Slowing Your Tactics Helps Courts Support Your Actions

This post is only offered as a discussion topic only and does not represent legal advice. Officers must refer to the laws in their own State as well as their agency's policies, which can be more restrictive on officers that the law requires.

Scenario: Here's an incident that most agencies will experience from time to time. A suicidal subject standing in the middle of the street with a weapon, threatening to pull officers into a shooting. Sometimes, the call goes great and the subject gets the help they need, other times the subject ends up dead.

How Do you Slow Your Tactics to Help Courts Support Your Actions?

Answer: In the California Court of Appeals case of Villalobos v City of Santa Maria from 2022, this exact situation unfolded. In this case, officers slowed the pace and got the resources they needed. They closed the street that the subject was standing in and spent 40 minutes trying to talk him into giving up. When it became clear the negotiations were going nowhere, the officers used less lethal projectiles to try and subdue him. That only made him more agitated and he ended up charging the officers while holding the knife. He was shot and killed.

His death brought a lawsuit by the man’s family. The California Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the officers saying, “…no reasonable juror could find that respondents were negligent or had acted unreasonably. The officers patiently waited approximately 40 minutes before resorting to less-than-lethal weapons. The negotiations with decedent had been futile. He was armed with a deadly weapon, was behaving erratically, and was also suicidal. He presented an immediate threat of physical harm to himself. At any time he could have used the knife to inflict grievous injury upon himself. Instead of calming down, he appeared to be growing more agitated.”

Two big takeaways from this case are:

1. This is another example of the courts using body camera footage to dispel the false claims made against officers. So officers need to make sure they're using their body cameras.

2. Using tactical conduct that slows the pace and allows time for compliance, even if unsuccessful, gives the courts room to support the officers' actions.