“Deadly Force by Off-Duty Officers: Investigating Homicides and Brutality by Detroit Police, 1994-2014,” is a multimedia report created by Corey Schneck of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab team. The investigation examines thirty-nine deadly force incidents by off-duty officers in the Detroit Police Department during a two-decade span. The off-duty total represents one-fourth of the 162 police homicides identified by a student research team during this period, a proportion that did not change after 2003, when the DPD came under a federal consent decree for unconstitutional patterns of deadly force. In a majority of the killings, off-duty officers were either drinking in bars, committing a domestic violence crime, or engaged in other forms of personal conflict unrelated to law enforcement duties. The DPD required (until 1998) and then encouraged off-duty police to carry their service revolvers and intervene to stop crimes in progress, resulting in numerous excessive force incidents, and did not ban its officers from carrying firearms while impaired by alcohol until federal pressure forced this policy change in 2005. The report maps the patterns of off-duty fatal force, explores multiple cases in depth, and assesses the limited impact of federal oversight.
CSP Publishes “Deadly Force by Off-Duty Officers”
