Guns and Police: Standards to Prevent Misuse

Summary

This report has been written by Amnesty International for the Control Arms Campaign and is the first in a series of thematic reports to be produced by Amnesty International, Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) during the Campaign. It focuses on what governments can do to improve the effectiveness of policing to help control firearms, without the police themselves resorting to the use of excessive and unjustified force. From an illustrative selection of cases, it argues that adherence to international professional standards in the use of force and firearms must be included in any efforts to improve policing.

The global proliferation of small arms means that police and other law enforcers are under pressure to counter rising levels of violent gun crime and are expected to confront armed offenders. But in many countries the resources for police equipment and training are insufficient. For this reason, but also sometimes as part of deliberately repressive government policy, police resort to excessive and arbitrary force, or use firearms for
unlawful killings and as an instrument of torture and ill-treatment against suspects.

Agreed international standards do exist to control the use of force and firearms by the police. They include the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles for the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. At their heart is the question of what constitutes legitimate force. Police must sometimes be permitted to use force or lethal force, in order to do their job of keeping communities
safe and protecting people from life-threatening attacks. But the force used must not be arbitrary; it must be proportionate, necessary and lawful. And it must only be used in self defence or against the imminent threat of death or serious injury.

In order to comply with this essential principle, police must know how to assess rapidly when a threat to life is being made. They need to be extremely well trained in tactical threat assessment so that they can judge in each different context whether a use of force, including lethal force, will be proportionate, necessary and lawful. Too many police forces around the world are trained how to fire a gun but not how to decide whether it should be fired, or when. And too few governments have incorporated the UN standards in their national legislation, or show any respect for them in practice.

Governments and law enforcement agencies need to invest significant resources in improvements to meet the UN standards for the effective control of the use of firearms by the police. Examples in the report include the following:

*The UN Code of Conduct states that law enforcement agencies "should be epresentative of and responsive and accountable to the community as a whole." Yet repeated testimony from the poorest communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, shows that policing practice discriminates violently against them, with frequently fatal consequences.

* The UN Basic Principles state that firearms should only be used by police in self-defence or against the imminent threat of death or serious injury. Yet in Jamaica, which has the highest rate of police shootings per capita in the world, evidence repeatedly contradicts police claims that they were fired upon first and indicates instead a disturbing pattern of extrajudicial executions.

* Police training should emphasise human rights and alternatives to the use of firearms, yet the new police force in Timor-Leste, having been provided with brand new guns, does not appear to have been trained in the tactical skills necessary to assess threats or exercise restraint consistent with the UN standards.

The report cites positive steps by governments and police moving towards a greater respect for the UN standards, for example:

* Under previous legislation in South Africa, police were allowed to shoot suspected thieves, drug dealers and fleeing suspects who posed no threat to life, a clear violation of the UN standards. This law has now been amended.

* In Cambodia, an ambitious project for storage and management of weapons is underway. The challenge to all governments to help control the misuse of arms is urgent. To achieve this, they must invest more resources in professional policing based on the agreed international standards. Only then can governments provide protection to women, men, and children through legitimate security forces that respect human rights, and gain the widespread support from civil society that is needed to curb the flow and use of illicit arms.

Genuine engagement with the community is imperative in all efforts to improve policing by consent. Initiatives at the community level must be driven by local people, to ensure relevance, ownership, participation, shared responsibility, and understanding. On this basis:

1. All governments and police authorities should promote, publicize, incorporate in law and practice UN standards for law enforcement officials, including the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officers and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

2. States should explicitly include the promotion and adherence to these UN standards in the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Manufacture and Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons when it is discussed in 2005 and reviewed in 2006;

3. Bilateral and institutional donors, including agencies of the United Nations, should require local authorities to adhere to these UN standards in all international assistance projects that they fund, particularly where such projects involve community safety;

4. States should support the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Small Arms to strengthen the implementation of UN standards on the use of firearms;

5. All states should assess recipient states' adherence to UN standards when considering whether to export or supply arms to forces or agencies involved in law enforcement, and should not supply firearms, ammunition or other weapons that present an unwarranted risk of injury or abuse;

6. Civil society organizations and individuals should join the global "Control Arms" campaign and help promote strict adherence to these UN principles by governments and law enforcement organizations.

