Officials: Border agents using weapons 30% less

WASHINGTON — Border Patrol agents have used firearms and other weapons less frequently in recent months on the Southwest border after implementation of guidelines aimed at curbing abuses, officials said Wednesday.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, head of Customs and Border Protection, said the agency has logged 385 use of force reports since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, which he said was nearly 30 percent less than a year ago.

The Border Patrol has faced growing criticism for agents shooting unarmed people, sometimes across the border in Mexico, usually in response to rocks being thrown. Few agents have faced prosecutions or other apparent accountability.

The agency did not release detailed statistics Wednesday, so it’s not known if the number of shootings by agents has fallen compared to use of nonlethal weapons.

After reviewing internal files on 67 deadly force cases, a group of police experts in 2013 criticized the Border Patrol for weak internal investigations and for use of force guidelines that gave agents far more latitude than is allowed at most U.S. law enforcement agencies.

New rules say agents should retreat first under rock assaults, rather than shoot, for example, and should avoid shooting at people in cars.

Four people were shot to death by Border Patrol agents last year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border Rights, based in Las Cruces, N.M.. Three people have been killed along U.S. borders in 2015.