Why Police Can’t ‘Shoot the Leg’
Media questions about the Ma'Khia Bryant shooting mislead public
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When I was a local TV reporter, I’d try to be the first on the scene of a DC police-involved shooting in the post Ferguson era. I was one of the few (or maybe the only) reporters who had shot a gun. I also know the use of force continuum and police training, so I could get a quick study of the situation and ask the relevant questions in the live press conference when the public would first hear the details.
I tried to pre-empty the other reporters’ inevitable questions about why the officer didn’t use a taser or didn’t shoot the bad guy in the leg.
Unfortunately I wasn’t in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday to play that role.
A reporter asked Columbus Police Chief Michael Woods these questions about the case of an officer shooting a knife-wielding, 16-year-old named Ma'Khia Bryant:
“Can an officer shoot the leg?”
“Could he have just shot her in the arm?”
“Can they shoot somewhere that would not result in a fatal wound?”
“Should the officer opt to use a taser rather than a service weapon?”
“Does Columbus Police Department policy state that the officer must declare he’s about to shoot before he does shoot?”
If you haven’t read about this case, Officer Nicholas Reardon was called to the scene by a 911 call. His body camera video shows that Bryant tried to stab one girl who falls to the ground. The officer yells “get down” several times to Bryant, who then lunged with the knife at a second girl. Reardon then shot and killed the 16-year-old.
The way the media has treated Reardon like a criminal reminds me of a story I did on a shooting that is somewhat similar to the Columbus one.
Watch my report on the police shooting a woman with a knife, video here and text of the story here.
A white police officer was called to a scene in Clay Terrace, a dangerous neighborhood in DC. There was a black woman with multiple knives coming at people on the street. She was clearly on drugs.
The officer yelled out repeatedly and even walked backwards as the woman was coming at him in the middle of a crowd. (The police do not have to back track like that, they are trained to stop a threat if it comes within about a 20 foot circle. The officer was new and so didn’t even follow his training — at a risk to his own life — because he didn't want to shoot her.)
The crowd all had their cell phones out to capture the scene and the videos went viral in the context of “another” white officer killing an “unarmed” black woman.
However, the officer followed his training. He was approached by a subject armed with a knife. He gave loud verbal commands but the woman didn’t respond. He had his duty weapon out and visible. By shooting her, he stopped countless people from being stabbed and possibly killed. But he had to carry the weight of it.
When I got to the scene, the young officer was very upset about having shot her. I found this to be the case with experienced officers too. The officers are given psychiatric treatment to help them work through the trauma of killing another person. No normal person wants to do that.
Once I got to Clay Terrace and learned how the officer did everything by his training (and more), I re-enacted his movements on TV to show the audience what actually happened. I explained it clearly, and the story pretty much died down without riots and famous basketball players saying the officer should be killed next.
Emily Miller @emilymiller
@KingJames Reported threatening violence https://t.co/N8atwvyfduWith my experience covering multiple officer-involved shootings that were all ruled justifiable, I wanted to jump through my TV and answer the questions for the Columbus police chief. Instead I’ll put here the points the media and public need to understand about police shootings.
1. “Can an officer shoot the leg?”
If a police officer shoots an assailant in the arm or leg, he made a mistake.
It’s very difficult to shoot a moving target -- a person who can go in any direction-- so you aim at center mass (the torso) because it’s the biggest part of the body and easiest to hit. This ensures that internal organs are hit and the person stops coming at you or the victim.
Center mass also helps to decrease the chance that missed rounds - which are likely in a high stress situation -- hit a bystander.
In this case, if Reardon had only shot Bryant in a leg, she would likely still be able to hold onto the knife and stab the girl on the car. (The reporter didn’t ask but that’s also why the officer shot four times — to stop her from stabbing the other girl. One shot is unlikely to stop someone cold.)
2. “Could he have just shot her in the arm?”
The arms and legs are small targets and much harder to hit and also unlikely to stop the bad guy. If Reardon had tried to just shoot her moving arm, he would have likely missed and shot one of the victims or innocent bystanders in the crowded scene.
3. “Can they shoot somewhere that would not result in a fatal wound?”
Law enforcement is trained for complicated scenarios. They are called to a scene to stop the threat, but at the same time, they have to not kill innocent bystanders and protect their own lives. They have to try to determine what is happening in a hectic scene. There may be more than one bad guy to stop.
