Police-Involved Shooting Cases

2009-10-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

All too often, the truth behind police-involved shooting incidents gets clouded by public perception and biased media accounts. It is human nature to be skeptical of authority, and to many people law enforcement exemplifies what they fear most about authority. But the truth is that police shootings are almost always the result of a split-second decision made by a police officer who, in an instant, perceives that his or her life is in danger.

At Knox & Associates, we strive to show the jury exactly what really happened in the few seconds during which a shooting takes place. We paint the picture. Where were the officers standing? What could they see? Why did they perceive a threat? Why did they fire so many shots? All of these questions have answers, and it is our job to find those answers and to present them in court.

The truth gets even cloudier when so-called experts--many of whom have limited, if any, knowledge of the dynamics of police-involved shooting incidents--are willing to make claims that are clothed in Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s. To reconstruct a police-involved shooting requires two things: crime scene reconstruction experience and practical police training. Anyone who lacks either one of those traits lacks the ability to truly understand how to put the pieces back together.

At Knox & Associates, we can put the pieces back together. We can show the jury what really happened. We bring truth to light.

Physical Evidence Never Lies

2008-09-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Historically, accident and criminal investigations have been centered around the least reliable evidence available: the statements made by witnesses. While all evidence obtained in the course of an investigation is important and useful, one need only a brief experience with the task of investigating any type of accident or criminal act to learn that every witness will tell a different story. Oftentimes the differences are minor, but in some cases the discrepancies between witnesses' stories can be vast.

Things get even more interesting when physical evidence is added to the mix. What years of documenting and analyzing physical evidence will teach you is that when there are five witnesses to a crime or accident, there will be six sides to the story: the five witness accounts and the story that the physical evidence will tell.

While physical evidence never lies, poor analysis of physical evidence can be misleading. So what qualifies a person to analyze physical evidence? Two things: education and experience.

The problem with finding an expert in, for example, traffic accident reconstruction is that few people have both the practical experience and the proper education. Most traffic accident reconstructionists come from one of two common backgrounds: years of engineering education or years of practical police experience. Each background has it benefits. Engineers understand the mechanics of traffic crashes in ways that most police officers never will, but police officers gain an unprecedented amount of hands-on experience actually going to traffic crash scenes. While the engineer may be very adept at the science of traffic crashes, he may never have been to an actual crash scene. The police officer, on the other hand, may be very familiar with the traffic accident scene, but his lack of scientific education may lead him to misapply scientific principles and thus come to erroneous conclusions.

If you search deep enough, however, you will find that there are a few of us out there that have both the education and the experience. This is the level of expertise you will find at Knox & Associates.

Knox & Associates Forensic Consulting

Police-Involved Shooting Cases

Physical Evidence Never Lies