Radley Balko offers examples of the way police departments avoid active verbs, the active voice, and human subjects of sentences “to publicly deflect responsibility for police shootings.”

• “A deputy-involved shooting occurred.”
• “The innocent McKay family was inadvertently affected by this enforcement operation.”
• “The deputy’s gun fired one shot, missing the dog and hitting the child.”

Balko notes that police departments have no trouble writing clearly when they want to assign blame to a suspect: “The suspect produced a semi-automatic handgun and fired numerous times striking the victim in the torso.”

[Balko, Radley. “The Curious Grammar of Police Shootings.” Washington Post, 14 July 2014.]