I was watching a "true crime" tv show based in a rural area. A violent criminal was holed up in an isolated cabin. The police determined the only solution was to "burn him out," so they poured gasoline into the cabin and lit it. Is this a legitimate type of use of force? Not to be a Monday morning quarterback, but I haven't heard of this tactic being used since John Wayne was a sheriff in movies.

I can't believe this is a legitimate type of use of force for LE. If their objective is to flush him out and try to take him alive, that's what tear gas is for. If he was shooting at the cops from inside the building, it would be legitimate for them to shoot back. Burning him out seems a little drastic, not only for the property destruction, but also for endangering nearby structures. How would they set the fire? They would have to use an incendiary munition of a kind used by the military, because I can't imagine anybody going right up to the building and setting it afire.

Check out the procedures used against the Branch Dividians in Waco

You search here for Christopher Dornan threads talking about "burner" devices.

In Arkansas you can be lit up by the police big time....

Then again, recently police sent an explosive-carrying robot to take out a barricaded suspect, but I believe he was actually shooting at them. Years ago, the Philly PD satchel-charged-bombed those MOVE people. Maybe it isn't so farfetched after all.

Yes they deserve to die and I hope they BURN IN HELL!

In (very) broad strokes, if deadly force is justified, then deadly force is justified. "Deadly force" doesn't just mean shooting someone, though that's often the best and/or most readily available option. This could also mean running them over with a vehicle, clubbing them in the head with a blunt object, choking them to death, etc. Depends on the circumstances, and what options are available to the officer.

However, any use of force - including deadly force - has to be objectively reasonable. While I don't know the exact details of this case you mentioned, I suppose it's possible that there's a scenario out there where burning down a house to apply deadly force could be a reasonable option, but it's not going to be a common scenario. Fire is inherently hard to control.

There are other examples of law enforcement officers having to think outside the box when it comes to using deadly force. A good example was the 2016 Dallas shooter that murdered five police officers before holing up in an office building at the end of a narrow hallway. After trying to deal with the barricaded suspect, and the SWAT team determining that there was no way to safely handle it otherwise, they strapped C4 to a bomb squad robot, wheeled it down the hall to him, and blew him up.

Or the viral dash cam video from a few years back with the bad guy cranking rifle rounds down a residential street, and while other officers are out on foot taking cover and trying to line up shots, one of the responding officers arriving on scene just floors it and drives his patrol car into the shooter and through a brick wall, ending the shootout with a quick-thinking but somewhat unconventional application of deadly force.

On the other hand, the 1985 decision by Philadelphia PD to drop bombs from a helicopter onto a house with barricaded subjects inside was determined to be excessive force.

So, it depends.

A quick Google suggest that you may be referring to the Christopher Dorner case? Disgraced former LAPD officer who went on a killing rampage in San Bernardino several years ago, resulting in a massive weeklong manhunt, and ending when he was found barricaded in a cabin and engaged in a shootout before dying when the cabin burned down.

If so, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office stated they didn't intentionally burn down the cabin. They used tear gas cannisters to attempt to drive him out, and the cabin caught fire in the process due to the tear gas cannisters' pyrotechnics. While I assume they would have known there was a fire risk associated with using that tear gas, the Sheriff's Office claims that it wasn't used specifically to burn the cabin down as a means to kill him.

Depends. Smoke him out, use tear gas.

If you have to kill him and blowing him up safely is the best recourse, then blow him up.


This is what was going to be done to Jason Derbin's killer. He kept shooting the drones and the sniper missed him. Approval was gotten to strap a bomb to the robot and send it in to blow him up. He shot himself in the head before he could be blown up.

Although I no longer recall the specifics because I don’t teach the subject any longer, courts (the Supreme Court?) have ruled that there’s no such thing as “too much” deadly force by the police if deadly force is justified. It therefore shouldn’t matter what the type of force was. But critics of the police in general and any sort of force at all, but specifically deadly force, will always find something to criticize.

