By Sam Wood
Philly.com
PHILADELPHIA — Police officers are shooting less often, firing fewer bullets when they discharge their weapons and striking fewer civilians compared to 2012, new Philadelphia Police Department data shows.
Shootings by police have plunged since a spike three years ago, when officers killed 16 people and wounded 32. Between Jan. 1 and mid June of this year, police fatally shot one person and injured seven others.
“This is exactly what we want to see,” said Kelvyn Anderson, the director of the city’s Police Advisory Commission, a civilian watchdog group. “Whatever the department is doing, this is exactly where we want it to go.”
Notwithstanding the drop, two recent shootings have been problematic. Brandon Tate-Brown, 26, was killed Dec. 15 following a car stop in Mayfair. The officer who fired the shot that killed Tate-Brown told investigators he discharged his weapon to prevent the 26-year-old North Philadelphia man from reaching a gun wedged into his car’s front seat.
Tate-Brown’s death sparked local protests echoing those in other cities over the police shootings of black men.
On May 12, Rudolph Keitt, a North Philadelphia man described by his lawyer as schizophrenic, drove into a group of officers then led police on a chase. An officer shot the 47-year-old in the chest, critically wounding him, minutes after a commander radioed an order to call off the pursuit.
The falloff in shootings accelerated after the U.S. Department of Justice launched a review of Philadelphia police procedures. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey had requested the review after a Philly.com report highlighted the department’s high rate of shootings compared with other cities.
Federal experts spent 18 months scrutinizing department policies and made recommendations this year as part of what they called a “collaborative review.” By that time, the drop in shootings was already well underway.
In a scathing 174-page report, the Justice Department issued in March criticized the department for flawed training, spotty oversight and a lack of nonlethal alternatives for officers who encounter potentially violent situations.
Statistics released by the department this week after a request under the state Right To Know law show that compared to the department’s 2012 peak, the number of officers shooting at civilians last year plummeted nearly 62 percent. Though it’s projected to rise somewhat this year over 2014, Ramsey avoided drawing conclusions.
“Even if it was showing a downward trend, the year is only half over. It’s too early,” he said.
During the past two years, violent crime in Philadelphia fell 11 percent and homicides fell from 332 to 248, a drop of 25 percent.
At the same time, the number of times police pulled the trigger dropped 68 percent. In 2012, police shot 477 rounds at civilians. Last year, the number dropped to 152. Current year figures, while projected to be higher, remain far below the average for the decade.
“We hope this signifies a trend,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “It demonstrates something we’ve long said, that policing can be conducted more fairly and effectively resulting in fewer fatalities without an increase in crime.”
Last year, the department upgraded its directive governing lethal force by adding a “sanctity of life” clause, which states “deadly force is a measure to be employed only in the most extreme circumstances.”
David Rudovsky, a civil rights attorney and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, also applauded the reduction in shootings.
“To the department’s credit, Commissioner Ramsey has rewritten the rules to establish that human life is a priority and that the use of deadly force should only when there is imminent danger to the officer or to someone else,” he said.
Rudovsky said because of the substantial fluctuations in the number of police shootings, it was too early to tell if the reduction since 2012 could be explained by department policy or is proof of permanent trend.
Ramsey in a recent interview credited the decline in part to “reality-based training,” which uses video to place officers in simulated volatile scenarios.
Officers are also now trained in crisis intervention, learning to deescalate tense situations before they erupt into violence.
“We really have put an emphasis on shootings being the last resort and using better tactics to avoid them,” Ramsey said.
As an example, he pointed to a tense situation several officers faced June 13 when they pulled up to a home in the city’s Harrowgate section. A gunman inside the house started shooting, pinning down the officers and striking three patrol cars.
Not knowing who else was in the building, the officers held their fire and stayed in position until a SWAT vehicle could extract them. The gunman, who already had killed a second man inside the home, later turned the weapon on himself. Ramsey applauded the officers’ decision to take cover and wait.
“It’s what we’ve been trying to get at,” the commissioner said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get the number of [police] shootings down to zero, though that would be great. We’re trying to do everything we can to keep them going that way.”
The Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of the historic Mother Bethel A.M.E. church in Society Hill, has been a vocal critic of department’s use of deadly force. Tyler said he was encouraged, but expressed caution.
He urged the department to adopt every recommendation made by the Justice Department team.
“The reality,” Tyler said, “is that unless there is a culture shift in how policing is done, the numbers will likely rise again.”
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