Rafael Briscoe of Southeast, DC, who was killed Tuesday afternoon by D.C. Metropolitan Police officers, is the third person to die in a D.C. officer involved shooting this year. On Feb 13, Davon Sealy, 19, of Gaithersburg, and Akeem Jamaal Cayo, 21, were fatally shot in a shoot-out with officers after a botched home invasion robbery.
MPD’s protocol for deadly use of force is here. A good discussion of the use of deadly force, it’s impacts and how communities respond is on the FBI’s website, here. That document describes the general tension surrounding officer-involved fatal shootings as follows:
Some members of the public seem to automatically assume that the officer did something wrong before any investigation into the incident begins. Conversely, others believe that if the police shot somebody, the individual must not have given the officer any choice.
Finally, we used information from MPD’s 2010 report on page 30, to compile this chart of deadly use of force in D.C. by year. (Note: there were none in 2010.)
