Will the NYPD’s John Wayne Bill Hit the Mark?

Police shootouts are one of the most common scenes on television these days. With a plethora of crime shows like the CSI and (already missed) Law and Order franchises, the general public has begun to believe that these shows accurately portray the actual criminal justice system.

In reality, cops don’t always fire with pin-point precision after careful consideration and negotiation with armed suspects. Nearly four years ago, a man named Sean Bell was killed by police fire after an undercover overheard Bell’s friend say “get my gun”. The undercover and his backup fired upon Bell and his friends following NYPD’s current policy of shooting if there is a perceived threat. Bell ended up being a victim of the undercover officer’s misperception of events. When the story broke, the public cried foul. Yet, had the incident been part of a cop show, it likely would have been accepted by the audience.

Legislation came before the State Assembly last week to change current police protocol of shooting to kill if there is a perceived threat. The proposed “minimum-force” bill calls for officers to shoot suspects in the arm or leg in order to stop the suspect but not kill them. {New York Post}

Yet, even Vice President Joe Biden acknowledges the absurdity of the bill by calling it the “John Wayne bill”. The new legislation requires that officers be expert shots, something that is definitely fiction. Despite being trained to aim for the biggest targets on the suspect, the head and chest, NYPD officers purportedly only hit their mark 17 percent of the time. A low success rate combined with the stress of a shoot out means that the likelihood of hitting an arm or leg  instead of the bigger chest area is extremely implausible.

So now all that remains is see whether the State Assembly will approve the bill or decide that the policy is absurd and extremely difficult to adhere to.

The thought behind the bill is obvious – if suspects are presumed to be innocent until they’ve had a trial, it’s extremely disconcerting to think that someone who is guilty of nothing more than an officer with bad hearing misunderstanding their conversation can be killed without consequence.  At the same time, if an officer is confronted by real immediate danger, hitting a moving target with pinpoint precision is difficult to pull off. Either way, the problem is not likely to go away.