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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for deadly force
51 results foundAuthor: Stewart, James K. Title: Collaborative Reform Process: A Review of Officer-Involved Shootings in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Summary: The use of deadly force against a citizen is the most serious act a police officer can take. It demands careful, impartial review and the highest professional standards of accountability. In November 2011, the Las Vegas Review Journal (LVRJ) published a five-part investigative series titled "Deadly Force: When Las Vegas Police Shoot, and Kill." The LVRJ series, using data provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD), reviewed officer-involved shootings (OIS) over the past 20 years. The LVRJ reported that although a number of these shootings were highly controversial and could have been avoided, LVMPD's internal accountability systems and the Clark County Coroner's Inquests had ruled that they were justified and held officers minimally accountable. As expected, the LVRJ investigative series raised concern about LVMPD's lack of police accountability both to the department's review bodies and to community stakeholders. In January 2012, in response to the LVRJ's investigative series, the director of the Office of Community Oriented Police Services (COPS Office), of the U.S. Department of Justice called LVMPD's Sheriff Gillespie. The director offered the assistance of the COPS Office through its Critical Response Technical Assistance grant to reduce OISs. Within a week of this phone call, Sheriff Gillespie sent members of his executive command to Washington, D.C., to meet with the COPS Office. They discussed the reforms that LVMPD was already undertaking to address the issue and the areas in which technical assistance would be beneficial. Simultaneously, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada (ACLUNV) filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division on behalf of the Las Vegas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The petition requested that the Civil Rights Division commence an investigation and pursue civil remedies to reform the LVMPD, claiming that the LVMPD "engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers . . . that deprives persons of rights, privileges or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States." Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2012. 158p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 13, 2013 at: https://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/Collaborative%20Reform%20Process_FINAL.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/Collaborative%20Reform%20Process_FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 127612 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice Use of Force |
Author: Payne, Troy C. Title: Officer-Involved Shootings in Anchorage 1993 - 2013 Summary: This report describes situational, officer, and citizen characteristics of the 45 officer-involved shootings in Anchorage for the period 1 Jan 1993 through 11 May 2013 as recorded in Anchorage Police Department criminal investigation files. An "officer-involved shooting" is defined as an incident in which a sworn employee of the Anchorage Police Department purposefully discharged a firearm at a human being. There were 45 such incidents during the study period. Data for this report was derived from investigation case files produced by the Anchorage Police Department at the time of the incident. The report has three limitations: 1. The data can be used to describe, but not to explain, officer-involved shootings; 2. The data reflect the views of officers involved or near the scene of the shooting, with no independent investigation completed by project staff for this report; 3. The report describes rare events, the patterns of which are difficult (or impossible) to distinguish from random chance. The average number of officer-involved shootings per year was 2.14 during the study period, with a range from zero to five. Officer-involved shootings were generally north of Tudor Road and located near a major street. Combining the situational, officer, and citizen characteristics detailed in this report, it is possible to describe the "typical" officer-involved shooting over the past 20 years. The incident occurred between 12:00am midnight and 7:00am on a weekday. Officers responded to the scene after a citizen call regarding a disturbance or aggravated assault. Most incidents involved one citizen and one or two officers. The citizen possessed and threatened to use or attempted to use a weapon. Officers discharged a department-issued semi-auto pistol between one and three times. The citizen sustained one or more gunshot wounds; officers were not injured. Officers were typically white, male, at the rank of Officer, and in the middle of their careers with 4-9 years of experience. Compared to the 2012 Anchorage population, citizens involved were disproportionately minority, male, and under 30 years old. Many citizens were under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. Half of citizens involved were suspected of other crimes and most had at least one conviction for a misdemeanor or felony before the officer-involved shooting incident. The report below is intended to provide an overall picture of the officer-involved shootings during the past two decades. While it cannot explain such events given the limitations of the data source, there is no other comprehensive source of aggregate officer-involved shooting data in Anchorage. This report is therefore a first step toward a better understanding of officer use of force in Anchorage. Details: Anchorage: UAA Justice Center, University of Alaska Anchorage, 2013. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: JC 1402: Accessed August 14, 2014 at: http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/research/2010/1402.apd_ois/1402.01.officer_involved_shootings.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/research/2010/1402.apd_ois/1402.01.officer_involved_shootings.pdf Shelf Number: 133068 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Use of Force (Alaska) |
