Police taught a simple rule: ‘You don’t shoot a perp in his back’

When Kalfani Turè was learning how to be a cop in Georgia nearly 20 years ago, the question of whether an officer could shoot a suspect in the back often sparked animated conversations in the police academy, he says, both within the classroom and without.

He and fellow cadets sat in lecture halls learning about the department’s liability issues, the particulars of Georgia’s use-of-force laws, and the 1985 Supreme Court decision limiting the use of lethal force on fleeing suspects only to those who “pose a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” 

“In the police academy – and I’ve attended three – all of that could become a bit dense for most to take in, so we just simplified it and said, ‘You don’t shoot a perp in his back,’” says

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