April 18, 2017
Commissioner Matthew M. Johnson, President
Commissioner Steve Soboroff, Vice President
Commissioner Sandra Figueroa-Villa
Commissioner Cynthia McClain-Hill
Commissioner Shane Murphy Goldsmith
Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners
100 West First Street, Suite 134
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Dear Board of Police Commissioners:
We write regarding the Los Angeles Police Department’s (“LAPD”) proposed revisions to
its Use of Force Policy (“Policy”) in response to the Office of Inspector General’s (“OIG”) March
10, 2016 Ten-Year Overview of Categorical Use of Force Investigations, Policy and Training report
(“Report”). The revisions purport to address recommendations Nos. 1 and 2 from the OIG Report,
which call on LAPD to revise the Policy to emphasize de-escalation and exhaustion of reasonable
alternatives to deadly force. We are encouraged by LAPD’s move toward de-escalation. But we are
concerned the proposed revisions do not implement the OIG Report’s recommendations, nor do
they clearly move LAPD towards requiring de-escalation. Instead, by addressing de-escalation only
in the Preamble rather in the standards setting forth factors by which use of force will be evaluated,
the new policy leaves ambiguous whether de-escalation will be a requirement on which use force will
be evaluated, or an unenforceable aspiration. For the same reasons, LAPD’s proposed revisions fail
to bring the agency in line with current standards and best practices for use of force policies.1
***
LAPD’s proposed revision of the Policy’s preamble to include language about de-escalation
is encouraging. We agree that “[o]fficers [should] attempt to control an incident by using time,
distance, communications, and available resources in an effort to de-escalate the situation, whenever
it is safe and reasonable to do so.” Indeed, officers must make such attempts in order to show the
“reverence for human life” that the preamble identifies as LAPD’s “guiding value when using
force.”
We are deeply concerned, however, that LAPD’s revisions include no mention of deescalation in the operative portions of the Policy (under subheading III. POLICY). The Policy’s list
of “Factors Used to Determine Reasonableness” still does not include whether an officer attempted
1
See, e.g., Int’l Assoc. of Chiefs of Police (“IACP”), Nat’l Consensus Policy on Use of Force (Jan. 2017) at
3 (including de-escalation in the “Procedures” section of model policy rather than in prefatory
sections); Police Executive Research Forum (“PERF”), Use of Force: Taking Policing to a Higher Standard
(Jan. 2016), available at http://www.policeforum.org/assets/30guidingprinciples.pdf; PERF, An
Integrated Approach To De-Escalation & Minimizing Force (Aug. 2012).
1 3 1 3 W E S T E I G H T H S T R E E T L O S A N G E L E S C A 9 0 0 1 7 t 2 1 3 . 9 7 7 . 9 5 0 0 f 2 1 3 . 9 7 7 . 5 2 9 9 A C L U S O C A L . O R G Page 2
de-escalation tactics.2 In this way, LAPD’s proposed revisions clearly stray from the OIG Report’s
recommendations. See Report at 18, Recommendation #1 (calling for revision of Policy “to include
attempts at de-escalation whenever feasible as one of the factors for determining the reasonableness
of an officer’s use of force”). The Policy also still fails to emphasize that officers should exhaust
reasonable available alternatives before using deadly force, which again falls short of the OIG
Report’s recommendations. See Report at 18, Recommendation #2 (calling for revision of Policy “to
emphasize that deadly force shall only be exercised when reasonable alternatives have been
exhausted or appear impracticable”).
The omission of the OIG Report’s recommendations from the proposed Policy is
particularly glaring because those recommendations could have been simply integrated into the
existing Policy language, as follows:
• Recommendation #1: “revise the use of force policy to include attempts at de-escalation
whenever feasible as one of the factors for determining the reasonableness of an officer’s use
of force”
The Policy lists “the availability of other resources” as a factor that may be used to determine
whether a use of force was reasonable; LAPD could simply replace that confusing phrase with
“whether reasonable alternatives were exhausted by the officer or appeared impracticable.” Similarly,
LAPD could easily add “whether the officer made attempts at de-escalation if feasible” as a factor in
the same list.
