POLICE KILLINGS OF 2 AIM SCRUTINY AT DEADLY FORCE

Shoot only to save yourself or someone else from immediate harm.

Police agencies may cast their deadly-force policies in other words, but it
comes out essentially the same.

Two officers made the decision last week in Berkeley, firing pistols at a
car their bosses say was menacing their lives, with its rear end pinned
under another vehicle and its drive wheels spinning in their direction.

The driver, wanted for suspicion of dealing drugs, and his passenger,
described by police as simply being in the way, both died. Civil rights
activists demanded answers. Investigators provided them slowly. It took two
days to tell the men had no guns. There is still no official count of the
number of shots.

The FBI has joined the investigation.

The pivot of the controversy - the rule on use of force - is based on the
1985 U.S. Supreme Court case of Tennessee vs. Garner.

A Memphis police officer shot and killed a teen-age boy, who had ignored an
order to stop and fled over a fence at night in the back yard of a house he
was suspected of burglarizing. The officer was "reasonably sure" the suspect
was unarmed.

The Tennessee state courts said the officer's conduct was constitutional.
But the Supreme Court ruled it was a violation of his rights to use deadly
force against an apparently unarmed, fleeing suspect.

Police may shoot, the high court held, only with probable cause to believe
the suspect would cause death or serious injury to the officer or someone
else.

The debate over what happened at a Jack in the Box restaurant parking lot in
Berkeley on Monday afternoon still rages. Was Earl Murray, 36, of
Northwoods, an unarmed fleeing suspect or a deadly threat behind the wheel
of a lurching 3,000-pound Ford Escort?

No matter how that is answered, there will remain a question of the death of
Ronald Beasley, also 36, of St. Louis, who was neither a suspect in the
crime nor the driver of the "weapon."

The two officers who fired shots were from different agencies and playing by
differently worded rules.

One was a Dellwood detective, operating as part of a St. Louis County
multiagency drug task force. Officials said its members follow the St. Louis
County rule. It says not to shoot at a car "unless the occupant(s) of the
vehicle represents a direct and immediate threat to the life or safety of
the police officer or an innocent person, and then only as a last resort."

The other was a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent, constrained
by slightly different words that say not to fire on a car unless there is a
"a reasonable belief that the subject(s) poses an imminent danger of death
or serious physical injury to the (officer) or another; and the public
safety benefits of using such force outweigh the risks to the safety of the
(officer) or other persons."

Other departments have similar policies. St. Louis police are taught not to
fire at a moving vehicle - or at a suspect inside - but the rules say "that
in exceptional circumstances, violations Š may be justified by necessity.
Every use of deadly force will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to
determine reasonableness of the officer's action."

The Missouri Highway Patrol policy seemed to anticipate the Berkeley
circumstances in limiting gunfire at cars: "The officer will carefully weigh
the immediate need for such action against the potential danger to any
innocent persons in the area, including any occupants of the suspect's
vehicle who are not engaged in criminal or threatening behavior.
Circumstances dictate the action to be taken."

Patrol Sgt. Terry St. Clair said such decisions are difficult to make in a
matter of seconds. For that reason, he said, most troopers have that
particular policy memorized.

"If you're in a shooting situation, you react automatically, so you have to
know. If the car is going to run over me, and I have no place to go, you
shoot at the car. If he gets hit, then you pray that he takes his foot off
the accelerator," St. Clair said.

Dellwood Police Chief Dan Chapman, who employs one of the officers involved
last week, said, "The car is like a 3,000-pound bullet coming at you."

He continued: "The holes in the vehicle are straight on in the windshield.
It's not like the officers were on the side or away from the vehicle. If
both of those officers would have been run over, we might have two dead
officers. It's very unfortunate for everyone involved."

The shootings in Berkeley occurred after officers tried to arrest Murray in
his car. They said he threw it in reverse, slamming into an undercover
police sport utility vehicle behind it and getting caught under the larger
vehicle's bumper. When Murray tried to accelerate forward, his car's tires
spun, and the car pivoted in the officer's direction and lurched forward,
police said. The officers, reported to be in the path of a car about to
break loose in their direction, fired in what they insist was self-defense.

Critics ask why they didn't just step aside, let the men flee and capture
them later. The dead men's families charge that at least 20 shots were
fired.

Lt. Tom Jackson, deputy commander of the county police drug squad, said:
"(The car) was turned directly towards them. That's where he was going to
escape. It was obvious to everyone he was going to go right through them.
What they (the officers) said was that it lurched forward. In that instant,
they thought, 'This is it.'"

Skeptics ask other questions. What if Murray's passenger had been a child?
Why not pick a less-congested site for an arrest than a fast-food restaurant
beside busy Interstate 70 during the afternoon traffic rush? How many shots
were enough?

"I can't second-guess what these guys would have done in a different
situation," Jackson said. "You could 'what if' it to death."

Zaki Baruti, co-chairman of a group called The Coalition Against Police
Crimes and Repression, said that "without a doubt," he believes police used
excessive force.

"I think that this is a reflection of a new form of lynching syndrome that
is taking place in America," he said. "In the early 20th century, you had
lynchings taking place in the South. Instead of people in white robes in the
past, you have people in blue uniforms that have been given a license."

Solomon Rooks, president of Congress of Racial Equality and himself a
convicted former drug dealer, said police are relying on the law to get away
with murder. "They shot to kill," he said. "That's a gangster's hit."

Narcotics arrests can prove dangerous for suspects and police alike.

For example, in 1994, an Illinois state trooper killed drug suspect Brandon
K. McKenzie, 20, of South Roxana, while trading shots in the parking lot of
a McDonald's restaurant in Pontoon Beach. Nobody else was hurt.

Three years later, St. Louis County undercover police detective Willie Neal
Jr., 29, died at a liquor store parking lot in St. Louis when shots were
exchanged in a drug arrest. He was accidentally killed by his partner.