene to support a safe and peaceful resolution.
Non-firearms incidents. ICAT focuses on those critical incidents in which the subject is unarmed or armed with a weapon other than a firearm (such as a knife, baseball bat, rocks, or other blunt instrument). Unlike situations in which the subject has a firearm and officers have few options besides lethal force, these non-firearms incidents often present officers with time and opportunity to consider a range of responses. Helping officers safely and effectively manage these types of encounters is the focus of ICAT.
Integration of crisis recognition/intervention, communications, and tactics. In recent years, a growing number of police agencies have been providing their officers with specialized training on how to interact with persons who are in crisis because of mental health issues or other factors. ICAT builds on those efforts by integrating communications and tactical skills with crisis intervention approaches. This integrated approach is presented in the context of a Critical Decision-Making Model that helps patrol officers develop and think through their options in these challenging non-firearms incidents.
Officer safety and wellness. ICAT is centered on PERF’s Guiding Principle #1: “The sanctity of human life should be at the heart of everything an agency does.” The Training Guide focuses on protecting officers from both physical threats and emotional harm. This is accomplished by equipping officers with the tools, techniques and skills needed to slow down some situations and pursue options for safely resolving them. The goal is to help officers avoid reaching the point where their lives or the lives of others become endangered and the officers have no choice but to use lethal force.
Read How the ICAT Training Guide Was Created
Flexible and Adaptable
PERF encourages police agencies and academies to be creative in how they choose to use the ICAT Training Guide.
ICAT is designed to be flexible enough to accommodate these and other approaches. However, it is critical that whatever approach is used, the agency or academy focus on the integration of skills, and not present the material in training “silos.” This focus on integration is what makes ICAT unique.
PERF ICAT training does not include subjects with a firearm. Shit, that looked so promising too. Introduce a firearm into the equation and PERF ICAT goes out the window. Introduce a firearm and PERF ICAT has no application whatever. Incidents with firearms are subject to a very different policy.
Repeated for emphasis.
PERF ICAT redounds to the benefit of the defense of Officer Dean as it makes clear that asituation with a subject armed with a firearm is handled differently from all the other situations, and the officers have few options besides lethal force.
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FORT WORTH PD USE OF FORCE POLICY AS REVIEWED BY THE USE OF FORCE PROJECT
http://useofforceproject.org/#review
[...]
Below is the use of force policy, including the use of deadly force on a subject armed with a firearm, for Forth Worth as documented by the above review of the Use of Force Project.
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Year of most recent policy 2017
Requires De-Escalation:
Does the policy require officers to de-escalate situations, when possible?
Bans Chokeholds and Strangleholds:
Are chokeholds and strangleholds Gncluding carotid restraints) explicitly prohibited, except in situations where deadly force is authorized?
Duty to Intervene:
Are officers required to intervene when witnessing another officer using excessive force?
Requires Warning Before Shooting:
Are officers required to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting someone?
Restricts Shooting at Moving Vehicles:
Are officers prohibited from shooting at people in moving vehicles unless the subject presents a separate deadly threat other than the vehicle itself?
• 5. Officers shall not place themselves in the path of a moving vehicle in a manner which may lead to the use of deadly force. If a confrontation with a moving vehicle does occur, officers shall move out of the path of the vehicle."
Requires Comprehensive Reporting:
Are all uses of force required to be reported, including the pointing of a firearm at a civilian?
Requires Exhaust All Other Means Before Shooting:
Are officers required to exhaust all other reasonable alternatives before resorting to deadly force?
Officers not required to exhaust other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force.
The use of deadly force is authorized only when it is necessary for officers to protect themselves or others from an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury.”
Has Use of Force Continuum:
Is a Force Continuum or Matrix included in the Policy, defining the types of force/weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance?
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#3. To: nolu chan (#0)
A jury will decide whether what Dean did was legal or not.
