US Border Protection agents should not be permitted to fire shots at a moving vehicle "unless vehicle occupants are attempting to use deadly force" against them. Nor should they be allowed to shoot at people throwing rocks or other objects on the Mexican side of the border if those objects are not capable of causing them "serious physical injury or death." Agents should be trained, rather, when faced with such situations, to "get out of the way." These are among the "significant change[s]" recommended by a critical internal report released on Friday on the use of lethal force by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. That such obvious, commonsense policies were not already “standard operating procedure” at CBP is, to say the least, concerning.
But it's not entirely surprising. CBP agents have killed at least nine people under questionable circumstances in the past four years. In some cases, agents said they were pelted with rocks before opening fire. In others, according to reports, agents deliberately stepped into the path of moving cars to justify shooting at drivers. One man, Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, was beaten and electro-shocked to death by border agents in 2010, while bystanders watched and filmed. The high number of fatalities, plus the failure to criminally prosecute a single agent, lends credence to the concerns of a group of US lawmakers who wrote the Department of Homeland Security in 2012 to express alarm about a “larger cultural problem" at CBP.
The CBP commissioned the report released last week from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a police practices consultancy group, but resisted making it public until months of public pressure, including Freedom of Information Act requests and a civil lawsuit, finally forced the agency's hand. PERF investigators reviewed 67 case files related to the use of deadly force by CBP agents between January 2010 and October 2012. They found serious deficiencies with CBP's policies and practices. “Too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force,” the report says. They also found a “lack of diligence" in some agency investigations into its use of force, and added that CPB's “’no harm/no foul’ practice can lead to tacit approval of bad practices.”
CBP has incorporated the PERF recommendations in a revised use-of-force policy handbook also released on Friday. This is a positive step. But CBP's “larger cultural problem” cannot be addressed simply on paper. CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowski committed Friday to revamping officer basic training curriculum in line with the new policies. This is essential. He should also ensure that when CBP agents – who have thousands of day-to-day interactions with border residents and border crossers – step out of line, they are held accountable for their actions, including the many other types of abuse that can occur alongside the egregious misuse of deadly force.