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36. Training in the legitimate use of force

A UN transitional administration was set up in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) in October 1999, to help reconstruction after decades of massive human rights violations, and widespread destruction in 1999 by the Indonesian security forces and pro-Indonesian militias. The rapid development of a professional police service was a major goal. The police force of about 3,000 began to be set up in April
2001, mostly armed with modern Glock 9mm pistols, but not all (34).

However, human rights violations against civilians by the new, armed police reflect a lack of proper UN-supervised training. In December 2002, for example, two people were shot dead and at least 13 others were injured in the capital, Dili, during rioting lasting eight hours. The findings of an investigation by the UN Police were made public in November 2003. According to the report the police were unable to identify individuals responsible
for the killings or provide detailed clarity concerning the circumstances of the shooting (35). During 2003, complaints against the police of assaults and misuse of firearms were frequent. Timor-Leste is now independent, but executive responsibility for policing still lies with the UN. Despite the UN presence, the inadequacy of police training and the lack
of proper oversight and accountability mechanisms for the National Police of Timor-Leste (PNTL) have meant that such complaints are often dealt with inconsistently or in some cases not at all (36).

Training of new cadets is limited to four months in the Police Academy (increased from three months in September 2003, and is expected to become six months in 2004), and although training in the use of force and firearms forms a significant part of the training, it appeared from direct observation of firearms training that while officers were taught technical skills, i.e. target practice and weapon maintenance, they were not equipped
with tactical skills that would enable them to assess threats or exercise restraint consistent with the UN standards (37).

The UN Basic Principles also require that "whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall... ensure that assistance and medical aid are rendered to any injured or affected persons at the earliest possible moment." (38) In many places, however, such medical assistance may be difficult to find. In Timor-Leste, the (draft) operational procedures state that if a firearm is discharged, officers "should immediately summon medical assistance for any injured person." However, in a country with little or no medical resources this is problematic, and so police officers should be trained in first aid and be issued with wound dressings. Police recruits in Timor-Leste currently receive 12 hours of first aid training.

Nevertheless, under UN supervision, police officers were issued with pepper sprays, batons and Austrian Glock pistols - and there are plans to issue a selected number of Rapid Deployment Service officers with semi-automatic weapons. It is clear that considerable further international support is needed to help build an effective police service capable of upholding human rights in Timor-Leste. Despite significant progress, the PNTL remains a fragile and underdeveloped institution which is not yet adequately trained, equipped, or sufficiently well-supported, to maintain law and order in a manner consistent with international human rights standards (30).

Proper firearms training according to the UN standards should be provided to all officers who carry out law enforcement, including personnel of private security companies if they are licensed and authorized to carry firearms. In South Africa, a study in 2002 showed that nearly 100,000 security officers had not been trained for the level of work they undertook; in 1999, three quarters of all security officers had only the lowest-grade qualifications, which enabled officers to be armed and deployed after only five hours of firearms training (40).

36. United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor, Executive Summary of nvestigations of police responses to the riots on 4 December 2002, 14 November 2003

37. Amnesty International, The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste: A new police service a new beginning July 2003 (AI Index: ASA 57/002/2003)

38. Ibid

39. UN Basic Principle 5. This article includes other provisions such as the obligation to: "Ensure that relatives or close friends of the injured or affected person are notified at the earliest possible moment." Yet, in Brazil for example, relatives are rarely informed of police hootings and struggle to locate loved ones.

40. Amnesty International, A New Police Service, A New Beginning, op cit

© Amnesty International, the International Action Network on Small Arms and Oxfam International, February, 2004

This paper was written by Brian Wood of Amnesty International. The text may be freely used for the purposes of campaigning, education, and research, provided that the source is acknowledged in full.

Copies are available to download from www.controlarms.org