Officers are trained to shoot only when the threat is imminent and will cause serious bodily injury or death. In this situation, Reardon needed to stop Bryant from stabbing the second girl. Bryant was doing the opposite of the officers’ verbal commands to “get down” and stop.
4. “Should the officer opt to use a Taser rather than a service weapon?”
We don’t know if the officer had a Taser, but it wasn’t possible in this situation. He would have had to get close to the knife-wielding girl. He would have likely been stabbed himself if he tried to use a Taser. Then she could have gone back to stabbing the other girls.
Also, the concept of “force continuum“ means the police need to have a level of force above what the bad guys use. So if the bad guy is punching a victim, the police may be able to get close enough to use a baton or Taser. But if the bad guy as a knife, the next level of force to contain the threat is a gun.
As one officer told me, “We don't want to go and utilize our service weapon and seriously injure someone or kill them if there is another alternative out there to preserve life.” And when a Taser can do that — if they have one - they will use it.
4. “Does Columbus Police Department policy state that the officer must declare he’s about to shoot before he does shoot?”
There is no requirement on what words to say, you just need to try to stop the threat.
After the shooting at Clay Terrace, DC Officer Robert Underwood (pictured below) told me how this type of scenario is taught in the academy:
“If time permits, you’re going to give loud verbal commands. And you give the person the option to comply with your demand — ‘Drop the knife, put your hand in the air.’ And if they don't, then the officer is challenged with using what force is necessary to save his life or potentially someone around him.”
We can see the officer training because the Columbus police department released the body camera video immediately to, most likely, calm the public on the day after a jury found Officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd in the line of duty. Still people have been rioting and calling this a “murder” of a “child.”
As is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings, Reardon is on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated to determine if the use of deadly force was justified.
I believe it was a “good shoot”, which is the term police use that means the circumstances fit their training and justifiable.
However, it is a tragedy both for Bryant and Reardon. A 16-year-old girl in foster care has had a terrible childhood and most likely became violent from a life of abuse and neglect. Reardon, one can assume, did not want to shoot and kill a girl and will have to live with that regret.
The public could be calmed down from rioting and protesting for the wrong reasons — this was nothing like the George Floyd/Derek Chauvin case — by very basic education to see how the police are trained to keep all of us safe.
UPDATE: Since I published this, I found the video for my TV report for this story. Watch here: EXCLUSIVE: Union rep says DC officer in shooting of armed woman followed training
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Let’s discuss in the comments: How could the media do a better job of educating themselves and the public to understand the details of policing, use of force and how to shoot a gun?
Where to even start?????????
First off, great job Emily, and keep doing what you are doing. You are on point. So let’s look deeper into this whole subject.
I could talk about this for hours, probably days.
To begin with, the media could stay home and study court cases, such as Tennessee v. Garner, Johnson v. Glick, Graham v. Connor, and others, until they understand that L.E. Use of Force must be judged by objective reasonableness, based on the totality of ALL the circumstances known to the L.E. officer at the time force was used, and without hindsight 20/20. A 5 second video, no matter how compelling, does not provide that.
The media could attend a Citizen's Police Academy. That alone provides a lot of insight into various topics such as Use of Force Training, Judgmental Training, Firearms Training, and Force on Force Training.
I’m sure larger agencies that have Judgmental Training equipment such as MILO (Multiple Interactive Learning Objectives), would be willing to provide training sessions to media groups in their community. This equipment provides the students with the opportunity to interact with video scenarios in which the student must communicate and take appropriate action depending on the circumstances provided.
To thoroughly understand the shooting in Center Mass question vs. shooting the arm or leg, several things come into play. To begin, look at it from the marksmanship stand point. Students learn the basics of their weapon and how to shoot. They are then tested in a relatively stress free environment, at a piece of paper that doesn’t move or shoot back. That doesn’t equate to making accurate shots in a real life lethal force situation.
Switch to a real life situation in which information is obtained prior to arriving on scene, stress level may be going up just driving there. The L.E. then arrives on scene and finds a chaotic scene. The stress level is going up fast. Something must be done. The threat must be stopped, BUT, several more things then come into play. The L.E. is accountable for every round fired. A suspect doesn’t care, although in this case the suspect had a knife.
