MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Peter Scharf & Arnold Binder

The book discusses reforms that must be instituted to control police use of deadly force, and to establish an equitable balance of risk to protect police officers (from being hurt by armed citizens) and citizens (from being erroneously shot by police). It begins with an examination of the effects of social forces on the police, psychological characteristics of individual officers, and the problems of management and control on decision-making by individual officers, all illustrated by examples of deadly-force encounters from investigations in Newark, Miami, Birmingham and Oakland. There is a discussion of the various purposes guns serve in police activities, the cultural marriage of guns with policing, and the variety of armed confrontations faced by police officers. The traditional view that police officers' behavior can be adequately understood in terms of the final armed encounter is discredited. A comparison involving the personality profiles of some officers who have shot often and some who have rarely fired explores the role of human emotions and moral judgment in these confrontations. The text also analyzes the impact of police administrative policies upon decisions to shoot or not shoot. A final chapter examines how police departments might control unnecessary use of deadly force. (NCJRS, modified).

Praeger, 1983, 260 pages