AZMEX POLICY 3 7-3-14
Note: Run away? "such as seeking cover or distancing themselves from the immediate area of danger."
Note: video at link
Border Patrol issues new guidelines for deadly force
Special report
Force at the border
By Bob Ortega and Rob O'Dell
The Republic | azcentral
Fri Mar 7, 2014 1:24 PM
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher issued new orders Friday telling agents not to place themselves in front of moving vehicles and to avoid situations in which they have no alternative to using deadly force against rock throwers.
The Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection also publicly released the full text of their use-of-force policies. The agencies have been under growing public pressure to release their policies and to address a lack of transparency and accountability in cases in which agents' use of force seemed questionable.
Read the directive here.
Fisher's directive said agents should only use deadly force when "the totality of the circumstances" are such that the force used against them poses imminent danger of death or serious injury to them or another person.
"Agents should not place themselves in the path of a moving vehicle or use their body to block a vehicle's path," he wrote. In rock-throwing incidents, "Agents should avoid placing themselves in positions where they have no alternative to using deadly force ... [and] should obtain a tactical advantage in these situations, such as seeking cover or distancing themselves from the immediate area of danger."
The Arizona Republic reported in December that Border Patrol agents and CBP officers have been involved in at least 44 use-of-force deaths since 2005. Those include eight incidents in which agents fired across the border into Mexico and killed rock throwers. In October 2012, an agent firing through the border fence into Nogales, Mexico, shot teenager Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez ten times in the back and head.
Special report: borderforce.azcentral.com
They also include a highly-publicized case in San Diego in September 2012 in which a Border Patrol agent shot to death Valeria Tachiquin Alvarado, a U.S. citizen, as she was trying to drive away in her car. In a lawsuit, Tachiquin Alvarado's family have charged that the agent placed himself in front of the vehicle.
Fisher noted in his directive that since 2010, agents have been assaulted with rocks 1,713 times. Some agents have been seriously injured, but none have been killed in rocking assaults.
END
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