Suppose local law enforcement officers were required to operate under similarly restrictive rules of engagement. Such rules would dramatically reduce the authority to use deadly force now extended to Portland's police officers. Currently, officers are allowed to use deadly force regardless of whether they see a weapon, so long as they reasonably believe they are "in danger of death or serious bodily injury." How different would things be under a more restrictive rule?
The first thing to keep in mind is that the authority officers have under current rules is rarely exploited by them in the field. In the vast majority of situations in which an officer could use deadly force, it isn't used. This is true even for situations in which a weapon is displayed. Many officers have faced a weapon; few have chosen to use deadly force in response. But those aren't the situations that make news.
If we limit our discussion to the rare cases in which officers have used deadly force, and then take the further step of removing the observed-weapon cases, we are left with the few cases that would be affected by a reduction in the authority given to officers. Looking back across the years at such no-observed-weapon cases, it's hard to find one in which a decision not to use deadly force would have resulted in an officer's injury or death.
Currently, the decision to use deadly force is left to an individual officer, and the evidence is that those decisions are being made, for the most part, in a satisfactory way. Nonetheless, when hindsight reveals that a decision to use deadly force caused an unnecessary civilian death, it has a corrosive effect on the ability of law enforcement to do its job.
Given the context within which officers make decisions about the use of deadly force, there is no policy that will avoid all unfortunate outcomes. But just as war is too important to leave to the military, law enforcement is too important to leave to the police. There needs to be a community-wide discussion of the appropriate allocation of the risk of injury or death between officers and those they confront. It may be that a change in the rules of engagement would reduce the risk of civilian casualties without increasing the risks faced by law enforcement.
As it stands, any one of us, faced with a disturbed, out-of-control family member, might hesitate to call the police for fear of making the situation worse instead of better. That has to change. But improvements in training, communications, supervision, discipline or civilian oversight, while all desirable, won't get at the root of problem. Both the community and the officers deserve a clearer set of rules regarding the use of force. The difficult task we all share is the creation of a setting within which those rules of engagement can be discussed.