Lithuania proposes restoring warning shots for officers

Lithuania’s Interior Ministry is proposing to restore officers’ ability to fire warning shots and strengthen their legal protection, LRT reported.

Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas said officers who must make decisions within seconds in critical situations need clear rules on when and how they may act.

“We cannot require officers to defend people and the state and then leave them alone for years with uncertainty over whether they committed a crime while acting lawfully,” Katelynas said in a statement issued on Monday.

Current laws link the use of force and firearms to concepts such as “imminent danger” and “unavoidable necessity”. The ministry proposes removing these discretionary criteria and using a clearer danger-based standard instead.

It also wants to eliminate “unavoidability” requirements that are difficult to assess in real time and define more clearly the situations in which officers may act. At the same time, the principle of minimising harm would be explicitly established, meaning that force must be used in a way that causes the least possible harm.

Firearms would remain a last resort when a danger cannot be eliminated by other means.

Under the proposal, officers would again be allowed to fire warning shots. Lithuanian law provided for this option until 2016. A warning shot would serve as an intermediate preventive measure, alerting people to the possible use of a firearm or explosives and, where possible, helping to prevent greater harm.

BNS reported that court proceedings continued for several years in the case of police officer Darius Šerpytis, who was accused of shooting an aggressive woman with a mental disorder after she attacked him while holding a knife. The use of gas and a Taser had failed to stop her.

At the end of May, the Supreme Court of Lithuania finally acquitted Šerpytis, who had been charged with murder, exceeding his powers and abuse of office.

The Vilnius Regional Court is currently hearing the case of border guard Karolis Ilgevičius, who is charged with murder and abuse of office. He is standing trial over shooting at the wheel of a fleeing smuggler’s car and killing a driver who had disobeyed officers.