“Why didn’t you shoot him in the leg?”
“Why did you shoot him so many times?” (“Because that’s all the ammo we had.”)
Etc.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
On the other hand, the 1985 decision by Philadelphia PD to drop bombs from a helicopter onto a house with barricaded subjects inside was determined to be excessive force.

The good old days, where a "small incendiary device = a pound brick of C4.
To give the Philly PD their due credit, they did not drop it from a helicopter, they used the helicopter to set down officers on the roof who chopped a hole in the roof and dropped a "small incendiary device" into the building and then hauled them off.

IIRC, the entire city block ended up burning down. It did end the MOVE movement for quite a number of years.

That Use-of-Force Continuum can sure be confusing sometimes. Burn 'em out! Sounds like some serious tort-claims action at the very least!

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/art.../use-force-continuum

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
A quick Google suggest that you may be referring to the Christopher Dorner case? Disgraced former LAPD officer who went on a killing rampage in San Bernardino several years ago, resulting in a massive weeklong manhunt, and ending when he was found barricaded in a cabin and engaged in a shootout before dying when the cabin burned down.

If so, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office stated they didn't intentionally burn down the cabin. They used tear gas cannisters to attempt to drive him out, and the cabin caught fire in the process due to the tear gas cannisters' pyrotechnics. While I assume they would have known there was a fire risk associated with using that tear gas, the Sheriff's Office claims that it wasn't used specifically to burn the cabin down as a means to kill him.

A firearms instructor of mine was staged at the scene about a mile away from the cabin when the order came for the first round of tear gas. He was in charge of the San Bernardino Fire response in case they were needed, owing to the unpredictable action of Dorner.

The first tear gas was ineffective and didn't move Dorner from the cabin. I think it was the difference between CS and CN, or something like that.

The LEO call went out for burner gas and this instructor adamantly said that it was not introduced to start a fire and burn Dorner. Instead, burner was the term used when they needed a more effective or different tear gas that went off at a higher temp/flash than the first gas.

He admitted the radio calls sounded bad to use the word burner but insisted the term had been around a long time, well before Dorner.

Mid 1970’s, Compton CA, the SLA decided to take on LAPD with automatic weapons from a house. The leader was known as “Cinque”. Well, LAPD poured so many “Salazar Rounds” and other tear gas projectiles into the house that it caught fire, incinerating all of the recalcitrant occupants. The event became known in LAPD lore as the Cinque BBQ.

Regarding the Salazar Rounds, they are actually 37mm Tru Flight teargas rounds. They earned the nickname after LASD put one through the head of Mr. Salazar, a newspaper reporter, during an earlier, unrelated insurrection.

Deadly force can be all kinds. Philadelphia Police bombed a house that took out a lot more than the house that they initially bombed.

https://www.vox.com/the-highli...ia-bombing-1985-move

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
Deadly force can be all kinds. Philadelphia Police bombed a house that took out a lot more than the house that they initially bombed.

... and then lost a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the survivors after the jury determined that was excessive force and an unreasonable seizure. Followed by losing another lawsuit filed by the neighbors whose homes were also destroyed by the resulting fire that ended up engulfing 61 neighboring homes.

All told, Philly ended up shelling out about $15 million in court judgements.

The city's own independent investigatory commission deemed this operation to be "reckless", "excessive", "unreasonable", and "unconscionable" in its final report.

So there are limits.

Although I agree that the Philadelphia action was use of inappropriate force, in considering the general topic, we shouldn’t forget that court decisions are not always logical or just. Very often, too, the defendants simply give in for public relations or even financial reasons, and sometimes that’s at the direction of the insurance company, not because their people were actually guilty of anything.

Fair point.

Okay, makes sense. It was the Dorner case. Apparently there was confusion on the part of the "journalists" concerning police terminology. I remember all of the cases referenced, I just couldn't remember a case where fire was intentionally used to neutralize a suspect. I am familiar with deadly force and the use of force continuum, but as a corrections officer we very rarely used firearms (except on escape attempts) but we did use a lot of chemical weapons. I kept picturing Stumpy in a John Wayne movie tossing dynamite into the church. Now where are those deputies using a Winchester as a crutch?