More than three years after police on Miami Beach shot more than a 100 rounds into a car driven by Raymond Herisse during a busy Memorial Day weekend because they felt he was trying to run an officer over, the Miami Beach Police Department has enacted a new policy under Chief Dan Oates.
The policy is pretty simple:
1. If a car is driving at an officer, the officer must get out of the way.
2. Under most circumstances, officers are now forbidden from shooting at moving cars.
"Bullets fired at a moving vehicle are extremely unlikely to disable or stop the vehicle," reads the new policy.
The order also notes that shooting a driver of a vehicle may have unintended consequences, like the drive losing control of the car and crashing, causing more damage. Though, the report also noted that it's extremely difficult to actually shoot someone in a moving car anyway.
Officers can now only shoot at a moving car if the driver or someone in the car presents a threat of deadly force. Basically, someone in the car has to be shooting out the window or something like that.
In the Herisse case back in 2011, police claimed that Herisse tried to run over several officers and used that as justification for shooting more than 100 bullets at his car on Washington Avenue. A gun was later found in the backseat of Herisse's car, but there was never any evidence that he shot at police.
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