Author: Vila, Bryan Title: Developing A Common Metric For Evaluating Police Performance In Deadly Force Situations Summary: There is a critical lack of scientific evidence about whether deadly force management, accountability and training practices actually have an impact on police officer performance in deadly force encounters, the strength of such impact, or whether alternative approaches to managing deadly force could be more effective. The primary cause of this lack is that current tools for evaluating officer-involved shootings are too coarse or ambiguous to adequately measure such highly variable and complex events. There also are substantial differences in how key issues associated with police deadly encounters are conceptualized, even by subject matter experts, how agencies can or should train for them, and what officers should - or reasonably can - be held accountable for. As a consequence, trainers and policy makers have generally been limited by subjective or rough assessments of deadly force performance or how challenging a deadly force situation was. Our research addressed this problem by using a novel pairing of two well-established research methods, Thurstone scaling and concept mapping. With them, we developed measurement scales that dramatically improve our ability to measure police officer performance in deadly force encounters. We expect that these metrics will make it possible to better evaluate the impact of management and training practices, refine them, and make assessment of accountability more just and reasonable. Details: Final Report to the U.S. Department of Justice, 2014. 178p. Source: Accessed September 29, 2014 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/247985.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/247985.pdf Shelf Number: 133476 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice DiscretionPolice EducationPolice MisconductPolice PerformancePolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) Title: Review of the IPCC's work on investigating deaths: final report Summary: In 2012 the IPCC began a review into the way that we investigate deaths following police contact, with the aim of identifying and implementing changes to ensure that our work in this key area is: - thorough, transparent and effective - sensitive to the needs and expectations of bereaved families - able to build and sustain public confidence We have consulted widely with those affected - in particular those who have been critical of our approach to this important work or of the outcomes of our investigations. We published a progress report in September 2013, detailing the issues and concerns raised, and our response to them. This final report summarises all that we were told, our responses, and most importantly the actions we have taken or are planning to take. Details: London: IPCC, 2014. 111p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 20, 2014 at: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/deaths_review/Review_of_the_IPCCs_work_in_investigating_deaths_2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/deaths_review/Review_of_the_IPCCs_work_in_investigating_deaths_2014.pdf Shelf Number: 134180 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice BehaviorPolice EffectivenessPolice LegitimacyPolice Use of Force (U.K.) |
Author: King, Denise Rodriguez Title: The Collaborative Reform Model: A Review of Use of Force Policies, Processes, and Practices in the Spokane Police Department Summary: The proper investigation and review of use of force (UOF) incidents, especially those involving deadly force, can have a significant impact on a police department's legitimacy and relationship with the community. The negative effects and impact of an improper investigation and limited transparency are most apparent in the Spokane Police Department's (SPD) investigation of the 2006 Otto Zehm deadly force incident. This incident created an uproar and conflict within the community, and it led to a federal investigation and a civil lawsuit. Six years after the incident, the civil lawsuit was settled, and the officer involved was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison. In spite of the settlement and sentencing of the officer, there is still an opinion within the community that the department has done little to change the internal culture that led to the officer's use of deadly force and the improper investigation of that force. Eight years after the Otto Zehm incident, the police-community relationship continues to be frayed. New leadership within the police department and an organizational restructuring are signs of positive progress; however, both the department and the community agree that continued change and improvement are needed to repair the scars left by events such as the 2006 deadly force incident. In fall 2012, Chief Frank Straub, only months after being sworn in as the new police chief, requested that the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) assess the SPD's use of force policies, processes, and practices. The COPS Office responded and tasked the CNA Corporation to conduct this assessment under the COPS Office's Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance (CRI-TA) program. The goal of this review was to improve the use of force processes in the SPD, taking into account national standards, best practices, existing research, and community expectations. The objectives of the review were as follows: - Examine the SPD's use of force policies and procedures compared with national best practices and existing research, identify areas for improvement, and provide recommendations. - Analyze a sample of use of force investigation files from 2009 through 2013 and identify trends, strengths, and weaknesses. - Examine the role of the ombudsman in use of force investigations compared with national best practices and existing research. - Improve the SPD organization's culture as it relates to use of force, in order to build trust with the community. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014. 132p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 9, 2015 at: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0751-pub.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0751-pub.pdf Shelf Number: 134772 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice LegitimacyPolice MisconductPolice Policies and PracticesPolice ReformPolice Use of Force (Spokane, Washington) |
Author: Fachner, George Title: Collaborative Reform Model: Final Assessment Report of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Summary: In January 2012, under growing community concern and scrutiny of its use of deadly force practices, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) agreed to take part in an initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), known as the "Collaborative Reform Model." As part of this initiative, LVMPD agreed to an in-depth assessment of its use of deadly force policies and practices. In support, the COPS Office and CNA would assist the LVMPD in adopting national standards and best practices as they relate to officer-involved shootings (OIS), while ensuring that LVMPD's implementation was comprehensive and integrated. CNA conducted the assessment, focusing on four issue areas: (1) policy and procedures, (2) training and tactics, (3) investigation and documentation, and (4) external review. CNA completed the assessment in November 2012, which documented a total of 75 reforms and recommendations. These included both new recommendations from the assessment team and reforms that LVMPD initiated before and during the assessment process. CNA published the final report, Collaborative Reform Model: A Review of Officer-Involved Shootings in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (referred to as the "2012 report" throughout the remainder of this report) in November 2012. The publication of the 2012 report did not complete the process. Sustainable policy and organizational change requires careful planning, implementation, and monitoring. The COPS Office, CNA, and LVMPD have continued in their collaboration throughout 2013. The COPS Office asked CNA to document reforms previously completed by LVMPD and to actively monitor those that resulted from the 2012 report. In September, CNA and the COPS Office published Collaborative Reform Model: Six-Month Status Report of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The six-month report showed that LVMPD had made significant progress. A total of 56 reforms had been completed by the department and another 15 were in progress. This report is the final assessment of LVMPD with respect to the Collaborative Reform Model. It has been two years since the beginning of the reform process, and one year since the reforms were recommended. The purpose of this report is to inform all stakeholders and interested parties of the progress made toward reforming LVMPD's policies and practices with respect to OISs. