Rural Georgia police chief's 'shoot to incapacitate' policy is criticized, but he says it's about building local trust

LaGrange in Troup County, Ga.
(Wikipedia map)

"A fundamental tenet of police training in the United States is that officers who fire their weapons in response to a deadly threat should always aim for "center mass," generally the chest. That's the biggest target and so the easiest to hit. But a bullet that finds its mark there is likely to kill," Jamie Thompson reports for The Washington Post from LaGrange, Ga. "The police chief in this picturesque Deep South town says there’s a better approach. Louis Dekmar, who has run the LaGrange Police Department for 26 years, is training his officers to shoot for the legs, pelvis or abdomen in situations where they think it could stop a deadly threat without killing the source of that threat. Doing so, he believes, could make a difference in the more than 200 fatal police shootings nationwide every year that involve individuals armed with something other than a gun."

The move has drawn widespread criticism from other law enforcement officials across the country, and was the focus of Georgia police leaders' annual conference this year. "While such a policy might be supported by the public, explained John B. Edwards of the Peace Officers Association of Georgia, most agencies would find it impossible to implement," Thompson reports.

But Dekmar told Thompson that the program is about the public's trust: "Every time we avoid taking a life, we maintain trust." Dekmar believes the public generally supports the initiative because he's invested more time in building that trust in the town of about 30,000. Other law enforcement authorities can do the same in their own communities to find solutions that fit, he told Thompson: "Policing in a democracy means that a community gets to define what ‘good’ policing looks like, and that definition may vary a bit from place to place."