• Recommendation #2: “revise the use of force policy to emphasize that deadly force shall
only be exercised when reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or appear
impracticable”
In the section governing “Deadly Force,” LAPD could simply add the sentence “Deadly force shall
only be exercised when reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or appear impracticable,”
following the sentence that reads: “The reasonableness of an officer’s use of deadly force includes
consideration of the officer’s tactical conduct and decisions leading up to the use of deadly force.”
The opening phrase of that section could be revised to read: “Law enforcement officers are
authorized to use deadly force when reasonably necessary to:” (suggested revision in italics). As the OIG
report noted, this language existed in LAPD’s Use of Force Policy prior to 2009, and its removal
broadened authority for the use of deadly force to situations where alternative courses of action may
have been available to the officer.
The practical effect of incorporating de-escalation into the Preamble, but not into the list of
factors used to determine reasonableness or any other operative portion of the Policy is to leave
ambiguous whether the de-escalation provisions are requirements or toothless introductory
statements. Unless de-escalation is mentioned in the sections of the Policy that are actually used to
evaluate whether a use of force fell in or out of policy, officers may view de-escalation as merely
2
We do not take issue with revising the Policy to add the additional factor “the amount of time and
any changing circumstances during which the officer had to determine the type and amount of force
that appeared to be reasonable,” but that factor is in no way a functional substitute for factors
specifically addressing de-escalation attempts or exhaustion of available alternatives to force.
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aspirational, and it is unlikely that any specific use of force will be determined “out of policy” based
on a failure to attempt feasible de-escalation. This is particularly troubling in light of LAPD’s failure
to recommend policy revisions that would limit the use of deadly force to situations where it is truly
necessary.
LAPD’s Use of Force Policy should do more than pay lip service to reverence for human
life; it should enact de-escalation policies that will decrease the risk of violence to officers and
members of the public alike. To ensure that the Policy serves this purpose, the Commission should
refuse to accept the proposed revisions as complete and insist on full implementation of the OIG
Report’s recommendations.
Finally, while we believe the step toward requiring de-escalation and considering deescalation as part of evaluating uses of force is a positive one, there is still much more to be done.
LAPD’s Use of Force Policy still centers on the reasonableness test of Graham v. Connor, which sets
forth the limits of unconstitutional force, not the standard for which departments should strive.
The LAPD can do better than just avoiding unconstitutional force — it should explicitly state that it
requires a higher standard than Graham’s constitutional minimum, as recommended by PERF, and
explicitly recognize the sanctity of human life—including those officers may regard as criminal
suspects—in its policies.3 LAPD’s Use of Force Policy should make clear that it requires its officers
to strive for minimal force, rather than reasonable force; should require officers to intervene when
other officers use excessive force; and should require officers to render medical aid promptly.4 As
more than one-third of people shot by LAPD officers in 2015 suffered from mental illness,5 LAPD
should call for and support the City’s investment in capacity to first respond to people in mental
health emergencies with mental health professionals rather than police officers with guns. Other
departments and law enforcement organizations have embraced these further reaching measures,
and we call on LAPD to adopt them as well.
Sincerely,
Adrienna Wong
Staff Attorney
ACLU of Southern California
[email protected]
3
See PERF, 30 Guiding Principles, supra note 1.
San Francisco’s newly adopted use of force policy sets minimal force as its objective and imposes a duty of
proportionality in force and a duty to intervene in other officers’ excessive force. See San Francisco Police Dep’t
Gen. Order 5.01, Use of Force (reb. 12/21/16), available at http://sanfranciscopolice.org/use-force-documents.
5
Kate Mather and James Queally, More than a third of people shot by L.A. police last year were mentally ill, LAPD
report finds, L.A. Times (Mar. 1, 2016), available at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-use-offorce-report-20160301-story.html.
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