Now let’s look at the physiological response to the human body under stress. Things like auditory blockage, tunnel vision, binocular vision, blood feeding the vital organs and leaving the extremities to preserve ones life. What does that have to do with anything? Well, on the stress free range, to deploy accurate rounds, the student is trained to be in a good shooting stance, have a good grip, obtain a good sight picture, proper sight alignment, focus clearly on the front sight, and then make a good trigger press with the tip of their index finger.
In real life, there is unlikely a good shooting stance. The threat is moving. The L.E. is moving. The physiological response is causing both eyes to open to take in more information. The eyes are now focused on the threat, not the front sight. Blood is leaving the extremities (tip of the trigger finger). All these things are now making it more difficult for the L.E. to make accurate shots.
In addition, as others stated, the threat must be stopped. Deploying rounds to center mass of available target is the best option to stop the threat as quickly as possible. There are three ways to stop a threat for sure. Psychological - The suspect decides they don’t want to die, therefore they stop. Loss of oxygen due to loss of blood flow, which can take a few minutes, in which the suspect can continue to be a threat. The famous 1986 bank robbery in Florida involving Michael Platt is a prime example. Finally, severe the brain stem, which would only be complete luck in a shooting situation.
I could add more, but I'm out of time right this minute.
My last comment on this thread. I promise. It's kind of off topic from this particular incident, but still a good time to address it I believe. I saw a comment the other day that I didn't have time to address, and wanted to address. I don't see it here now, so maybe it was on the Zuckerberg platform, so maybe no sense responding on that platform anyway.
The comment mentioned targets not having arms and legs for a reason, and something to the effect that law enforcement is trained to fire at the torso, and that it's a federal and state mandate that officers only fire at the torso, or something along those words. That would lead the unknowing to believe that law enforcement are only trained to fire at center mass of a human torso, and that the arms and legs are not to be fired at.
WRONG! Now don't blow a gasket. Please read all the way to the end.
Yes, Law Enforcement fire at torso targets for qualification, and those targets typically have some type of lines drawn on them for scoring purposes, whether it be X, 10, 9, 8 rings, or a box, or various size silhouette lines, etc. For example, in MD, it must be a scoring zone of no larger than 725 square inches. That does NOT mean an officer cannot fire at the arms or legs. This is done for two reasons. And by the way, the targets, although it doesn't have lines between the torso and where the arms would be, are every bit as wide as the average human, to include the arms hanging at their sides, but I digress.
1. A law enforcement officer must show proficiency in handling their weapon, and proficiency in marksmanship. That would be difficult to do with a human body target with arms and legs. It would be impossible to determine marksmanship skills if a student were directed to fire at the legs for certain sequences of fire, and fire at the head during other sequences of fire. Short of scoring every hit as it occurs, how would one know if rounds striking the lower leg were intended for the legs or the head, and vice versa. That's no marksmanship test.
2. All training should be completed as close to real as possible, so while a bullseye target could be utilized for the marksmanship testing, it's not real life. Firing at torso targets, at least trains the law enforcement officer through kinesthetic awareness, of the proper sight picture desired to obtain center mass hits on a human target. That is, after all, the most common target they will have, albeit, unlikely standing still waiting to take incoming rounds.
BUT, once an officer has displayed proficiency in the ability to continually pass the marksmanship portion of firearms training, the officers are, or sure should be, trained to fire center mass of available threat. If they aren't cutting targets in half, or placing them in manners that they are only partially exposed, and conducting drills, they are shorting themselves. Same with moving targets, and so on.
Why?
Has a suspect never fired over a knee wall? Hood of a car? Bed of a pick up truck? In those cases there will likely only be top of the shoulders and head available. Do I not fire because I don't have center mass of torso?
If an active shooter in a school hallway peers around a corner and all that's available is a slice of head, a right shoulder, and maybe some right leg, do I not fire?
If a law enforcement officer gets pinned down behind a vehicle but can observe a suspects lower legs as the suspect approaches from the opposite side of a vehicle, does the officer not fire under the vehicle at the lower legs?
In all of these instances, my hope is officers are training to fire center mass of available threat. It's not ideal, but taking out an ankle will at least slow the suspect down when time is of the essence. I'm not going to remain pinned down because I don't have a torso to fire at center mass.
Just some thoughts to archive for future incidents that we know are going to occur.
Be safe!