We know that the FBI does not report all civilian legal defensive homicides (CLDHs) by citizens by a significant factor. We know the FBI UCR reports a shooting death by a citizen as a DGU only if there is no question at the time of the initial investigation by police that the shooting is justified. By contrast police shooting homicides tend to be reported as justified unless an initial investigation has significant evidence to the contrary. We can understand why the FBI UCR contains so low a count in self-defense homicides by examining the FBI UCR Handbook which gives guidance on reporting for the annual UCR.
On the UCR Handbook (linked from: http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf) page number 17, the following note is given: NOTE: Justifiable homicide, by definition, occurs in conjunction with other offenses. Therefore, the crime being committed when the justifiable homicide took place must be reported as a separate offense. Reporting agencies should take care to ensure that they do not classify killing as justifiable or excusable solely on the claims of self-defense or on the action of a coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court. The Handbook clearly establishes a criteria for justified homicide that doesn't match the usual notions of self-defense -- in fact, it obviously promotes a policy of police determining whether a homicide is justified notwithstanding findings by a "coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court". Obviously, a claim of self-defense doesn't mean the homicide is justified. Just as obviously the FBI and local police authorities are too busy with real police work to go back to correct reporting the classification of homicides weeks, months and even years later based on the results in courts or other extended evaluations of the circumstances. The real question to those of us not enthralled by the bureaucracy (and the desire to defend their work) is "what are the annual numbers of homicides that comport to our notions of self-defense -- especially those from legal defensive shootings?" We have a hint of the scope of this under-reporting from Time magazine which published the article "7 Deadly Days" July 17, 1989 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958158,00.html). That article reported 199 murders (charges since trials had not yet been held) and 14 civilian legal defensive homicides (CLDHs) or 6.6% of gun homicides for the week of 1-7 May 1989. A year later, Time followed-up their report with the article "Death by Gun: One Year Later", May 14, 1990 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970085,00.html), to see the results from trials on the charged cases. They reported that there were now 28 CLDHs (13.1% of gun homicides), an increase of 100% on the original report with at least 43 cases not yet adjudicated by the one-year later follow-up. With the attitude presented in the UCR Handbook we see why the FBI UCR count of justified homicides is such a small fraction of CLDHs as evaluated by the people or other non-police agents. Phil _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
