By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D.
We can’t blame citizens for not understanding how and why police officers have to sometimes fight and even kill. Our humanity should bristle at such things. We wish we could live without the reality of those decisions. Despite our fears about violence, research shows that most humans have a great reluctance to kill, even in wartime, as Lt. Col Dave Grossman documents in his highly regarded work On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.
That makes educating the public difficult because the realities are difficult. One area of misunderstanding is when a suspect with a blade is shot by police using a firearm. Is the knife threat really that deadly? The U.S. is a culture where guns are ubiquitous, if only in our entertainment venues, so the public considers a knife or other edged weapon to be a much lesser threat than a gun. Let’s be clear: knives kill.
Murder by blade
About ten percent of murders in the U.S. are committed using edged weapons. Typically the instrument would be a knife, but this number includes anything that can cut or stab. While the percentage may seem low it must be noted that cutting instruments were used three times as often as rifles and shotguns combined. At 2018s FBI report of 1,515 cutting related murders, that number represents over twice the number of murders committed by beating with hands, fist, or feet and almost four times the number of persons beaten to death with blunt objects. Knives are also used in 17% of aggravated assaults, and roughly 10% of armed robberies
Also of significance is the use of knives in murders where guns are not as prevalent as in the U.S. London’s murder rate has frequently rivaled that of New York City in recent years and most of those murders are by blades, not firearms. London’s mayor has encouraged “knife control” laws.
It was just a knife!
Advocates of de-escalation and reduction of the use of force by police often overlook the lethality of knives. Protests followed an August 2020 shooting of a man running from police with a knife about to enter a convenience store. Protesters ignored that fact that officers had been called because of reports of a disturbance in a convenience store involving a knife, and had attempted to persuade the subject to abandon the knife, had attempted non-lethal means of stopping him, and fired only when the subject attempted to enter another convenience store still armed with the knife. Instead of concentrating on the danger of the knife, critics focused on the race and mental health of the suspect.
This case was one of many where a Taser ® was used against knife-wielding suspects. There are some clear limitations of electronic control weapons (ECWs) such as a Taser. Incorrectly referred to often as “stun guns” in the media, ECWs are designed to lock up a target’s nervous system rendering them temporarily unable to move. This is achieved by wired darts that must attach to the target’s body. There are a lot of variables that impact the success of an ECW discharge. One is the spacing of the darts when they land, another is whether the darts can penetrate clothing. If only one dart attaches, there is no electrical conduction circuit and thus no effect. ECWs can fail to be effective at stopping even a person standing still, much less actively moving.
Another limitation is that the officer deploying an ECW must be close to the target. Studies have shown that a person attacking with an edged weapon can traverse the distance of the typical ECW range before an officer can draw and fire their firearm or ECW. This means that another limitation is that there must be at least one other officer present ready to apply lethal force if the ECW fails.
Failure is not an option
With an assailant in possession of an edged weapon, the potential for serious injury and death is great. Consider that the 9/11 hijackers accomplished their murders by using only box cutters against the pilots of the doomed aircraft. An August 2015 attack on a Belgian train was stopped by two trained U.S. military men and a civilian. The three did subdue the attacker, but one of our heroes suffered a cut from the attacker’s box cutter than nearly severed his thumb.
The human heart is typically less than three inches from the skin. Stab depths are affected by the elasticity and compression of the body so that the length of the blade is not the limit of the depth of a stab wound. Although ballistic material is often worn by police officers, the material is designed to spread the force of a blunt bullet, not a thin blade. Therefore a knife could penetrate a bullet-resistant vest that can stop a bullet.
Add to the risk of a single fatal stab, the vulnerability of eyes, arteries, and fingers to a slashing incision, one can imagine that a police officer attempting to gain control of a resisting subject who has a blade might be distracted or disabled by pain, blindness, or dysfunction with one intentional or accidental slash or stab.
The next time the news reports that a person was shot by police who “only had a knife”, you’ll know that reporter has never been confronted by one.