NEWS

Fatal shootings by IMPD increase in 2015, but sketchy data nationally hinder deep analysis

Mark Alesia
IndyStar
A woman screams at police after officers shot and killed Christopher Goodlow, who lunged at an officer with a knife, had been Tased twice and ignored repeated commands to put down a knife. Family members said he was mentally ill.

The numbers tell only part of the story: Nine fatal officer-involved shootings by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department this year are the most since the department consolidated in 2007.

And IMPD also has had more fatal shootings when compared to the latest published statistics from similar-sized departments. That includes two within three days earlier this month in Indianapolis.

But experts warned that data on police-action shootings is inadequate throughout the nation, making it hard to draw conclusions about individual departments.

And even if you have solid data on police shootings and killings, they have to be assessed in context of other factors, said David Klinger, professor of criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a former Los Angeles police officer.

Shooting an unarmed person running away from police, he noted, is much different than shooting someone robbing a bank with an AK-47 automatic rifle. That distinction is at issue in a wrongful death lawsuit against IMPD based on a police-action shooting in January 2015. The lawsuit says the suspect, Donte Sowell, was unarmed and surrendered before being shot, which IMPD denies.

Klinger has advocated for years for a thorough, systematic reporting of officer-involved shootings. It would include variables such as whether the suspect was armed, what the suspect was armed with and the nature of the incident. Even different types of guns used across different departments might affect the statistics, Klinger said.

"The point is, we don't know, and all of this is important in getting a deep understanding," he said.

IMPD data compiled by Indianapolis Star reporters Jill Disis and Michael Anthony Adams show 21 fatal officer-involved shootings involving IMPD in the past three years. There were 14 in the previous six years.

Fatal officer-involved shootings by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department​

  • 2007: 1
  • 2008: 4
  • 2009: 2
  • 2010: 3
  • 2011: 2
  • 2012: 2
  • 2013: 8
  • 2014: 4
  • 2015: 9

Source: Indianapolis Star research (Michael Anthony Adams, Jill Disis) 

The FBI this month announced that by 2017 it will improve and expand data gathering on incidents where police caused death or serious injury. Independent websites and media have tried to fill the void of such data nationally. Websites such as Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters count fatal police shootings. The Washington Post and the U.S. edition of The Guardian of London also are counting.

IMPD publishes data on officer-involved shootings, but it only goes back to July 2014 and hasn't been updated since October 2015.

Asked about the rise in fatal officer-involved shootings, IMPD issued a statement: "Often times we are confronted with violent individuals who either suffer from mental illness or refuse to obey lawful orders from police. Uniformed Crime Reporting data compiled after an officer assaulted incident shows an upward trend over the past few years of individuals willing to utilize a firearm or other dangerous weapons against our officers.”

The statement said there have been 20 officer-involved shootings in 2015; there were 19 last year and 11 in 2013. That includes the fatal officer-involved shootings.

Michael Jenkins, a criminal justice professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, said that law enforcement agencies generally have taken two approaches to increased scrutiny on officer-involved shootings.

"The first is, 'We could police better, and we could be better,'" Jenkins said. "The second approach is, 'We can’t second-guess officers, and we don’t know what it’s like. And they put their lives on the line, and we can’t question them.' Thankfully, we’ve kept attention on police enough in the last year-and-a-half where citizens — and the police — are getting on the (first) side."

The lawsuit against IMPD stems from a Jan. 15 incident in which Donte Sowell, 27, was the passenger in a car pulled over by police for a traffic stop. Sowell, wanted on an arrest warrant, ran away. Officers and a security guard found him near the entrance of an apartment complex. Police said Sowell started shooting and officers returned fire in what an IMPD spokesman said was "an intense gun battle."

Sowell had previous felony convictions for cocaine possession and conspiracy to commit robbery. It was illegal for him to have a gun.

The lawsuit claims the traffic stop itself was unjustified, Sowell was unarmed and that he had surrendered before police started shooting. At least two of the bullets hit Sowell in the back, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit cites four incidents since 1996 of alleged misconduct by police in officer-involved shootings in Indianapolis. The complaint calls Indy's "rate of police shootings of civilians" as "staggeringly high." It cites the website Killed By Police to compare Indianapolis to New York City.

The city denies those allegations in court documents.

Jenkins said that even when a police shooting is justified, "it deserves attention about what other steps could have been taken." There is, he said, potential for "officer-created danger," such as needlessly escalating tension to the point where lethal force is required.

"Anytime an individual loses his life because of a police shooting, that should be a big deal," Jenkins said. "The media should be all over it. The police should be all over it. So the truth comes out."

Contact Mark Alesia at (317) 444-6311 and follow him on Twitter: @markalesia.