Perhaps, but perhaps not. About the only contestable facts would be what occurred on the phone call from the dispatcher to the responding officers, what the officers did at the scene, and what is contained in the relevant policy directives. The uninformed noise of the anarcho-libertarian hive collective on this site is irrelevant. The contestable facts are covered by video, audio, and documentary records. The defense could well stipulate the facts, waive a jury, and go with a bench trial to determine guilt or innocence based on application of the law to the stipulated facts. As in Morales (9th Cir., 2017) infra, "The question is whether every reasonable officer under those same circumstances would believe that there was no reasonable basis for the arrest." Kisela (S. Ct. 2018) infra makes clear how difficult it will be to obtain a conviction, the uninformed noise from the anarcho-libertarian hive collective notwithstanding. While qualified immunity directly applies only to civil cases, a similar standard appears to be inferred by the Fort Worth PD Use of Force policy regarding a subject with a firearm. Where a court finds an officer had qualified immunity, by necessity it finds that the officer's acts did not constitute a crime. Qualified immunity cannot attach to an act held to be criminal. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-467_bqm1.pdf In Kisela v. Hughes, 17-467, 554 U.S. ___ (2 Apr 2018) per curiam Sotomayor J, joined by Ginsburg, J, dissenting, The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 9th Circuit opinion and stated, At 5-7 (slip op) Kisela says he shot Hughes because, although the officers themselves were in no apparent danger, he believed she was a threat to Chadwick. Kisela had mere seconds to assess the potential danger to Chadwick. He was confronted with a woman who had just been seen hacking atree with a large kitchen knife and whose behavior was erratic enough to cause a concerned bystander to call 911 and then flag down Kisela and Garcia. Kisela was separated from Hughes and Chadwick by a chain-link fence; Hughes had moved to within a few feet of Chadwick; and she failed to acknowledge at least two commands to drop the knife. Those commands were loud enough that Chadwick, who was standing next to Hughes, heard them. This is far from an obvious case in which any competent officer would have known that shooting Hughes to protect Chadwick would violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court of Appeals made additional errors in concluding that its own precedent clearly established that Kisela used excessive force. To begin with, even if a controlling circuit precedent could constitute clearly established law in these circumstances, it does not do so here. Sheehan, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 13). In fact, the most analogous Circuit precedent favors Kisela. See Blanford v. Sacramento County, 406 F. 3d 1110 (CA9 2005). In Blanford, the police responded to a report that a man was walking through a residential neighborhood carrying a sword and acting in an erratic manner. Id., at 1112. There, as here, the police shot the man after he refused their commands to drop his weapon (there, as here, the man might not have heard the commands). Id., at 1113. There, as here, the police believed (perhaps mistakenly), that the man posed an immediate threat to others. Ibid. There, the Court of Appeals determined that the use of deadly force did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 1119. Based on that decision, a reasonable officer could have believed the same thing was true in the instant case. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded by commenting on the 9th Circuit's attempt to rely on Harris, better known as the Ruby Ridge case. For these reasons, the petition for certiorari is granted; the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed; and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. - - - - - - - - - - https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/10/16/14-35944.pdf Morales v Fry et al, 14-35944 (9th Cir, 16 Oct 2017) Footnotes at 9-10: This instruction relates to Plaintiffs federal law claim for unlawful arrest against Defendant Sonya Fry. Defendant Fry contends that her arrest of Plaintiff was justified by her reasonable belief that this action was permitted or required and, therefore, lawful. If Defendant Fry reasonably believed that probable cause existed to arrest Plaintiff, and acted on the basis of that belief, then her reasonable belief would constitute a complete defense to the Plaintiffs claim even if, in fact, the arrest was not lawful. Put another way, even if you find that Defendant Fry violated Plaintiffs constitutional rights by unlawfully arresting her, Defendant Fry cannot be liable if she reasonably believed at the time she acted that her actions were in accordance with the law. But keep in mind that this reasonableness inquiry is an objective one. The question is whether every reasonable officer under those same circumstances would believe that there was no reasonable basis for the arrest. 4 Jury Instruction No. 21 stated in almost identical terms: This instruction relates to Plaintiffs federal law claim for excessive force against Defendants Sonya Fry and Brian Rees. Defendants Fry and Rees contend that their use of force on Plaintiff was justified by their reasonable beliefs that their actions were permitted or required and, therefore, lawful. If the officers reasonably believed that the force used was lawful, and acted on the basis of that belief, then their reasonable beliefs would constitute a complete defense to the Plaintiffs claim even if, in fact, the force was not lawful. Put another way, even if you find that Defendants Fry or Rees violated Plaintiffs constitutional rights by using excessive force, Defendants cannot be liable if they reasonably believed at the time they acted that their actions were in accordance with the law. But keep in mind that this reasonableness inquiry is an objective one. The question is whether every reasonable officer under those same circumstances would believe that the use of force was unlawful.
We'll see about that. The legal process is never free from politics in high-profile cases.
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