In Utah, You’re More Likely to be Shot Dead by a Cop Than a Criminal

The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Erin Alberty reports
that citizens of the Beehive State are
more likely to be killed by police than gang members, drug
dealers, or abusive parents. Only homicide at the hands of an
intimate partner is more likely.

Culled from “media reports, state crime statistics,
medical-examiner records and court records” from the past five
years, the Tribune found “45 people had been killed by law
enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent
of all homicides during that period.”

As is common with police shootings across the country, all but
one of the incidents was ruled justifiable by prosecutors, and even
that one was dismissed by a judge before going to trial. 

Former police lieutenant Chris Gebhart is quoted in the article
conceding that there are situations when violent, and sometimes
deadly, force is justified, but “There’s an opportunity to
de-escalate more of these situations. Officers instead are
escalating these situations themselves.”

Lack of sufficient training in crisis deescalation might be
partially to blame for the amount of killings by police:

Scott Stephenson, director of POST (Peace Officer Standards and
Training, a division of the Utah Department of Safety), said cadets
receive formal training in de-escalation, including a 12-hour class
on conflict resolution, eight hours on mental illness response and
a session on dealing with subjects with “excited delirium” from
drug use.

“We teach officers to use lower levels of force, if at all
possible,” Stephenson said.

But that coursework gives way to continuing training that
focuses almost exclusively on using force, Gebhardt said.

“When they receive the verbal Judo class, it’s one time, done
and over with,” Gebhardt said. “Baton training, OC spray, firearms
are done on a quarterly, annual, or two-year basis. They should
integrate that de-escalation training into it. When a situation
deteriorates, the officer reverts to their training. … Departments
really need to own, from the top down, de-escalation. They need to
stress and emphasize de-escalation with the officers.”

If officers are repeatedly trained on the use of deadly force,
with only a cursory introduction to conflict resolution, it’s
hardly surprising that the lessons in keeping the peace might be
forgotten, or at the very least, de-prioritized. 

This article serves as a useful reminder that there is
no national database of shootings by police, and save for a few
journalists, academics and
sports websites, no efforts to create one.