[P]olice officers have been…using mug shots of black suspects for target practice in Florida. The images used by North Miami Beach Police were discovered by a female soldier who used the firing range after a police training session…Police Chief J Scott Dennis said that his officers had used poor judgment but denied racial profiling.He told NBC that using real suspect images was an important part of training for his sniper team and that his officers had not violated any policies.
“There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this,” he said.
A police spokeswoman added on Friday that officers use targets of all races and genders in their training sessions.
Embarrassing. A public relations nightmare for the department. But was using the mugshots unethical? Why?
Let’s vote:
Ethics Alarms 
Yes it’s unethical. It’s only appropriate to display a picture of whatever currently embodies our real enemy. But even then simple silhouettes are appropriate.
If an image must be used, King George III is acceptable.
But silhouettes are the way to go.
A silhouette with a turban and an AK? If the idea is to develop marksmanship, then the standard range target would be far better as it allows for sight picture adjustment. If you’re talking about Hitchcock-like silhouettes they are fun but silly.
Yep.
The silhouettes are great for reactive marksmanship training. But for bare bones rote marksmanship?
A black circle.
They are not training to go to the national rifle championships but to ID and fatally shoot individuals. This was not for the beat cops but for the departments snipers. Placing the point of aim on a face is not the same as shooting a bulls-eye on known distance marksmanship course.
Yeah, if there is a current targeted person that a sniper is specifically assigned to kill, they study the hell out of that person. But that is, I’m comfortable saying, the realm of military and black ops style killing.
I’m not aware of too many police snipers who have specific hits assigned to them.
You’ll note, from my very first comment, that I have no issue firing at images of actual people. It just depends on the image selected. These images? Nope. I noted what images I’d consider acceptable to shoot at. So you won’t undermine the argument from that angle.
Diversity of faces, features, position all matter, it has to be trained. You can pull the trigger all day on black or King George III but the day will come when the face that appears in the lens will a real person and with everything else that will be going on at that moment the man on the trigger needs every advantage, any hesitation can result in failure.
“the day will come when the face that appears in the lens will a real person and with everything else that will be going on at that moment the man on the trigger needs every advantage, any hesitation can result in failure.”
So true, Steve! The more familiar the face — pre-approved and practiced for the occasion — the shorter the hesitation.
An ethics alarm just has to sound here:
1. It’s a Golden Rule breach. how would you like knowing the police, or anyone, is using your face for target practice? The definition of creepy.
2. You can’t do things as a professional that will destroy public trust if discovered. An unethical risk.
3. I don’t know if this really would make a cop quicker to see a threat from a black man, and I think the leadership needs to make sure they don’t find out.
4. Is it racist? No. Is it a symptom of possible racism? Yes.
5. The department leadership should be disciplined, not the officers.
Does your analysis change if instead of suspect mugshots, they are the incarceration photos of convicted felons? How about death row felons? Or in your opinion is it completely unethical, even in the exception I made in my first comment?
Appearance of impropriety unless it is unequivocal and unambiguous why the faces are being used: Hitler, Bin Laden, Daumer, Stalin…Ok. We get it.
None of the above. Silhouettes are fine and do well for marksmanship training but scoping and shooting real images of people is a legitimate course of fire as well. Is it militaristic? Sure, but given the primary responsibilities of snipers it is not unethical. Pulling the trigger on someone you recognize as an individual human being is a standard that anyone utilizing high powered optics should be doing. Using mug shots is not necessary and likely came about due to laziness, pulling from locally available individuals and printing them out, so I see that as unethical. They failed in not insuring to keep the practice quite thus building mistrust with the public, sloppy, unethical. The soldier should have taken the issue up with the police an gotten an explanation prior to going public, sure she may have been upset her brothers mug shot from 15 years ago was one that was found but as a sergeant I would expect a more disciplined and tactful response so she is unethical as well.
I would definitely worry that it desensitizes officers, AND I would add another reason it’s unethical: it contributes to an organizational culture of “us vs. them”, rather than being a part of the community.
