JOHN GRASSO
Since a recent shooting on Route 95, readers ask, day after day, why the police shot the pickup truck’s driver instead of shooting the pickup truck’s tires. That question suggests that shooting the tires was a legitimate option. It wasn’t. Hollywood good guys frequently save the day by shooting the bad guy’s tires. In real life, it doesn’t work.
Police are trained to use force according to a continuum. It’s Police Academy 101. If an officer uses too little force, he or she will fail to bring about the desired outcome. If an officer uses too much force, unnecessary injury might result, the police could be sued, and the officer could be charged with a crime.
The so-called “use of force continuum” is like the numbers on a volume dial. The officer is trained to employ the minimum amount of force necessary to bring about the desired outcome. The No. 1 on the “dial” is the officer’s presence. The No. 10 on the “dial” is deadly force. The “numbers” in between represent different degrees of force. For example, a verbal command is a higher degree of force than the officer’s presence but less than applying handcuffs.
Police are not required to pass through every number on the “dial” to get to whatever level of force is required to achieve the desired result. If a bad guy jumped out of his truck and started shooting at the police, the police are justified to go directly to No. 10 because no other degree of force would be sufficient.
In the Route 95 incident, we witnessed the entire use of force continuum. When Cranston Police first engaged the white truck by attempting to pull the driver over using lights and sirens, that was the No. 1 on the “dial.” Instead of yielding to that low level of force, the driver drove recklessly, putting the safety of the police and others at risk. As the police chased that truck, the desired result was to stop it.
When the truck got trapped in traffic, we witnessed the police quickly go through the use of force “dial.” Police presence and verbal commands proved useless because the driver refused to surrender. The police “turned up the dial” when they attempted to break the windows and open the doors. Had the driver done nothing but sit in his locked truck, the police would have been required to hold the “dial” where it was because that would have been the minimum force necessary to apprehend the driver.
When the driver began to crash his truck into the occupied automobiles in his way, the threat changed and so did the police response. By pounding his truck repeatedly into those occupied automobiles, the driver used deadly force, and the police were justified to respond with the same level of force.
When those police officers started to shoot, their intent was not to kill the driver. It was to immediately stop the truck from being used as a deadly weapon. That’s where the law of physics takes over. Armed with standard issue firearms, the only way to stop the truck was to stop the driver.
The officers, armed with small caliber pistols, knew that a bullet or a dozen bullets fired into a truck tire would not have stopped the threat. Some of those bullets might not have penetrated the tire or ricocheted, presenting serious danger to the officers and innocent bystanders. Even if the police were able to deflate a tire, the truck would have remained a deadly weapon. The rubber of the tires would have continued to provide sufficient traction to allow the driver of the truck to continue to smash it into the cars blocking his exit.
The determined truck driver forced the police to direct their force toward him. By eliminating the vehicle’s operator, the police stopped the threat. Unfortunately, the minimum amount of force necessary to bring about the intended result was the No. 10 on the dial.
— John Grasso is a retired Cranston police officer. He was a member of the department’s SWAT team, a police sniper and patrol rifle instructor. He practices law in Providence.