Police Chiefs Group Bolsters Policy on Suicide Bombers

Assistant FBI Director Michael A. Mason, who oversees the Washington Field Office, demonstrated the difficulty of the split-second decision with a hypothetical situation: A man in a heavy coat on a hot Washington afternoon heads up the steps of a Smithsonian museum, where a group of children is standing. Someone yells that the man has explosives. Mason identifies himself as an FBI agent and screams for the man to stop, but the man ignores him.

"What do you do?" Mason asked. "I am instantly between a rock and a hard place."

Gainer retrained his officers after a trip to Israel during which he and other chiefs traveled with the Police Executive Research Forum for week-long counterterrorism schooling from Israeli officers familiar with confronting Palestinian suicide bombers.

The Israeli training of British and American law enforcement officials makes some groups ask whether the police are going too far. The tension is especially pronounced among Muslim community leaders, who are deeply suspicious of Israel because of the country's long-standing conflict with the Palestinians.

"The London situation where an innocent man was shot and killed was based on Israeli procedure, and I don't think that we want to be replicating the actions of a foreign government engaged in a brutal occupation of another people," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It sends the wrong message to the Muslim world."

In contrast to the national shoot-to-kill policies of Israel and Britain, American use-of-force orders are set by each of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

A number of high-profile shootings in the past decade, including that of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times in 1999 by New York police officers, highlighted the abuse of lethal force by out-of-control officers and the deadly mistakes that can be made by fearful or reckless police.

Most law enforcement agencies, including the D.C. police, are supposed to use what is known as a continuum of force: If force is used, it should be applied or increased in proportion to the suspect's actions and level of resistance.

Deadly force policies across the country are similar to those of the Metro Transit Police, who patrol the Washington area's subways and bus terminals. "Lethal force can be used if the officer reasonably believes his/her life or the lives of others is in danger or in defense of any person in imminent danger of serious physical injury," reads the Transit Police policy.

With the exception of sniper units or SWAT teams, police officers are generally taught to "shoot to stop" or "shoot to neutralize." Officers traditionally are trained to aim at the center body mass, which offers the largest target, if they are in a situation that requires the use of deadly force.

But now, in the case of a suicide bomber, the international police organization says that tactic would be "inappropriate." According to the group's training guidelines, a bullet could hit an explosive device and detonate it. The bullet also might wound the bomber, who could then detonate an explosive vest. In addition, some explosives -- such as smokeless powder and triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which apparently was used in the London bombings -- are sensitive to heat, shock and friction, according to the training document.

"You need to get him dead as quick as possible," said Timoney, the Miami police chief. "The easiest way to do that is a head shot. That's the only way to guarantee. It's not something you relish. But if you shot him in the upper torso, that person would be able to make movements and make sure the bomb, if he had it, could go off. A body shot very seldom kills instantly."

David Heyman, director of the homeland security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he does not think that most U.S. police departments will adopt a shoot-to-kill policy unless there is a suicide bomber on U.S. soil.

But terrorism experts said departments need to move now to develop clear directives and prepare their forces in case that day comes.

"The police standard operating procedure of addressing a suspect and telling them to drop their weapon and put their hands up or freeze is not going to work with a suicide bomber," said Bruce Hoffman, author of "Inside Terrorism" and a terrorist expert at the Rand Corp. "You're signing your own death warrant if you do that."

Staff writer Lyndsey Layton and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.