Article

Summer | 2025

Moving Targets: An Examination of Departmental Deadly Force Policies and Police Shootings at Vehicles

Summer | 2025

In 1971, New York City Police officers shot and killed an 11-year-old who was joy riding in a stolen car. In response to the subsequent protests the department was the first in the nation to implement a policy regulating officers firing their weapons at a moving vehicle. Since then, agencies across the nation have implemented a variety of policies regulating an officer’s decision to fire their weapons at moving vehicles. However, the impact of these policies has been ‘largely untested’.

Previous research has found when agencies utilize ‘a combination of administrative policies, formal reporting processes, standardize data collection, and internal reviews of incidents, officers were less-likely to use deadly force. This study evaluates policies from the 100 largest police departments in the United States to determine if stricter policies on shooting at moving vehicles or requiring officers to move out of a vehicle’s path were associated with fewer incidents.

Officers shooting at persons who have ‘weaponized their vehicle’ to hit an officer or other persons has been classified into two broad categories, Non-Elective and Elective:

Non-Elective as being “when officers have no choice but to discharge their weapons or risk imminent death or serious injuries to themselves or others”.
Elective when officers “choose to shoot or not shoot when there is less risk to themselves or others.”

Using crowdsourced data, researchers found in the six-year period of 2020 to 2025, 7.3 percent (N=774) of persons who officers injured or killed were described as ‘being armed with a vehicle’. Sixty-seven percent of the agencies reported at least one shooting during this period. The number of incidents for the 67 agencies ranged from 1 to 7 with an overall average of 1.38 per agency.

Researchers evaluated operational policies to determine if departments required:

Constraining Permissive Behavior/ “Restrictive Policy” – Policy directives restricted specific behaviors (i.e., Officers shall not discharge a firearm at a moving/fleeing vehicle or had no reasonable means to avoid the threat).
Obligative Preventive / “Avoidant Behavior” – Explicit policy directives requiring officers take preventive action from being in the vehicle’s path or to move out of its way. (i.e., Officers are to move themselves out of the path of a moving or fleeing vehicle).

Seventy-three of the agencies’ policies contained language constraining permissive behavior, 26 did not. A little more than half (N=55) of the agencies had policies requiring officers to engage in avoidant behavior, 44 did not. Officers in agencies with a policy constraining (limiting) language had “81% lower odds of firing a weapon at a moving vehicle”.

Agencies with a policy requiring officers to not place themselves in a vehicle’s path or to move out of the way was not statistically associated with the frequency of shootings at vehicles.

In the summary discussion, researchers noted when officers engage a moving vehicle, their ability to properly assess the risks such as innocent passengers, bystanders, or children are greatly reduced. In addition, officers are less likely to accurately fire their weapon and are exposed to a higher likelihood of striking innocent passengers and by-standers.

The authors also added implementation of a policy is a critical first step, but a policy alone is not sufficient to change behavior. To successfully effect change it is critical for agencies to implement active training, supervision, and agency buy-in.

John A. Shjarback and Julie Ward, “Moving Targets: An Examination of Departmental Deadly Force Policies and Police Shootings at Vehicles”, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 2025, Vol.19. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paaf004