A majority of police shootings in the region are determined by internal investigations to be justified, according to data from county police departments.
“What you find is most police departments will clear shootings,” said Geoffrey Alpert, chairman of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina and an expert on the use of force by police officers.
In the past week, three police officers in Anne Arundel County ? two county officers and one Annapolis officer ? fired shots at civilians. All three cases are still under review.
The reason most cases are cleared, Alpert said, is that police almost always fire shots as a response to some action on the part of a suspect.
“There are times when it?s not the most appropriate response, but it?s rarely anything but a response,” he said.
Unless police department can prove officers intentionally set out to harm someone, they can usually determine that shots were justified, he said.
In Anne Arundel County, there have been five police shootings in the past three years and three reported this year, said Detective Sara Schriver. All of the previous cases have been found to have been justified except for the two new cases, which remain open. Annapolis police said the police-involved shooting this weekend was the only one in the city in years, Officer Hal Dalton said.
Lt. David Waltemeyer, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel police, said what appears to be a sudden increase is “purely coincidental.”
Alpert said increases in the use of force are usually tied to increases in violent crime.
“The major variable is crime and violent crime and officers being put in a position to use force,” Alpert said.
In Baltimore County, there have been 18 police shootings since 2003; 17 instances were cleared and one is still under review, a police spokesman said. In Howard County, there have been two police-involved shootings since 2003; one was cleared and one investigation is still under review, said spokesman Pfc. Brandon Justice. Carroll County has had two shootings since 2003, said Maj. Tom Long, and both were found to have been justified.
Albert said that women officers are less likely to use force than male officers, and that the youngest and oldest officers in some departments are more likely to use force than staff in the middle of their careers.
