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Trenton,
NJ – Attorney General Anne Milgram
has issued a supplemental use of force policy
concerning less-lethal ammunition and the
circumstances in which the ammunition should
be used.
The new policy is based on recommendations
of the Attorney General’s Advisory
Committee on the use of less-lethal force,
which recommended last month that new guidelines
should be established detailing when and
under what circumstances the use of less-lethal
ammunition is appropriate.
“I
am convinced that this new tool will help
to enhance officer safety and will provide
officers with the means in appropriate circumstances
to avoid having to use deadly force,’’
Attorney General Milgram stated in a letter
to county prosecutors, State Police Superintendent
Col Rick Fuentes, and other law enforcement
officials.
The supplemental policy is effectively an
amendment to the existing use of force policy,
and applies specifically to the use of less-lethal
ammunition that is ejected from a firearm
and targeted at a person. It does not address
the use of other forms of less-lethal force,
including electronic stun guns, such as
Tasers. However, the advisory committee
plans to examine legal and policy issues
concerning stun guns, and plans a public
hearing on the issue. (A date has not been
set.)
The Attorney General’s Advisory Committee
on Less-Lethal Force was formed last summer
to study the circumstances in which law
enforcement officers in the state should
be permitted to use less-lethal ammunition
designed to stun or temporarily disable
people.
The
advisory group is co-chaired by retired
Superior Court Appellate Judge Dennis J.
Braithwaite and Mitchell Sklar, the executive
director of the New Jersey State Association
of Chiefs of Police.
Other
advisory group members are Essex County
Prosecutor Paula Dow; Middlesex County Prosecutor
Bruce Kaplan; Robert N. Davison, the executive
director of the Mental Health Association
of Essex County; Deputy Attorney General
Dermot O’Grady, who is the acting
director of the Office of State Police Affairs;
and Ricardo Solano Jr., a criminal defense
director at the Gibbons law firm in Newark.
The
committee had recommended that police officers
be permitted to fire less-lethal ammunition
at a person only when such force is reasonably
necessary to prevent that person from causing
death or serious bodily injury to himself,
an officer, or any other person.
The
supplemental policy provides specific criteria
for the use of less lethal ammunition that
is designed to stun or temporarily incapacitate
a person without penetrating the body.
The
State Police, in consultation with the Division
of Criminal Justice in the Department of
Law and Public Safety, is charged with developing
a list of specifications of less-lethal
ammunition that may be used. That list will
be submitted to the Attorney General for
approval. The list will not be of specific
products, but will define specifications
and characteristics that must be met for
approval.
The
policy states that less-lethal ammunition
may be directed against a person only when
such force is reasonably necessary to prevent
the person from causing death or serious
bodily injury to himself or herself, a police
officer, or any other person.
An
example of a situation where the use of
less-lethal ammunition might be authorized
would be a circumstance in which a person
is armed, or appears to be armed, with a
potentially deadly weapon and refuses to
comply with an officer’s order to
disarm, but the danger to the officer is
not yet imminent.
A
second example would be a person threatening
or actively engaged in suicidal or other
self-destructive behavior, and the use of
less-lethal ammunition is necessary to prevent
the person from causing death or serious
injury to himself of herself.
The
policy states that no police officer can
use less-lethal ammunition unless the officer
has completed a training course approved
by the Police Training Commission.
A
copy of the Supplemental Policy on Less-Lethal
Ammunition is available on-line at: www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases08/llapolicy03.19.08.pdf
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