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 92p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 9, 2015 at: http://www.lvmpd.com/Portals/0/OIO/LVMPD_Collab_Reform_Final_Report_v6-final.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.lvmpd.com/Portals/0/OIO/LVMPD_Collab_Reform_Final_Report_v6-final.pdf Shelf Number: 134774 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Brutality Police Misconduct Police Reform Police Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: Fachner, George Title: Collaborative Reform Initiative - An Assessment of Deadly Force in the Philadelphia Police Department Summary: In 2013, in response to an increase in officer-involved shootings, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey requested technical assistance from the COPS Office. Launched in November 2013, the Collaborative Reform Initiative in Philadelphia focuses on the use of deadly force over a seven-year period. The COPS Office's training and technical assistance provider for the assessment, CNA, reviewed hundreds of departmental policies, manuals and training plans; conducted 164 interviews with community members and department civilian and sworn personnel; facilitated focus groups with city and department stakeholders; and directly observed operations, including the use of force review board hearings of 20 officer involved shooting incidents. Through its 48 findings, the assessment identifies serious deficiencies in the department's use of force policies and training, including a failure to maintain a certified field training program; deficient, inconsistent supervision and operational control of officer involved shooting investigations and crime scenes; and oversight and accountability practices in need of improvement, the most notable being the need for the department to fully cooperate with the Police Advisory Commission. To address these issues, the report prescribes 91 recommendations to help the department improve with respect to the use of force and implement industry best practices. The COPS Office will work with the Philadelphia Police Department over the next 18 months to help them implement these recommendations and will provide two progress reports during this time. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2015. 188p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 25, 2015 at: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0753-pub.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0753-pub.pdf Shelf Number: 135005 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice BehaviorPolice BrutalityPolice DiscretionPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force (Philadelphia) |
Author: Amnesty International Title: Deadly Force: Police Use of Lethal Force In The United States Summary: Hundreds of men and women are killed by police each and every year across the United States. No-one knows exactly how many because the United States does not count how many lives are lost. The limited information available however suggests that African American men are disproportionately impacted by police use of lethal force. While the majority of the unarmed African Americans killed by police officers are men, many African American women have also lost their lives to police violence. Police officers are responsible for upholding the law, as well as respecting and protecting the lives of all members of society. Their jobs are difficult and often dangerous. However, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and countless others across the United States has highlighted a widespread pattern of racially discriminatory treatment by law enforcement officers and an alarming use of lethal force nationwide. Indeed, just 10 days after Michael Brown was fatally shot in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014, St. Louis police officers shot and killed a young black man, Kajieme Powell, 25, who was reportedly holding a knife. Police claims that he was brandishing a knife were not borne out by the available video footage of the shooting. Some of the individuals killed by police in the United States include the following: Rekia Boyd, an unarmed 22 year old black woman was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer on March 21, 2012; Eric Garner, a 43 year old black man, died after being placed in a chokehold by New York Police Department officers after being approached by an officer who attempted to arrest him for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes on July 17, 2014; Ezell Ford, 25, an unarmed black man with a history of mental illness, was shot and killed by Los Angeles police officers on August 11 2014; Tamir Rice, a 12 year-old black boy, was shot and killed by officers in Cleveland, Ohio while playing in a park with a toy gun on November 22, 2014; Walter Scott, a 50 year old unarmed black man, was fatally shot in the back after a traffic stop for a broken light on his car in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 4, 2015; and Freddie Grey, a 25 year old black man, died from a spinal injury after being taken into police custody in Baltimore, Maryland on April 19, 2015. These are all cases that have received national media attention; however, there are many more including Hispanic and Indigenous individuals from communities across the country who have died at the hands of the police. The use of lethal force by law enforcement officers raises serious human rights concerns, including in regard to the right to life, the right to security of the person, the right to freedom from discrimination and the right to equal protection of the law. The United States has a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfill these human rights and has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which explicitly protects these rights. One of a state's most fundamental duties which police officers, as agents of the state, must comply with in carrying out their law enforcement duties, is to protect life. In pursuing ordinary law enforcement operations, using force that may cost the life of a person cannot be justified. International law only allows police officers to use lethal force as a last resort in order to protect themselves or others from death or serious injury. The United Nations (UN) Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms provide that law enforcement officials shall not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or the defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, and that, in any event, "intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life." Furthermore, international law enforcement standards require that force of any kind may be used only when there are no other means available that are likely to achieve the legitimate objective. If the force is unavoidable it must be no more than is necessary and proportionate to achieve the objective, and law enforcement must use it in a manner designed to minimise damage or injury, must respect and preserve human life and ensure medical aid are provided as soon as possible to those injured or affected. Details: New York: AI, 2015. 