WASHINGTON (AP) – A Missouri grand jury’s decision to spare police officer Darren Wilson from criminal charges makes his case the latest in a long line of police shootings that show the latitude that the law and the courts give law enforcement in using deadly force.
The question for the panel that decided the case was never whether Wilson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, but rather whether the Aug. 9 killing constituted a crime. In declining to indict Wilson, the grand jury reached a conclusion that is far more the norm than the exception.
“For a cop to be indicted and especially to be convicted later of a crime in these kinds of situations is very, very unusual,” said Chuck Drago, a police practices consultant and former police chief in Oviedo, Florida.
States and police departments have developed their own policies that generally permit officers to use force when they reasonably fear imminent physical harm. The Supreme Court shaped the national standard in a 1989 decision that said the use of force must be evaluated through the “perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene” rather than being judged after the fact. That means officers are often given the benefit of the doubt by prosecutors and grand jurors reluctant to second-guess their decisions.
Many of the cases that don’t result in charges involve armed suspects shot during confrontations with police. But even an officer who repeatedly shoots an unarmed person, as was the case in Ferguson, may avoid prosecution in cases where he contends he felt at imminent risk.