Lethal Force (2001)

In a previous section, "continuous improvement" real gains, or simply pay lip service, I concentrated on national guidelines for incident management, conflict resolution, and the use of force: 2004 and problems associated with these guidelines. In this article, I focus on a particular aspect of these guidelines that should be of great concern to the Australian police.

"This is a greater use of force? Punching someone, or pepper spray?" If I had a dollar for every time I heard this question, I'd probably be mounted on a gold-plated Harley Davidson my yacht 100 feet now. The reason this question has been asked so often because neither the law nor the policy sufficiently explained the relationship between the use of certain force options. Have you received sufficient training to answer that question to a jury of your peers "? What would you say to an internal investigator, or one of CMC / IPO etc.?

In 1994, Victoria Police conducted Beacon Project, which was a training program in response to the public (and media) outcry about the number of people killed by police in Victoria. (I am in no way criticizing Victoria Police for their use of force at this time.)

Part of this project was to create a model of tactical options that should be taught to all police officers in Victoria. This model has been given by other courts, and finally made its way into the national guidelines in 1998 and again in 2004.

Figure 1

Let me highlight some basic ideas behind this tactical options model of the situation (see Figure 1), which I quoted directly from the national guidelines for incident management, conflict resolution, and use Force: 2004:

"Such a model provides a mechanism to assist the police in the incident management;

"The model helps the police to select the most appropriate solution to achieve an effective and safe for a variety of scenarios;

"Additional models illustrate a step-by-step linear progression of the level of force appropriate to the level of resistance / threat displayed by a suspect or inmate, the minimum force (officer presence, for example, verbal communication) lethal force (eg, firearms). There are two fundamental problems with the structure of additional models. First, they imply the need to move in incremental steps one step at a time. Consequently, these models are very restrictive in terms of tactical options available for selection at any time. Second, they can be considered as uni-directional. This limits the scope of de-escalation of the incident ";

I will address each item separately. Firstly, paragraph 1, states, "Such a model provides a mechanism to assist police in managing incidents." This point I agree with, and is one that needs to be understood by all . This model helps agents to manage an incident.

Too many agencies in Australia are teaching our police this model as an example of how to decide which use of the option to use the Force. It is a dangerous practice that must stop. This is not the model of the Force, but a tactical situation model options. This is something that must be used by the first police officer to an incident to refer to an incident at the resolution. This is not a learning tool for the use of Force training.

"Hick's Law, simplify considerably, indicating that the best options to choose from, the more he must choose an option. If a police officer is facing a threat, especially a potentially fatal t.