105p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 9, 2015 at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/aiusa_deadlyforcereportjune2015.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/aiusa_deadlyforcereportjune2015.pdf Shelf Number: 135979 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Misconduct Police Use of Force |
Author: Amnesty International Title: You Killed My Son: Homicides by Military Police in the City of Rio de Janeiro Summary: Extrajudicial executions at the hands of police officials are frequent in Brazil. In the context of the so-called "war on drugs", military police forces have unnecessarily and excessively used lethal force, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people over the past decade. The authorities often use the legal term of "resistance followed by death" as a smokescreen to cover up killings committed by the police officers. This report is based on a series of cases of police killings that occurred during 2014 and 2015 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the favela of Acari. Details: London; Amnesty International, 2015. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 14, 2015 at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/youkilled_final_bx.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Brazil URL: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/youkilled_final_bx.pdf Shelf Number: 136430 Keywords: Deadly ForceHomicidesPolice BrutalityPolice Use ForceWar on Drugs |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice Title: Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation into the Shooting Death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson Summary: At approximately noon on Saturday, August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. The Criminal Section of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (collectively, The Department) subsequently opened a criminal investigation into whether the shooting violated federal law. The Department has determined that the evidence does not support charging a violation of federal law. This memorandum details the Department's investigation, findings, and conclusions. Part I provides an introduction and overview. Part II summarizes the federal investigation and the evidence uncovered during the course of the investigation, and discusses the applicable federal criminal civil rights law and standards of federal prosecution. Part III provides a more in-depth summary of the evidence. Finally, Part IV provides a detailed legal analysis of the evidence and explains why the evidence does not support an indictment of Darren Wilson. The Department conducted an extensive investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown. Federal authorities reviewed physical, ballistic, forensic, and crime scene evidence; medical reports and autopsy reports, including an independent autopsy performed by the United States Department of Defense Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service (AFMES); Wilson's personnel records; audio and video recordings; and internet postings. FBI agents, St. Louis County Police Department (SLCPD) detectives, and federal prosecutors and prosecutors from the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office (county prosecutors) worked cooperatively to both independently and jointly interview more than 100 purported eyewitnesses and other individuals claiming to have relevant information. SLCPD detectives conducted an initial canvass of the area on the day of the shooting. FBI agents then independently canvassed more than 300 residences to locate and interview additional witnesses. Federal and local authorities collected cellular phone data, searched social media sites, and tracked down dozens of leads from community members and dedicated law enforcement email addresses and tip lines in an effort to investigate every possible source of information. The principles of federal prosecution, set forth in the United States Attorneys' Manual (USAM), require federal prosecutors to meet two standards in order to seek an indictment. First, we must be convinced that the potential defendant committed a federal crime. See USAM 9-27.220 (a federal prosecution should be commenced only when an attorney for the government believes that the person's conduct constitutes a federal offense). Second, we must also conclude that we would be likely to prevail at trial, where we must prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. See USAM 9-27.220 (a federal prosecution should be commenced only when the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to sustain a conviction); Fed R. Crim P. 29(a)(prosecution must present evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction). Taken together, these standards require the Department to be convinced both that a federal crime occurred and that it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. In order to make the proper assessment under these standards, federal prosecutors evaluated physical, forensic, and potential testimonial evidence in the form of witness accounts. As detailed below, the physical and forensic evidence provided federal prosecutors with a benchmark against which to measure the credibility of each witness account, including that of Darren Wilson. We compared individual witness accounts to the physical and forensic evidence, to other credible witness accounts, and to each witness's own prior statements made throughout the investigations, including the proceedings before the St. Louis County grand jury (county grand jury). We worked with federal and local law enforcement officers to interview witnesses, to include re-interviewing certain witnesses in an effort to evaluate inconsistencies in their accounts and to obtain more detailed information. In so doing, we assessed the witnesses' demeanor, tone, bias, and ability to accurately perceive or recall the events of August 9, 2014. We credited and determined that a jury would appropriately credit those witnesses whose accounts were consistent with the physical evidence and consistent with other credible witness accounts. In the case of witnesses who made multiple statements, we compared those statements to determine whether they were materially consistent with each other and considered the timing and circumstances under which the witnesses gave the statements. We did not credit and determined that a jury appropriately would not credit those witness accounts that were contrary to the physical and forensic evidence, significantly inconsistent with other credible witness accounts, or significantly inconsistent with that witness's own prior statements. Based on this investigation, the Department has concluded that Darren Wilson's actions do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. 242, which prohibits uses of deadly force that are 'objectively unreasonable,' as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson's uses of deadly force were 'objectively unreasonable' under the Supreme Court's definition. Accordingly, under the governing federal law and relevant standards set forth in the USAM, it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2015. 86p. Source: Internet Resource: Memorandum: Accessed August 17, 2015 at: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf Shelf Number: 136435 Keywords: Criminal InvestigationDeadly ForcePolice BehaviorPolice Use of Force |
