When tragedy strikes in the form of a police shooting, families typically find themselves subject to another issue: Manipulative interrogations by law enforcement. In far too many cases, police officers take advantage of the families to elicit disparaging information about the deceased for the purpose of lessening civil liability and the possibility of lawsuits.
The methodology is quite straightforward. Officers rush to interrogate families of those killed by police before they learn of the fate of their loved ones. They gather prejudicial information that could potentially be used in court to defend the officers and department.
Bruce Praet, a former police officer and co-founder of consulting group Lexipol, has been instrumental in training law enforcement on the use of this tactic. In one of his trainings, he notes that officers have “about five, 10, 30 minutes to get out there before word gets back on the street – that bad guy is either in the hospital, dead, jail, whatever.”
This method appears to be common in California and other areas of the country.
For years, law enforcement agencies across California have been trained to quickly question family members after a police killing in order to collect information that, among other things, is used to protect the involved officers and their department, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism has found.
Police and prosecutors routinely incorporate the information into disparaging accounts about the people who have been killed that help justify the killings, bolster the department’s defense against civil suits and reduce the amount of money families receive in settlements and jury verdicts, according to police reports, court records and interviews with families and their attorneys.
The Times and the Investigative Reporting Program documented 20 instances of the practice by 15 law enforcement agencies across the state since 2008. Attorneys specializing in police misconduct lawsuits say those cases are just a fraction of what they describe as a routine practice.
The story of Diana Showman presents a stark example of this method in action.
In 2015, Diana Showman’s parents sued officers from the San Jose Police Department over the death of their 19-year-old daughter.
Showman, who lived with bipolar disorder, had called 911 one morning a year earlier to say she was armed with an Uzi and pointed a black cordless drill at the officers who responded. Mistaking the tool for a gun, an officer shot her.
In their lawsuit, James Showman and his ex-wife, Victoria Caulfield-Showman, argued that officers should have done more to determine whether their daughter was armed and used their training to resolve the standoff peacefully. The lawsuit, they felt, was their only way to hold the Police Department and its officers accountable.
They may have had a persuasive case, especially in California, where large settlements in police shootings are common. But less than two hours after the shooting, two San Jose detectives interviewed Showman’s father in an interrogation room. They knew the teen was dead, but chose not to tell her father, who believed his daughter was being treated at a hospital, according to department records and interviews with Showman’s father.
They maintained the ruse even when Showman said, “I don’t even know if she’s alive,” a recording of the interview shows. They pressed him for more information about his daughter’s mental health history.
Twenty-seven minutes into the interview, Showman asked, “Is she alive?”
“I’m sorry,” a detective said. The interview ended minutes later.
Praet’s controversial guidance instructs law enforcement officials to avoid notifying family members of the deceased until they can obtain information that could be useful in the event of a lawsuit or other action against the police department.
He suggests an approach bordering on predatory when dealing with the families of victims: “Before the dust settles, I want you to send in a uniform, a detective, I don’t care, somebody out to their friends and family to find out what they’ve been up to for the last 24 hours,” he said in another training video.
This method often results in family members divulging information under false pretenses, which the department then uses to mitigate liability in legal actions. The objective is to get family members to give up negative information about the deceased to either avoid a lawsuit or lessen the amount the city will have to pay in a settlement. By finding information that can be used by the city’s lawyers to justify the shooting or argue that their death is not worth paying out certain sums of money to the families, they can shield the government from accountability.
In many of these cases, the city dredges up past drug use, mental health issues, and other problems of the deceased to bias the court against the victim in the hopes that the jury will either rule in the government’s favor or order a lower settlement.
The intentional deception employed in these interrogations seriously undermines trust between law enforcement and the public. Michael Gennaco, a consultant on police conduct, noted that “[t]he best approach is the straightforward one” and that “[i]t’s important to be straight with family members who’ve lost someone to police deadly force.”
Weaponizing a family’s shock and vulnerability to protect local governments from accountability is not only inhumane, it ensures that abuses and mishaps will continue to happen. This practice is one that should never be allowed. Police departments should put policies in place to prevent law enforcement officials from taking advantage of the families of those killed in police shootings.
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