Police-Generated Killings: The Gap between Ethics and Law

• Author: Ben Jones
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009596
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(2) 366 –378

Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009596

Political Research Quarterly

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Police kill over a thousand individuals each year in the

United States (Fagan and Campbell 2020). Because video

evidence and key details are missing for many of these

killings, it is impossible to know exactly how many are

justified. But some clearly are not. Consider the 2015

shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina. Video shows

Officer Michael Slager shooting a plainly unarmed Scott

in the back as he fled a traffic stop (New York Times

2015). Slager’s actions provoke a combination of moral

disgust, anger, and horror—and rightly so. At the time he

was shot, Scott presented no threat to anyone’s life. There

was no need to use deadly force to protect life, yet the

officer shot anyway. In this case, the law backs up our

ethical intuitions. U.S. law prohibits police from shooting

nondangerous suspects who flee (Tennessee v. Garner

1985).

The law, though, does not always match our intuitions

regarding killings by police. That is especially true for

some of the most controversial incidents, what I call

police-generated killings. In these cases, bad police tac-

tics create a situation where deadly force becomes nec-

essary, becomes perceived as necessary, or occurs

unintentionally. Since current law in the United States

fails to ban many bad tactics, police-generated killings

often are treated as “lawful but awful” (Cournoyer 2016).

Several high-profile incidents fall into this category, like

the 2014 shooting in Cleveland, Ohio, of Tamir Rice—a

twelve-year-old Black child. An officer shot Rice after

perceiving him make a threatening movement with a gun

that turned out to be fake. The shooting occurred after the

officer confronted Rice at close range with his firearm

drawn. This abrupt escalation of force appears unneces-

sary, since Rice presented no immediate threat (Park and

Lindsay 2015). In fact, many use-of-force experts criti-

cized police tactics in this case and blamed them for con-

tributing to a likely avoidable death (Kindy 2016;

Pickering and Klinger 2016, 28).

Defenders of police responsible for such incidents

argue that deadly force was and should be lawful because,

at the moment of its use, officers had a reasonable belief

in its necessity to stop a threat to life (Holloway 2015). In

the United States, some legal precedents support this

view, which is why officers like the one who shot Rice

often avoid legal sanctions (Williams and Smith 2015).

Yet, as protests in recent years make clear, many find that

lack of accountability deeply troubling.

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PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211009596Political Research QuarterlyJones

research-article2021

1The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ben Jones, Rock Ethics Institute, The Pennsylvania State University,

131 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.

Email: bentaylorjones@gmail.com

Police-Generated Killings: The Gap

between Ethics and Law

Ben Jones1

Abstract

This article offers a normative analysis of some of the most controversial incidents involving police—what I call police-

generated killings. In these cases, bad police tactics create a situation where deadly force becomes necessary, becomes

perceived as necessary, or occurs unintentionally. Police deserve blame for such killings because they choose tactics

that unnecessarily raise the risk of deadly force, thus violating their obligation to prioritize the protection of life. Since

current law in the United States fails to ban many bad tactics, police-generated killings often are treated as “lawful

but awful.” To address these killings, some call on changes to departmental policies or voluntary reparations by local

governments, yet such measures leave in place a troubling gap between ethics and law. I argue that police-generated

killings merit legal sanctions by appealing to a relevant analogy: self-generated self-defense, where the person who

engages in self-defense started the trouble. The persistent lack of accountability for police-generated killings threatens

life, police legitimacy, and trust in democratic institutions. The article closes by identifying tools in law and policy to

address this challenge.

Keywords

criminal law, deadly force, killing, law enforcement, police, self-defense