Author: Police Executive Research Forum Title: Re-Engineering Training On Police Use of Force Summary: Over the past year, the policing profession has been shaken by controversies over the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, and many others. I don't know anyone who would dispute that the reputation of American policing has suffered from these incidents. At times, it has seemed like every time you turn on the TV, you see another story about the police that hits you like a punch to the stomach. PERF's Board of Directors was quick to realize that the rioting last summer in Ferguson was not a story that would fade away quickly, and we decided to hold a national conference in Chicago about the implications of Ferguson for policing. That meeting, held on September 16-17, just five weeks after the Ferguson incident, was written up in "Defining Moments for Police Chiefs," our last Critical Issues in Policing report. One of the key issues we discussed that day in Chicago was the need to rethink the training that police officers receive on de-escalation strategies and tactics. As we look back at the most controversial police shooting incidents, we sometimes find that while the shooting may be legally justified, there were missed opportunities to ratchet down the encounter, to slow things down, to call in additional resources, in the minutes before the shooting occurred. It became clear that this issue of de-escalation was one of many ways in which the training of police officers can be improved. Our goal is to give police officers better tools for avoiding unnecessary uses of force, particularly deadly force. So we began planning for another national research project and conference, titled "Re-Engineering Use of Force." This report is the result of this project. You will see that this report, like others in the Critical Issues series, consists largely of the discussions by participants at our May 7, 2015 conference. Nearly 300 police chiefs and other law enforcement executives, federal government officials, academics, and representatives from policing agencies in the UK came together in Washington to share their views on what should be included in new approaches to training on use of force. We also fielded a survey of police agencies on their use-of-force training, reviewed research, and sent PERF staff to Scotland to observe their training firsthand. Details: Washington, DC: PERF, 2015. 84p. Source: Internet Resource: Critical Issues in Policing Series: Accessed August 20, 2015 at: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/reengineeringtraining.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/reengineeringtraining.pdf Shelf Number: 136502 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice DiscretionPolice TrainingPolice Use of Force |
Author: Wortley, Scot Title: Police Use of Force in Ontario: An Examination of Data from the Special Investigations Unit Summary: Police use of force against racial minorities has emerged as one of the most controversial issues facing the law enforcement community in North America. In the United States, high profile incidents involving police use of force - including the Rodney King, Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo cases - often serve to increase tensions between racial minority communities and the police and solidify the public perception that the police are racially biased (Walker 2005; Walker et al. 2004; Joseph et al. 2003). The negative impact of police violence on community cohesion can be profound. For example, over the past twenty years, specific incidents of police violence against racial minorities have sparked major urban riots in several cities including Miami, Cinncinati and Los Angeles. Police use of force against racial minorities has also emerged as an important issue in Canada. As in the United States, well publicized police shootings in Ontario and Quebec - including the cases of Dudley George, Jeffrey Roedica, Lester Donaldson, Allen Gosset, Sophia Cook, Buddy Evans, Wade Lawson and Marlon Neal - have led to community allegations of police discrimination. Unfortunately, unlike the United States, very little empirical research has actually addressed the question of whether the police are more likely to use physical force against racial minorities than Whites (see discussion in Forcese 1999: 181-184). The following report attempts to address the gap in Canadian research by: 1) Providing a detailed literature review on police use of force against minorities in Canada and the United States; 2) Describing the results of a focus group with leaders from Toronto's Black community on the issue of police use of force; and 3) providing the results of a new study on police use of force in Ontario using data from the province's Special Investigations Unit. The report concludes with a discussion of different explanatory models that might help explain the overrepresentation of African Canadians and Aboriginals in police use of force statistics. Recommendations for reducing the illegitimate use of force by the police are provided. Particular emphasis is placed on reducing police use of force against racial minority communities. Details: Toronto: Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 2012. 126p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 31, 2015 at: https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/projects/pdf/AfricanCanadianClinicIpperwashProject_SIUStudybyScotWortley.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Canada URL: https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/projects/pdf/AfricanCanadianClinicIpperwashProject_SIUStudybyScotWortley.pdf Shelf Number: 136631 Keywords: Deadly ForceMinority GroupsPolice Use of ForceRacial DisparitiesRacial Minorities |
