Fatal Shooting In Alexandria Fuels Debate On Police Policy

"We put the emphasis on better training. Striking at a moving vehicle doesn't do you any good. If you think you had a problem before, try adding a corpse behind the wheel," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said last night. "We feel better tactics, better approaches . . . is the way to go."

Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina and an expert on the use of lethal force, said officers can put themselves in a position to fear for their lives. "This is an issue that is well resolved at major departments for all the right reasons," he said. "You do not shoot at a moving vehicle when the only force being used against you is the moving vehicle."

In Boston, for example, the police department changed its policy three years ago after a woman was killed. Now officers cannot shoot at moving vehicles unless there are other threats, such as a driver having a loaded weapon. Officers are instructed to move out of the vehicle's path and find cover, to lessen the chance anyone will be injured by ricocheting bullets or a crash, officials said.

And in Los Angeles last year, police fired 10 shots into a stolen car being driven by a 13-year-old, striking him seven times. The incident prompted the city's civilian police commission to prohibit shooting at moving vehicles and directed officers to move out of the way when a vehicle is headed toward them.

More than 20 years ago, a vehicle at which New York City police were firing went into a crowd and injured several people. Since then, police departments nationwide have grown more restrictive in their policies governing deadly force.

Thomas Aveni, a part-time police officer and co-founder of the Police Policy Studies Council in Spofford, N.H., said no one keeps exact numbers on such incidents, but they are more common than many people realize.

"On some occasions, police literally step in front of a vehicle in order to facilitate an apprehension," he said. "That creates additional risk to themselves, which they in turn use as justification to pull the trigger. That troubles administrators, and it's what they're trying to rein in."

Still, "there are many occasions where police legitimately feel in fear of their own lives," Aveni said. "And the shootings are sometimes legitimate. So to limit officers' ability to use deadly force when they have legitimate need to use it against a moving vehicle is where we have a problem."

That is the chief reason most area jurisdictions have not forsaken the practice, said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police. "It's no different than aiming a gun at the officer," Schrad said.

"It's probably even more dangerous. The general rule of thumb is that you match force with force."

Alexandria City Council members and the mayor learned of the incident at 7 a.m. Saturday and said yesterday that they were awaiting results of the investigation into circumstances surrounding Brown's death.

"We're all concerned," said council member Rob Krupicka (D). "We want the facts to come out as quickly as possible. . . . We're going to make sure we do this thing by the book. Clearly, we need to look at this very carefully."

Staff writers Del Quentin Wilber, Ian Shapira, Allan Lengel, Martin Weil and Annie Gowen and researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.