Recent police shootings and expanded MO gun laws cause officers to clarify use of force practices

In the past week, two officer involved shootings have occurred, re-igniting tensions between law enforcement and citizens that haven’t yet healed.

In Tulsa, Terence Crutcher is dead after an officer spotted him in the road with an SUV running nearby. The officer was not wearing a body camera, but claimed Crutcher had his hands up and moved toward his car while she told him to stop.

Keith Lamont Scott is dead in Charlotte, N.C. after an officer claimed Scott had a gun and refused to drop it. Scott was not the subject of any investigation, and family said he was reading a book, not holding a gun. No evidence of the book has been recovered.

These incidents involving these two men, who were both African-American, have inflamed already tense relations between law enforcement and the citizens they’re sworn to protect.

With gun laws in Missouri set to expand slightly in the coming months, including more protection for gun owners, ABC17 News spoke with law enforcement about the law and how it might impact people across the state.

Officer Jeff Forck, the Columbia Police Department SWAT and CNT Training Coordinator, said Wednesday that anytime a new law is passed, there’s some fear about what’s going to take place but he said law enforcement won’t be acting differently because they already assume most people have a gun.

“Any call that we go to there’s a gun there, at least ours, if not somebody else’s,” he said. “We want to make sure that anytime we come in contact with gun holders, we want compliance. Tell us that you have a firearm with you and we’re not going to overact and do anything crazy or stupid.”

Both situations involving Crutcher and Scott took place quickly and in a high stress situation. Forck said training for those situations happens early and often for Columbia police.

“We do use of force training exercises to try to get in that high stress situation so that the first time they encounter it is not when it occurs on the road,” he said.

Witnesses in Charlotte saw Scott armed with a gun, not a book before he was shot. According to police, Scott would not lower the weapon when police asked him to. Forck said even before the gun laws expand in Missouri, they ask for compliance to officer’s requests.

“We want to make sure the weapon is put down or dropped immediately when we get there, hands are completely visible and we’ll act accordingly to that,” he said.