Author: Ferguson Commission Title: Forward through Ferguson: A path toward racial equity Summary: The Ferguson Commission is an independent group appointed by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on November 18, 2014, to conduct a "thorough, wide-ranging and unflinching study of the social and economic conditions that impede progress, equality and safety in the St. Louis region." The need to address these conditions was underscored by the unrest in the wake of the death of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson on August 9, 2014. The Commission's Charge The Commission, composed of 16 diverse volunteer leaders, was charged with the following: To examine the underlying causes of these conditions, including poverty, education, governance, and law enforcement; To engage with local citizens, area organizations, national thought leaders, institutions, and experts to develop a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the concerns related to these conditions; and To issue an unflinching report containing specific, practical policy recommendations for making the region a stronger, fairer place for everyone to live. This is that report. Details: Ferguson, MO: The Commission, 2015. 198p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 18, 2015 at: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2413166/fergusoncommissionreport-091415.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2413166/fergusoncommissionreport-091415.pdf Shelf Number: 136831 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice MisconductPolice Use of ForcePublic SafetyRacial EqualitySocioeconomic Conditions and Crime |
Author: Thompson II, Richard M. Title: Police Use of Force: Rules, Remedies, and Reforms Summary: Several high-profile police shootings and other law enforcement-related deaths in the United States have sparked intense protests throughout the country and a fierce debate in Congress concerning the appropriate level of force police officers should wield in a society that equally values public safety and the lives of each of its citizens under law. These incidents have been the subject of several congressional hearings, have prompted the introduction of various legislative measures, and have catalyzed a new civil rights movement in the United States aimed at reforming the criminal justice system. Reformers claim that police work too closely with local prosecutors resulting in insufficient oversight and have called for greater involvement by the federal government. The law enforcement community and its supporters have countered that these recent deaths are anomalous in otherwise exemplary police conduct, and that placing the federal government in direct regulation of state and local police would present an unwarranted intrusion into state and local affairs. To provide legal context for this debate, this report will address three overarching questions: (1) what are the constitutional rules governing an officer's use of force; (2) what role has Congress played in providing a remedy for a violation of these rules; and (3) what are the potential reforms to these rules and remedies? Rules. In a line of cases beginning in the mid-1980s, the Supreme Court ruled that all claims of excessive force occurring during an arrest or investigatory stop-deadly or otherwise-are governed by the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures. Under prevailing judicial precedent, all uses of force must be "objectively reasonable" based on the totality of the circumstances viewed through the lens of the officer in the field. This requires a fact-intensive inquiry that is not easily reduced to categorical rules, but some general trends can be discerned from the case law. For instance, the courts have been deferential to officers in the field who are required to make split-second decisions in dangerous situations. Also, officers need not use the least intrusive means to effectuate a seizure so long as their actions are reasonable. Remedies. In an effort to provide teeth to federal constitutional restraints, Congress has enacted three federal statutes that accord various remedies for police use of excessive force. First is the federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. 242, which prohibits officers from willfully depriving another of a constitutional right while acting under color of law. Enacted shortly after the Civil War, many have argued that Section 242's specific intent mens rea requirement is too high a threshold to provide an adequate deterrence to excessive force. Moreover, the federal circuit courts are split on how to apply this test, with some requiring a strict form of intent and others permitting a reckless disregard jury instruction. Second is the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. 1983, which provides a civil cause of action for deprivations of one's constitutional rights. While generally viewed as successful in providing monetary damages to those injured by officers in the field, the doctrine of qualified immunity has frequently shielded officers from liability when the law was not "clearly established" at the time. Third is the more recently enacted "pattern or practice" statute, 42 U.S.C. 14141, which authorizes the Attorney General to sue local municipalities whose police forces have engaged in a pattern of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. Reforms. Various reform bills have been introduced in the 114th Congress to provide additional restraints on police use of force, including the Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act of 2015 (H.R. 2052), which would criminalize the use of chokeholds, and the Police Accountability Act of 2015 (H.R. 1102), which would create a new federal crime for certain homicides committed by law enforcement officers. Additionally, several bills would place requirements on states to report use of force statistics to the federal government. Details: Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015. 29p. Source: Internet Resource: R44256: Accessed November 6, 2015 at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44256.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44256.pdf Shelf Number: 137208 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Decision MakingPolice DiscretionPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force |
Author: Front Line Title: Front Line Brazil : murders, death threats and other forms of intimidation of human rights defenders, 1997-2001. Summary: The defence of human rights in Brazil is a dangerous undertaking. In virtually every context in which human rights defenders operate-whether rural conflicts, the fight against urban police brutality and the violence of organised criminal elements, the defence of the environment and of indigenous peoples, or on parliamentary human rights commissions-they face harrassment, intimidation by unwarranted lawsuits, death threats, physical attacks and even murder. This report analyzes fifty-six separate incidents of violence and harrassment of human rights defenders-nineteen instances of homicide, causing twenty-three deaths, and thirty-seven other incidents including attempted murder, death threats and other forms of harassment-over the past five years. These were not the only such cases during this period, but rather represent a frightening national tendency. Still, the numbers are impressive: twenty-three deaths, thirty-two death threats, four instances of attempted murder, four unjustified prosecutions, four beatings, one kidnapping, one disappearance and one