Evidence
From the Kenneth Adams’ assessment of police use of force the references and sources tell us:
What we know with substantial confidence about police use of force mainly is
- police use force infrequently.
- police use of force typically occurs at the lower end of the force spectrum, involving grabbing pushing, or shoving.
- use of force typically occurs when police are trying to make an arrest and the suspect is resisting.
These are facts that support these main topics:
- The Bureau of Statistics’ (BJS) says
- 45 million people had face-to-face contact with police over a 12 month period and that approximately 1 percent, or about 500,000 of theses persons, were subjected to use of force or threat of force.
- out of 6,421 persons, 14 respondents, or roughly 1 in 450, said that they were subjected to used of force or threat of force by police over a year’s time.
- out of the 14 respondents who reported that police used or threatened force against them, 10 suggested that they might have provoked the officer to use force.
- handcuffing is included in the BJS definition of force, the number of person’s increases to 1.2 million.
- it is estimated that about 500,000 people were “hit, held, pushed, choked, threatened with a flashlight, restrained by a police dog, threatened or actually sprayed with chemical or pepper spray, threatened with a gun, or experienced some other form of force. Three-fifths of these situations involved holding.
- Garner and Maxwell found that physical force (excluding handcuffing) is used in less than one of five adult custody arrests.
- Also they observed that police use weaponless tactics in roughly 80 percent of use of force incidents and that half the time the tactic involved grabbing the suspect.
- 2.1 percent of custody arrests involved use of weapons by police. Chemical agents were the weapons most frequently used (1.2 percent of arrest), while firearms were the weapons least often used (0.2 percent of arrests).
- After using statistical controls for more than 50 characteristics of the arrest situation, the suspect, and the police officer, found that forceful action by suspects was the strongest and most consistent predictor of use of force by police.
- Finally they found that while 22 percent of arrests involved use of force by police, 14 percent of arrest involved use of force by suspect.
- in Miami 64 percent if use of force incidents involved grabbing or holding the suspect.
- the most common injury to a suspect was a bruise or abrasion followed by laceration.
- police almost always follow the prescribed sequence of control procedures they are taught, except when suspect resistance is high, in which case they ten to skip the immediate procedure.
- that criminal suspects are not always cooperative when it comes to arrest. In almost all cases (97 percent) in which police officers used force in a Florida jurisdiction, the suspect offered some degree of resistance. In 36 percent of use of force incidents, the suspect actively resisted arrest, and in one quarter of the incidents the suspects assaulted the officer.
What we know with modest confidence about police use of force is
- use of force appears to be unrelated to an officer’s personal characteristics, such as age, gender, and ethnicity.
- use of force is more likely to occur when police are dealing with persons under the influence of alcohol or drugs or with mentally ill individuals. More research is needed.
- a small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use of force incidents. More research is needed.
These are the facts that support these main topics:
- Bayley and Garofolo concluded that use of force is not related to age, although it may be related to experience.
- Garner and collegeues report that the race of a suspect and officer is not predictive of use of force, however incidents involving male police officers and male suspects are more likely to involve force.
- They found that alcohol impairment by suspects was a consistent predictor of police use of force, while drug impairment predicted increased used of force for some but not all measures of use of force.
- Alpert and Dunham found that officer characteristics are of little utility in distinguishing between force and nonforced incidents.
- Research indicates that officers are more likely to use force against suspects of their own race
- They observed that alcohol or drug impairment of suspect of suspect was unrelated to police used of force or subsequent injury.
- About 42 percent of use of force situations suspects appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
What we do not know about police use of force is
- the incidence of wrongful use of force by police is unknown. Research is critically needed to determine reliably, validly, and precisely how often transgressions of use of force powers occur.
- the impact of differences in police organizations, including administrative policies, hiring, training, discipline, and use of technology, on excessive and illegal force is unknown. Research is critically needed in this area.
- Influences of situational characteristics on police use of force and the transactional nature of these events are largely unknown. More research in necessary.
These are the facts that support these main topics:
- Adams states that we do not know how often police used force in ways that can be adjudged as wrongful. The use of force could even be excessive.
- Society needs a more accurate measure of police force if we are to advance our understanding of these problems.
- Understanding all use of forces incidents helps us to put wrongful use of force in perspective. However, because political, legal, and ethical issues are very serious when we are dealing with excessive force, pressures to know the incidence and prevalence of these events with precision will always be present.
- Since we are unable to measure excessive force, we can neither determine whether the problems are getting better or worse nor determining the circumstances under which those problems are more or less severe.
- The major gap in our knowledge about excessive force by police concerns the characteristics of police agencies that facilitate or impede this conduct.
- Many formal aspects of the organization- such as hiring criteria, recruit training, in service programs, supervision of field officers, disciplinary mechanisms, operations of internal affairs and more - plausibly are related to levels of officer misconduct. It makes sense that poorly educated, badly trained, loosely supervised, and inadequately disciplined officers are likely problematic, and when such officers are in the majority, the organization is on the road toward disaster.
- Less formal aspects of police organizations – officer morale, administrative leadership, peer culture and influence, police-community relations, relations with other government agencies, and neighborhood environments- also plausibly have a part in officer misconduct.
Evaluation
This article of “What We Know About Police Use of Force” is helping in putting police use of force into context in order to understand the potential magnitude of use of force problems. Adams states that it is possible to minimize the use of force by modifying the behavior and tactics of the police officers. He then follows by stating that by understanding the sequences of events that lead to police use of force, we can gain a greater degree of control over those situations and possibly redirect the outcome.
I found this article to be very informative about police use of force. I learned from this article that police use of force is something that isn’t used as frequently as I thought. From watching television and hearing reports on the radio, I believed that police used force a lot more often than statistics show. Another thing I learned was that Police used of force is more likely to occur when the perpetrator is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
This article is very helpful to society who questions or has concerns about the whole aspect of police use of force. The article is beneficial to society because it helps address issues and give factual information to those who are unclear about the issue.
“What We Know About Police Use of Force” is an article based on the researching of Kenneth Adams. Even though he found answers to many questions about the topic of use of force by the police, he stated himself that there isn’t enough information to come to conclusions about some issues that have arise. He states a few times in the article that more research is necessary to come to a conclusion. The publication of this article was in 1999. I feel that the study of police use of force should be replicated to update the statistics and keep the public or society informed.
