Police are supposed to shoot at people only to save themselves or someone else from serious harm. The rules on when not to shoot are, by necessity, more vague. However, national guidelines have long been established:

Don't shoot at or from moving cars. It almost never works and is dangerous to bystanders. Don't shoot at petty criminals or suspects who are running away; they pose no real threat. Don't shoot if you don't have a target and a clear line of sight. And never shoot when innocent people might be imperiled.

In Miami, those guidelines were repeatedly ignored.

At the same time, in more than half the cases reviewed by The Herald, the shootings appeared to be unavoidable.

In dozens of unexpected, life-and-death confrontations, it is difficult to second-guess officers' decisions to pull the trigger. Usually there is no question that officers were right to intervene. Almost always, the intended targets were committing crimes and trying to get away.

At issue is whether the officers' decisions to shoot were reasonable, or whether they brazenly and recklessly sent bullets flying, then were not held accountable for mistakes - even when other lives were put at risk.

PROBLEMS OVERLOOKED
Shootings should have sent warning signals

The Herald review shows that the department overlooked problems in suspect shootings for years - shootings that should have sent out warning signals that something had gone awry:

* In 1990, Officer Carl Seals, in his sixth career shooting, fired six shots and hit 14-year-old Xavier Roberts' arm while the boy was running away with a bag of marijuana.

According to Seals, the boy ignored an order to stop and reached for his waistband. Seals fired. Then Roberts threw a plastic bag of pot over a fence and kept running. Seals fired again.

There was no evidence that Roberts had a gun when he was shot. Furthermore, the officer said he didn't actually see a gun in the boy's hand when he fired.

The lead homicide investigator later criticized the shooting in court proceedings.

"I have a couple problems with it being justified, in my eyes, which is probably going to get me in trouble, " Sgt. Thomas Watterson said in depositions. Watterson, since retired, said he saw no threat when Seals fired the second round of shots at the fleeing suspect.

"I have a problem with the additional rounds myself, " Watterson said.

The Firearms Review Board disagreed. Seals stayed on the streets. Years later, he was forced to resign after he used a controversial choke hold that put a suspect in a permanent coma. That case cost the city $7.5 million in a settlement with the family.

* Again, in 1990, officers Juan Mendez and Jose Quintero fired at an armed security guard in a case of mistaken identity. Just after midnight that night, a call went out that an officer had been shot at by a robbery suspect.

The officers ended up searching in a railroad yard, looking for a black man with a handgun. They spotted Gabriel Castellon - a white Hispanic holding a shotgun - and ordered him to halt. Castellon, worried because he was in the country illegally, turned and ran instead, still holding the shotgun. Mendez and Quintero fired, shooting him once in the back.

The real robbery suspect was never caught. A Miami-Dade civil jury ruled that the police were negligent, and awarded Castellon $550,000 - more than his lawyers requested. A judge later knocked the award down to $125,000 because of Castellon's immigration status.

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