unjustified detention. This report sheds light on a series of aspects of the defence of human rights in Brazil that merit attention. First, human rights defenders are a varied lot in Brazil. While most pertain to some form of organised civil society group, such as nongovernmental organisations or unions, many are public authorities, prosecutors, and elected officials. What they have in common is their labour in defence of one or more of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Second, while public authorities, prosecutors and elected officials may enjoy an additional level of protection not afforded to non-state members of civil society groups, even these public authorities are not immune from attacks. This report considers the dangers of human rights defence in Brazil by analyzing instances of abuse and intimidation affecting human rights defenders since 1997, as well as the response of relevant authorities to these incidents. Global Justice chose to limit this report to cases from the past five years due to the existence of literally hundreds of instances over the past decade. Beginning with this universe of cases, we tried to focus on 1) the most serious abuses; 2) instances of abuse that were most representative of the kinds of difficulties faced by defenders; 3) cases that represented the diversity of contexts in which defenders face risks in Brazil; 4) cases that demonstrated the regional diversity of abuses; 5) cases that were well documented and 6) cases known to authorities. Unfortunately, we were forced to eliminate a number of instances that should be in this report due to the lack of corroborating information. As such, while the report includes nineteen cases involving twenty-three homicides, and dozens of incidents of death threats and other forms of intimidation, those figures are not exhaustive, but rather a sampling of the many instances of abuses of the rights of defenders in Brazil. Details: Blackrock : Front Line : Global Justice Center, 2002. 229p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 11, 2016 at: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/files/en/1564_FrontLineBrazil_0.pdf Year: 2002 Country: Brazil URL: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/files/en/1564_FrontLineBrazil_0.pdf Shelf Number: 137463 Keywords: Civil RightsDeadly ForceHomicidesHuman RightsHuman Rights AbusesPolice Use of ForceViolence |
Author: Sekhon, Nirej Title: Blue on Black: An Empirical Assessment of Police Shootings Summary: Michael Brown's 2014 death in Ferguson, Missouri thrust police-officer-involved homicides into the popular consciousness. A series of subsequent officer-involved homicides has kept the issue politically and legally salient. Despite this, official data sources are thin and unreliable. This article presents original analysis of 259 police shooting incidents that occurred in Chicago between 2006 and 2014. The study, based upon publicly available information, suggests a more complex relationship between race, policing, and violence than one might expect from high-profile, officer-involved shootings. As in other large cities, shooting victims are overwhelmingly minorities, with Black persons constituting over 80% of victims. Contrary to intuition, many of the officer shooters are minorities as well. The analysis here suggests that neither racist malevolence nor unconscious bias afford complete explanations for why officer-involved shootings occur. Both of these explanatory frameworks focus too intensively upon individual officers' decision-making at the expense of institutional and situational dynamics. Scholars and policy makers should focus far more intensively on regulating bad practices, rather than just on disciplining bad officers following egregious incidents. Shifting focus in this way will help identify connections between everyday policing tactics in minority neighborhoods - such as plainclothes policing and aggressive stop and frisk - and officer-involved shootings. The article also concludes that evidentiary challenges mar post hoc review of officer-involved shootings, whether it is in the form of judicial or civilian review. This also underscores the importance of preventive regulation. Details: Atlanta: Georgia State University College of Law, 2016. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Georgia State University College of Law, Legal Studies Research Paper : Accessed February 10, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724 Shelf Number: 137827 Keywords: Deadly ForceOfficer-Involved ShootingsPolice DiscretionPolice Use of Force |
Author: Freelon, Deen Title: Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the online struggle for offline justice Summary: IN 2014, A DEDICATED ACTIVIST MOVEMENT "Black Lives Matter (BLM)" ignited an urgent national conversation about police killings of unarmed Black citizens. Online tools have been anecdotally credited as critical in this effort, but researchers are only beginning to evaluate this claim. This research report examines the movement's uses of online media in 2014 and 2015. To do so, we analyze three types of data: 40.8 million tweets, over 100,000 web links, and 40 interviews of BLM activists and allies. Most of the report is devoted to detailing our findings, which include: - Although the #Blacklivesmatter hashtag was created in July 2013, it was rarely used through the summer of 2014 and did not come to signify a movement until the months after the Ferguson protests. -Social media posts by activists were essential in initially spreading Michael Brown's story nationally. - Protesters and their supporters were generally able to circulate their own narratives without relying on mainstream news outlets. - There are six major communities that consistently discussed police brutality on Twitter in 2014 and 2015: Black Lives Matter, Anonymous/Bipartisan Report, Black Entertainers, Conservatives, Mainstream News, and Young Black Twitter. - The vast majority of the communities we observed supported justice for the victims and decisively denounced police brutality. - Black youth discussed police brutality frequently, but in ways that differed substantially from how activists discussed it. - Evidence that activists succeeded in educating casual observers came in two main forms: expressions of awe and disbelief at the violent police reactions to the Ferguson protests, and conservative admissions of police brutality in the Eric Garner and Walter Scott cases. - The primary goals of social media use among our interviewees were education, amplification of marginalized voices, and structural police reform. In our concluding section, we reflect on the practical importance and implications of our findings. We hope this report contributes to the specific conversation about how Black Lives Matter and related movements have used online tools as well as to broader conversations about the general capacity of such tools to facilitate social and political change. Details: Washington, DC: Center for Media and Social Impact, American University, 2016. 92p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 5, 2016 at: http://www.cmsimpact.org/sites/default/files/beyond_the_hashtags_2016.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.cmsimpact.org/sites/default/files/beyond_the_hashtags_2016.pdf Shelf Number: 138109 Keywords: Deadly ForceMedia CampaignsPolice AccountabilityPolice BrutalityPolice MisconductPolice ReformPolice Use of ForceSocial Media |
