Officers have blown out their own windshields at least six times. They have shot their own dashboards, their own car doors. At least three times, they have even shot at each other by mistake.

"In more than 90 percent of the projectiles fired by the Miami Police Department, the projectiles were trucking around the countryside and looking for somebody to hit, " retired Lt. John Campbell said during a deposition in a lawsuit against the city. He added that he repeatedly questioned the department's tolerant attitude. "I have a problem with that."

* Internal affairs and homicide investigators, in two dozen cases, ignored or discounted contradictions in officers' accounts or physical evidence that suggested the shootings could not have happened as officers claimed.

Sometimes, officers claimed the suspects had fired first or threatened them with guns, but bullet casings weren't in the right places and no fingerprints were found on the suspects' alleged guns.

* Miami officers almost never face discipline for shooting at suspects, even in cases where policy is apparently violated. Officers were cleared in 91 percent of deadly-force cases, statistics compiled by The Herald show. No officer was fired and just 14 have been issued reprimands. In five of those cases, that punishment was later reversed.

* Miami has 15 officers who have had four or more career shootings. One Miami officer has shot at seven people on the job, killing four - the last a skinny 19-year-old without a gun, who was shot as he jumped over a fence and tried to pull up his pants. Another officer shot at six people and killed two.

* Department leaders at times disregarded suggestions of reform. Some department commanders, alarmed at what seemed to be instances of wild gunplay, pushed to retrain officers who were involved in suspect shootings.

"I was unhappy personally, professionally with the decision-making in some of the shootings that I was seeing, " said Campbell, a now retired homicide commander, who suggested sending training officers to shooting scenes so mistakes wouldn't be repeated.

"I was told not to do that anymore, " Campbell said. The fear: "Our training officers would become witnesses against the city."

POLICE DEBATED ISSUE
Each shooting justified, according to Miami chief

The apparent lack of control has been a point of internal debate for years, with reform initiatives going unheeded for fear of civil lawsuits and the wrath of the police union, according to Campbell, a former training supervisor.

Martinez said that if there was a pattern of suspect shootings, it went unnoticed.

"Obviously, in hindsight, you wish you would have asked more questions, but I can't remember a case where I was uncomfortable with my finding at the time, " Martinez said. "Maybe we didn't look hard enough at the whole picture. Maybe we were wrong just looking at them case by case. Maybe we didn't do a good enough job looking at how many were the same kinds of shootings.

"But when you look at each individual shooting, with the information we had at that time, it was justified."

Martinez said the department has since tightened its shooting policy and is working to improve its internal investigations.

"We have come a long way from where we were before, " he said.

The Herald evaluated all intentional shootings, hits and misses, because all are potentially deadly - depending only on marksmanship and luck. As virtually all departments do, Miami trains officers to shoot at the middle of the torso, because those shots have the best chance of hitting their mark and stopping the person. Warning shots are not allowed.

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.repliedToText@

@Nyx.replyAnswerText@

Reply to this Comment @Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@