Pennsylvania State troopers shoot at drivers fleeing traffic stop, raising questions about controversial practice

• By Jenna Wise and Christine Vendel/PennLive

Two Pennsylvania State police officers fired at two fleeing drivers last week after a traffic stop, raising questions about the department’s use-of-force policy, which still broadly allows shooting at moving vehicles despite widespread condemnation of the practice by legal experts.

It’s unknown if the troopers hit the drivers or their vehicles. The SUVs were later found abandoned in Philadelphia, about 75 miles from the traffic stop on the Turnpike, in Elizabeth Township, Lancaster County.

State police have released few details about the incident at 11:35 p.m. on April 15 and have not answered specific questions from PennLive, including why they pulled the SUVs over or the justification for the use of deadly force

The department issued a news release the morning of April 16, saying the troopers pulled over the drivers of two SUVs, one black, and one white. After a state trooper reached into the black SUV to turn the ignition off, the driver started the SUV again, disobeyed commands to turn it off, then drove forward, hitting the trooper, according to Trooper Kevin Kochka.

Both drivers sped away from the traffic stop, he said. The officers then fired their pistols before chasing the vehicles, but they could not find them again.

Kochka told LancasterOnline the trooper who was hit by the black SUV was taken to the hospital for evaluation and released. But he would not say whether the trooper sustained any injuries or provide details about what part of the vehicle struck the officer.

It’s also unclear how close the two SUVs were to each other when the troopers fired at them, but both drivers could have been in the line of fire even though only one driver had hit the trooper, according to the version of events from state police. Police have not said whether they have identified the drivers who fled, but they have not publicly identified them.

It’s unclear what either driver was being arrested for, if anything, before they drove off.

Police would likely accuse the first driver, if they could identify him, with assault for the actions they say he took as he fled. But troopers also shot at the second driver, who is not accused of any such action.

Kochka did not respond to questions about what justification for deadly force existed if the drivers were leaving, and any danger to the officers, had potentially already passed.

State law allows officers to use deadly force “only when he believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to himself or such other person, or when he believes both that:

(i) such force is necessary to prevent the arrest from being defeated by resistance or escape; and

(ii) the person to be arrested has committed or attempted a forcible felony or is attempting to escape and possesses a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict serious bodily injury unless arrested without delay.”

The term “forcible felony” is not defined under Pa. law. Some departments define it in their policies as the crimes of murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, robbery, kidnapping, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, arson, endangering persons and aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury.

State troopers define forcible felony in their policy as: “A felony involving actual or threatened serious bodily injury.”

In a case before the state Supreme Court, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner argued that the U.S. Supreme Court, in Tennessee v. Garner, already has concluded: “The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable.”

The justices instead ruled an officer can only use such force to prevent an escape while having “probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

Beyond the question of constitutionality, policing experts have long discouraged shooting at moving vehicles.

“Usually if an officer has time to shoot, they have time to get out of the way,” said Justin Nix, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “If the officer successfully strikes the driver, now you’ve got an injured or possibly dead person operating a motor vehicle – that creates its own dangers.”

An independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, the Police Executive Research Forum, has advocated against officers shooting at moving vehicles since at least 2016. Their updated guidance to law enforcement is:

“Agencies should adopt a prohibition against shooting at or from a moving vehicle unless someone in the vehicle is using or threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle itself, or the driver is attempting to use the vehicle as a weapon of mass destruction in an apparent terrorist attack.”

Harrisburg police in 2016 updated its policy to restrict officers from firing at moving vehicles except under very limited circumstances.

Firing a gun is supposed to be a last resort that’s only carried out when officers are faced with a life-threatening situation, experts said. But nearly every day, situations arise across the country that call into question the definition of “life-threatening.”

The New York Police Department changed their use of lethal force policy more than four decades ago, after an officer shot and killed 10-year-old Ricky Bodden. Since then shooting at moving vehicles has been banned — when the only physical threat was from the car, versus another weapon, Vox reported, and it has resulted in an immediate sharp reduction in officer-involved shootings that has continued to this day.

Police in Sharon Hill, a Philadelphia suburb, fired at a car at a high school football game, killing 8-year-old Fanta Bility in August last year. The 8-year-old’s family car was leaving the football game and police said they started firing because they thought the car was involved in a shooting reported about a block away. Their department’s policy prohibited shooting at moving vehicles except in self-defense or the defense of others, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The three officers involved in the Sharon Hill incident were charged earlier this year with manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and 10 counts of reckless endangerment for shooting at a car.

Between January 2015 and May 2017, police killed nearly 200 people nationwide who were inside a moving car, according to a Washington Post database.

“If you actually hit the driver and are successful, now you’ve got an unguided missile,” Geoffrey Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police use of force, told The Atlantic last year. “It’s just as likely if you shoot someone that a foot’s going to go on the gas as on the brake.”

“Most of the time the person being pursued isn’t guilty of anything more than a traffic offense, yet often pursuits end in crashes and deaths to the driver or innocent third parties on the road,” Nix said. “The payoff doesn’t justify the risk.”