Each year, too many law enforcement officers die in the line of duty and too many people are killed by the police. Yet, can any of these deaths be avoided? To answer this we must investigate the nature and causes of these deaths in an unbiased and objective manner to highlight and expose weaknesses in policy that can be amended through more rigorou

As unrest over officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody takes center stage in conversations about policing and the criminal justice system, Guidelines for Investigating Officer-Involved Shootings, Arrest-Related Deaths, and Deaths in Custody addresses critical investigation components from an expert witness perspective, providing the insights necessary to ensure a complete investigation. Investigating a custodial death or an officer involved in a shooting presents unique and complex issues: estate, community, judicial, agency, involved officer, and public policy interests are all at stake. These types of deaths present various emerging medical, psychological, legal and liability, technical, and investigatory issues that must be addressed through a comprehensive investigation. This book is ideal for students in criminal investigation, death investigation, crime scene investigation, and special topic courses in custodial deaths and officer-involved shootings, as well as for death investigators, law enforcement officers, police administrators, and attorneys.

The US Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of The National Academies to conduct a workshop that would examine the interface of the medicolegal death investigation system and the criminal justice system. NIJ was particularly interested in a workshop in which speakers would highlight not only the status and needs of the medicolegal death investigation system as currently administered by medical examiners and coroners but also its potential to meet emerging issues facing contemporary society in America. Additionally, the workshop was to highlight priority areas for a potential IOM study on this topic. To achieve those goals, IOM constituted the Committee for the Workshop on the Medicolegal Death Investigation System, which developed a workshop that focused on the role of the medical examiner and coroner death investigation system and its promise for improving both the criminal justice system and the public health and health care systems, and their ability to respond to terrorist threats and events. Six panels were formed to highlight different aspects of the medicolegal death investigation system, including ways to improve it and expand it beyond its traditional response and meet growing demands and challenges. This report summarizes the Workshop presentations and discussions that followed them.

As unrest over officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody takes center stage in conversations about policing and the criminal justice system, Guidelines for Investigating Officer-Involved Shootings, Arrest-Related Deaths, and Deaths in Custody addresses critical investigation components from an expert witness perspective, providing the insights necessary to ensure a complete investigation. Investigating a custodial death or an officer involved in a shooting presents unique and complex issues: estate, community, judicial, agency, involved officer, and public policy interests are all at stake. These types of deaths present various emerging medical, psychological, legal and liability, technical, and investigatory issues that must be addressed through a comprehensive investigation. This book is ideal for students in criminal investigation, death investigation, crime scene investigation, and special topic courses in custodial deaths and officer-involved shootings, as well as for death investigators, law enforcement officers, police administrators, and attorneys.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports Section selected and analyzed 51 incidents of police officer killings in order to evaluate the psychology of the offender, the behavior of the police officer, and circumstances in which the police officer lost his or her life. The study was conducted over a 3-year period; the 51 incidents resulted in the death of 54 police officers and involved 50 offenders. Results demonstrated that, while no single offender profile could be established, most killers of police officers had been diagnosed as having some type of personality disorder. Behavioral descriptors of victims were frequently similar in that they were good-natured and more conservative than their fellow officers in the use of physical force. The incidents themselves revealed that killings were often facilitated by some type of procedural miscue (e.g., improper approach to a vehicle). Type of assignment, circumstances at the scene of an encounter, weapons involved, and the environment in which events occurred all played a role in the preponderance of police officer deaths in the South. The report presents extensive information on the victims, offenders, and incidents studied. It identifies personality types of offenders, provides guidance on how individuals of a given personality type interact with authority figures, and offers approaches to interrogation. The report also points out specific areas where law enforcement training and procedures may be improved. Appendixes contain the study methodology and a description of personality types.

There is tremendous controversy across the United States (and beyond) when a police officer uses deadly force against an unarmed citizen, but often the conversation is devoid of contextual details. These details matter greatly as a matter of law and organizational legitimacy. In this short book, authors Jon Shane and Zoë Swenson offer a comprehensive analysis of the first study to use publicly available data to reveal the context in which an officer used deadly force against an unarmed citizen. Although any police shooting, even a justified shooting, is not a desired outcome—often termed "lawful but awful" in policing circles—it is not necessarily a crime. The results of this study lend support to the notion that being unarmed does not mean "not dangerous," in some ways explaining why most police officers are not indicted when such a shooting occurs. The study’s findings show that when police officers used deadly force during an encounter with an unarmed citizen, the officer or a third person was facing imminent threat of death or serious injury in the vast majority of situations. Moreover, when police officers used force, their actions were almost always consistent with the accepted legal and policy principles that govern law enforcement in the overwhelming proportion of encounters (as measured by indictments). Noting the dearth of official data on the context of police shooting fatalities, Shane and Swenson call for the U.S. government to compile comprehensive data so researchers and practitioners can learn from deadly force encounters and improve practices. They further recommend that future research on police shootings should examine the patterns and micro-interactions between the officer, citizen, and environment in relation to the prevailing law. The unique data and analysis in this book will inform discussions of police use of force for researchers, policymakers, and students involved in criminal justice, public policy, and policing.

The purpose of this publication is to consolidate the training material utilized in the Managing Death Investigation Course and Death Investigation Field Schools conducted by the Behavioural Science Unit, FBI Academy,

All too often, police called to the scene of a water-related death may consider it an accidental drowning before they even arrive. But the investigation of these types of deaths requires the same careful and thorough documentation as in other potentially non-natural deaths and these efforts must be carried through all stages of investigation. Water