Good answer.
Bad answer, these were the police snipers, their primary job is to spot, id and engage dangerous people, not issue tickets. Part of the problem of utilizing SWAT for normal policing is that the training required does dehumanize those your expected to aggressively engage. When utilized properly, when direct action is required or expected then things generally work out well, bad guys neutralized.
Except these weren’t even current mugshots, Steve. If they were legitimately hunting specific dangerous individuals, that’s something else entirely, and unrelated to the episode.
What if for some reason the Ferguson PD consistently used an image that looked almost exactly like Michael Brown for practice? Even their regular beat cops…
then they would be idiots
Good reason not to use anything or anyone that specific.
Would it change a grand jury’s opinion?
Might.
It has nothing to do with current mug shots, it has to do with putting rounds in human faces, in a human face that you can see an expression on, see the color of their eyes and pull the trigger.
Then you don’t use African Americans, real people, live people, or recognizable people.
the diversity is needed, some use screen shots from extras in movies, others use pictures from public cameras, some are generated based on composites and others use actual models who have been hired specifically to make targets. The last is ethical but least efficient.
It is even MORE important that SWAT not dehumanize potential suspects, especially with the growing use of SWAT teams for everyday busts. At the end of the day, they are police, not soldiers, and these people are suspects and not enemy combatants.
“growing use of SWAT teams for everyday busts” That is exactly the problem, SWAT is there for when situations are at there worst and that is what they need to train for, for killing bodies.
Even worse, to me, was the “unconventional threat” targets that used pictures of pregnant women, old people, kids, etc.
The SWAT team in San Antonio, Texas was severely chastised a number of years ago, and numerous replacements trained for the offending officers when most, if not all, of the members of the team showed up wearing SS Lightning Bolt tattoos on their forearms. I’m sorry, I prefer my cops to be COPS, not soldiers and certainly not assault troops. If we have gotten to a point that we need Marines and SEALS patrolling our streets, we are in trouble.
I have no problem with police using mug shots of criminals as targets. Where’s the “us vs them” worry when the “them” are the enemies of society? If you want to try and add diversity, racial sensitivity and political correctness (the usual hogwash) to the process, then the entire issue becomes downright arcane. I’m sorry that so many young black men are wanted or convicted criminals, but that’s the reality. You can’t blame the police for that… at least, with justice.
I’m wondering why the gender of the soldier was newsworthy.
The use of photo images of actual identifiable, (especially local) individuals as sniper targets is unethical, not to mention unheard-of in my experience. It is lazy and unprofessional as well. I am speaking as a law enforcement trainer and former Marksman (we didn’t use the tem “sniper” back in those days). I have shot literally hundreds of photo-image targets, and none were of individuals I could have identified on the street (novelty targets like OBL, Hitler, et al excepted). One alternative is, as mentioned, using commercially available photo-image targets, and another is using agency-generated images of digitally distorted photos or near photo-quality digital images of faces, from various view angles. All the shooter needs is a recognizable face so the facial features can be utilized to make effective shot placement. Just using an office copier, the contrast of images can be varied to make this process more or less difficult, as the training scenario requires. Just shooting at a frontal face photo (e.g.mug shot) is no real challenge within the range of a precision shooter’s marksmanship ability.(Most police sniper shots -95%- are under 100 yards; about 50 yards is average.) Heck, I’ve even made 3-D face targets using paper mache, cast in old Halloween masks, to demonstrate how different light levels and angles change what the shooter sees. I know all this may sound morbid to the uninitiated, but we’re talking about training for absolute precision which requires uncommon mastery of self and weapon.
Using those mug shots was just asking for trouble that police don’t need at any time, but especially now.
If they wanted to use realistic faces, why didn’t they just whip up some composites using FACES™ and print those out life-sized? That way, you can vary head shape/size, gender, hairstyle, glasses/no glasses, tattoos, and have a big representative group of people to practice on.