Increased Police Shootings in Atlanta Area Prompt Review of the Department

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. - A day after he turned 21, Lorenzo Matthews was killed under murky circumstances by suburban Atlanta's DeKalb County police in the department's ninth fatal shooting this year -- more than even New York City has recorded.

The toll has led to an independent review of police training and use-of-force procedures and brought lawsuits and protests in the county, which has both pockets of poverty and some of the most affluent black neighborhoods in America.

"It's imperative that we have a first-rate police department that is adequately funded, adequately trained and made up of experienced officers," said state Sen. David Adelman, who lives in the sliver of Atlanta that is part of DeKalb County.

Already this year, DeKalb County police have killed three times as many people as they did in all of 2005, bucking a national trend of fewer justifiable homicides by officers.

The fatal police shootings in DeKalb County, with a population of 700,000, are more than the six so far this year in New York City and equal to Los Angeles' death toll, even though the nation's largest and second-largest cities have millions more people and thousands more officers.

At the same time, records obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request show that some of the department's required in-service training in the use of deadly force has been reduced, along with instruction in the use of batons.

Interim DeKalb Police Chief Nick Marinelli blamed the killings in part on loose gun laws in the South and more aggressive criminals. One DeKalb officer has been killed this year, shot to death along with a suspect June 29.

"If I really believe you're going to do serious bodily harm to me or that citizen, I'm going to act with a greater force than you are, hopefully, and I win, you lose," Marinelli said.

He suggested that the increase in killings from the year before was part of a cyclical pattern and that the trend will reverse itself.

An AP investigation found that since 2001, the 966-officer DeKalb County Police Department has logged 64 officer-involved shootings, nearly half of which -- 31 -- resulted in a death to a civilian. Of those shootings, all but six were deemed justified by internal investigators, though most this year are still under review.

Nationwide, justifiable killings by officers while on duty declined from 378 in 2001 to 341 last year, according to the FBI, which does not catalog fatal police shootings that are accidents or not justified.

Among the DeKalb killings: On Aug. 24, an officer with three years on the force shot a man who she says charged her in an apartment and tried to take her gun. On May 17, an officer with 11 years of experience shot a man inside a vehicle; the man's girlfriend said he had a gun and was suicidal.

As for Matthews, he was killed Sept. 12 after officers went into an apartment building in search of a man wanted for questioning in an earlier shooting. There is no indication in the police report that Matthews was armed; the police chief has refused to discuss details.

One of the two officers who confronted Matthews was a 17-year department veteran who also had a role in a fatal shooting June 5. That shooting remained under review, but department policy did not prohibit the officer from returning to duty.

Matthews' stepfather, Andre Hatten, said Matthews didn't have a gun.

"He was getting into a little trouble, but never got into any trouble hurting no one," said Hatten, adding that Matthews was excited about the birth of his son weeks earlier.

DeKalb County police reported 75 homicides last year, the most of any county law enforcement agency in Georgia, down from 79 the year before. Rapes, too, were down, though robberies and aggravated assaults have increased, FBI statistics show.

Nearly half the officers involved in the DeKalb shootings had five years or less of experience at the department, agency records show.

DeKalb officers are required to undergo at least 20 hours of continuing training each year. The department's requirements list zero hours this year under "command in service use of force update/firearms" training; four hours were required each of the past five years. One hour of training in use of force with a baton was required for all officers this year, down from two hours last year and three the year before.

DeKalb County Chief Executive Vernon Jones recently asked a consulting firm headed by Lee Brown, a former Houston mayor and drug czar for President Clinton, to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the police training and procedures for the use of deadly force.

"We want to make sure our policies reflect our core values," Jones said.

Jack Levin, a criminologist at Boston's Northeastern University, said improved training and oversight can help reduce police shootings, but they can accomplish only so much.

"Let's face it, sometimes the police are justified in shooting back and sometimes they're not," he said. Also, "no matter how well you train a police force ... you can't rule out the influence of reflex, the influence of instinct."