Can the Police Shoot a Person Who Refuses to Drop a Knife?

According to the CDC, a “sharp instrument” was used in over 1,300 homicides in 2019. Knives are dangerous and police officers are justified in treating them as such. Under what circumstances may an officer shoot someone who refuses to drop a knife? The short answer is, under circumstances in which the person with the knife poses an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to an officer or someone else. That is the general standard for using deadly force established by Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985). Looking at some recent cases helps to flesh out how courts have applied Garner in cases involving knives. Supreme Court: qualified immunity applied when an officer shot a knife-wielding woman, behaving erratically, who was six feet away from another woman. In Kisela v. Hughes, __ U.S. __, 138 S.Ct. 1148 (2018) (per curiam), the Court considered a case in which officers responded to reports of a woman acting erratically with a kitchen knife, including using it to hack at a tree. They encountered one woman, Chadwick, standing in a driveway near a car, while another woman, Hughes, emerged from a nearby home carrying a knife. Hughes walked towards Chadwick and stopped six feet from her. The officers were separated from both Hughes and Chadwick by a chain-link fence. An officer ordered Hughes to drop the knife, but she didn’t. Officer Kisela then shot Hughes. Hughes survived and sued, alleging excessive force. The district court granted summary judgment to Kisela, the Ninth Circuit [...]