Distance, Cover, and Time

Distance changes what can happen next. It can create time, preserve options, or disappear almost instantly. In edged-weapon encounters, the important question is not simply how many feet separate a person from an officer, but what that distance means in context.

Distance is often discussed as though it were a threshold: close enough to be dangerous, far enough to be safe.

Real encounters are more complicated.

A person with an edged weapon may be several feet from an officer but only a step from a civilian. A physical barrier may create meaningful separation even at close range. An officer may have room to move, or may be confined by a wall, vehicle, doorway, crowd, or other obstacle.

Distance also changes over time. A contained encounter can remain relatively stable for minutes, then change within seconds.

For that reason, EWRL treats distance as part of a broader question:

What did the positioning of the people, weapon, obstacles, and available space allow—or prevent—at that moment?

Where it fits in the incident lifecycle

Distance, cover, and time become especially important as officers arrive and the encounter begins to develop.

Pre-Incident & Dispatch Callers may describe where a person is located, whether anyone else is nearby, whether the person is moving, and whether barriers or confined spaces are involved. That information can influence how officers approach the scene.

Arrival & Approach Initial positioning can affect what officers see, how much time they have to assess the situation, and whether they can establish separation from the subject or other people.

Encounter & Intervention Distance may expand or contract as the subject, officers, and civilians move. Cover, barriers, containment, and available escape routes can affect whether officers can maintain time and separation.

Post-Incident & Analysis Later review often reduces a dynamic encounter to a single number—such as the estimated distance at firearm discharge. That measurement can be useful, but it should not replace the full geometry and sequence of the encounter.

What to know

1. Distance is relational

There is rarely just one relevant distance.

An edged-weapon encounter may involve:

• subject to officer;
• subject to civilian;
• subject to intended victim;
• subject to doorway or exit;
• subject to dropped or accessible weapon;
• officer to available cover; and
• officer to other officers or intervention resources.

A person can therefore be relatively far from one officer while presenting an immediate risk to someone else.

When possible, distance should be described as distance between whom or what, rather than as an isolated number.

2. There is no universal “safe distance”

Police training sometimes uses distance-based exercises to demonstrate how quickly a person can close space.

Those exercises can illustrate a real problem: movement can occur faster than an observer may expect.

They do not create a universal distance at which an edged weapon automatically becomes an imminent threat or deadly force becomes justified.

There is no constitutional “21-foot rule,” and a distance measurement should not be treated as a substitute for examining behaviour, movement, obstacles, third-party risk, and the surrounding circumstances.

3. Cover can create time

Cover is often discussed in terms of protection from firearms, but physical barriers can also matter in edged-weapon encounters.

A vehicle, wall, locked door, fence, substantial piece of furniture, or other obstacle may:

• slow physical access;
• preserve separation;
• protect officers or civilians;
• allow additional communication;
• create time for additional resources to arrive; or
• provide an opportunity to reassess.

Not every barrier is reliable, and not every scene permits officers to remain behind one.

The useful question is whether a particular object or position actually changed the person’s ability to reach someone.

4. Time is a tactical resource

When a scene is stable enough to permit it, additional time can expand the available options.

Time may allow officers to:

• gather better information;
• move civilians;
• establish containment;
• reposition;
• coordinate roles;
• request specialized resources;
• stage less-lethal options;
• change communication strategies; or
• simply observe whether the threat is changing.

That does not mean waiting is always safer.

Time is useful only when the existing conditions can be maintained. If a person is actively attacking someone, rapidly advancing, entering an occupied space, or gaining access to another weapon, delay may increase rather than reduce risk.

5. Officers are generally not required to retreat—but that does not end the analysis

Federal constitutional law does not establish a general rule requiring officers to retreat from a threatening person before using force.

That principle does not mean positioning is irrelevant.

Depending on the jurisdiction and circumstances, courts may still consider facts such as:

• where officers positioned themselves;
• whether the encounter was contained;
• whether the officer moved closer;
• whether civilians were exposed;
• whether the subject was moving toward or away from others; and
• whether the threat changed before force was used.

There is an important distinction between:

There was no legal duty to retreat

and:

Positioning could not matter to the reasonableness analysis.

They are not the same proposition.

6. Closing distance can change the encounter

Moving closer may sometimes be necessary.

Officers may need to:

• reach a person who is attacking someone;
• prevent entry into an occupied area;
• provide medical aid;
• prevent access to a weapon;
• arrest a person; or
• respond to rapidly changing behaviour.

But closing distance also reduces reaction time and may eliminate options that existed at greater separation.

That does not make the decision automatically unreasonable. It means that movement and positioning should be treated as part of the sequence rather than ignored.

What the evidence can tell us

Relevant evidence can include:

• body-worn camera;
• surveillance or bystander video;
• scene photographs;
• diagrams and measurements;
• officer and witness statements;
• location of physical barriers;
• movement before and during the encounter;
• estimated subject-to-officer distance;
• distance to civilians;
• available exits;
• containment;
• officer positioning; and
• timing between significant changes in the encounter.

Video can be especially useful for reconstructing movement, but camera perspective can distort apparent distance and may not show what was outside the frame.

A single distance measurement should therefore be interpreted together with the rest of the scene.

What the evidence does not establish

A particular distance does not, by itself, establish that:

• a person was an immediate threat;
• a person was not an immediate threat;
• officers had sufficient time to disengage;
• officers were required to retreat;
• less-lethal force was feasible;
• lethal force was required;
• an officer deliberately created danger;
• the subject could reach someone before officers could respond; or
• a training exercise establishes the constitutional standard.

Those conclusions require additional context.

Questions to keep in mind

Distance between whom? Is the measurement subject-to-officer, subject-to-civilian, or something else?

Was the distance stable? Was the subject stationary, advancing, retreating, running, or changing direction?

What was between them? Was there a wall, vehicle, fence, furniture, doorway, or other meaningful barrier?

Who else was exposed? Could the subject reach another person even if officers themselves were farther away?

Could officers maintain the position? Was the scene containable, or were circumstances forcing movement?

What would additional time have changed? Would waiting have created useful options, or increased the risk to someone?

Did positioning change? Did officers or the subject close distance immediately before force was used?

The takeaway

Distance matters, but distance is not a rule.

Its significance depends on movement, barriers, positioning, third-party exposure, available space, and how quickly conditions are changing.

The most useful analysis asks not simply “How far away was the person?” but:

What did that distance allow each person to do, and for how long?