Author: Independent Police Complaints Commission (U.K.) Title: Deaths during or following police contact: Statistics for England and Wales 2014/15 Summary: This report presents figures on deaths during or following police contact that happened between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2015. It provides a definitive set of figures for England and Wales and an overview of the nature and circumstances in which these deaths occurred. This publication is the eleventh in a series of statistical reports on this subject published annually by the IPCC. To produce the IPCC annual statistics on deaths, the circumstances of all deaths referred to the IPCC are examined to decide whether they meet the criteria for inclusion in the report under one of the following five categories: - road traffic fatalities - fatal shootings - deaths in or following police custody - apparent suicides following police custody - other deaths following police contact that were subject Details: London: The Commission, 2015. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 21, 2016 at: https://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/research_stats/Deaths_Report_1415.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/research_stats/Deaths_Report_1415.pdf Shelf Number: 138350 Keywords: Complaints Against PoliceDeadly ForcePolice CustodyPolice Use of ForceSuicides |
Author: Stinson, Philip M. Title: Violence-related Police Crime Arrests in the United States, 2005-2011 Summary: - Police violence is behavior by any police officer-acting pursuant to their authority and/or power as a sworn law enforcement officer- that includes any use of physical force, whether justified or not (Sherman, 1980). - Situational risk faced by officers influence an officer's decision to use coercive force, non-deadly force, and/or to employ deadly force (e.g., Alpert & Smith, 1999; Fyfe, 1981; Terrill, 2003). - Officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) remains a problem (Stinson & Liederbach, 2013). Details: Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 2015. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Presented at the Annual Conference of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Orlando, Florida March 5, 2015 Accessed March 30, 2016 at: http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=crim_just_pub Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=crim_just_pub Shelf Number: 138502 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice MisconductPolice Use of ForcePolice Violence |
Author: Munoz, Ernesto Title: A report of officer involved shootings in Colorado, 2010-2015 : pursuant to Senate Bill 15-217 Summary: In 2015, the Colorado General Assembly passed Senate Bill 15-217, which mandated that state and local law enforcement agencies report specific information to the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) in the Department of Public Safety in the event that the agency "employs a peace officer who is involved in an officer-involved shooting that results in a person suspected of criminal activity being shot at by the officer." S.B.15-217 mandated DCJ to analyze and report the data on an annual basis. This first report, as specified in S.B. 15-217, documents findings based on data received by DCJ regarding officer involved shootings that occurred during a 5-1/2 year period between January 1, 2010 and June 30, 2015. During the time period under study, 47 law enforcement agencies reported 192 shooting incidents involving 313 officers and 219 citizens. Most of the citizens and officers were white (57% and 83%, respectively), reflecting the overall Colorado population, but the citizen group included 28% Hispanics and 14% Blacks. As a group, the citizens were younger, on average, than the officers. Among the citizens, Blacks were youngest (average age 28), compared to an average age of 31 for Hispanics and 38 for Whites. Over half (56%) of the incidents were originated by a call for service. Agencies reported that in two-thirds (65%) of shooting incidents, officers perceived an imminent threat to officers or citizens, and in another 20% of incidents, a shot(s) was fired at the officer. The officer perceived some level of threat in 10% of incidents, and three incidents (2%) involved preventing an escape. In 74% of the cases, a verbal warning was issued before the incident. For about one-third of citizens (34%), there was some indication of intoxication with alcohol, drugs or a combination of those. Agencies reported that a weapon was involved in at least 84% of incidents, and most often that weapon was a handgun (46%) followed by a motor vehicle that was perceived by the officer to be used as a weapon (12%), and a knife/cutting instrument (7%). Firearms (including handguns, rifles, and shotguns) were present in 57% of incidents. Black citizens were significantly more likely to have a firearm (83%) compared to Whites (52%) and Hispanics (53%). Ninety-one (91%) of officers were neither injured or killed compared to 19% of citizens. Nearly half (43%) of citizens were killed and another 38% were wounded. Citizens who were killed or wounded were likely to be perceived by the officer as an imminent threat. Fifty-two percent of Hispanics were killed, as were 40% of Whites and 37% of Blacks. Almost half (47%) of Blacks were wounded as were 32% of Hispanics and 40% of Whites. Among citizens who survived these encounters, 86% were arrested or cited for a crime (there was no difference across race/ethnicity). The most common charge was attempted first degree murder followed by first degree assault. Other common charges included felony menacing, criminal mischief, and assault on a peace officer. Note that the data reported here represent information provided by 48 law enforcement agencies, 47 of which reported officer-involved shootings between January 1, 2010 and June 30, 2015. It is not possible to know if every incident was reported to the Division of Criminal Justice. Two agencies submitted data (on one incident each) well after the statutory deadline2 and these two incidents were not included in the findings presented here. Details: Denver: Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Justice, 2016. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 5, 2016 at: http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ors/docs/reports/2016-Officer_%20Involved_Shooting-Rpt.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ors/docs/reports/2016-Officer_%20Involved_Shooting-Rpt.pdf Shelf Number: 138947 Keywords: Deadly ForceOfficer Involved ShootingsPolice Use of Force |
Author: McGinty, Timothy J. Title: Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Report on the November 22, 2014 Shooting Death of Tamir Rice Summary: Four years ago, I retired as a judge to run for County Prosecutor to make our Criminal Justice System more transparent, professional and accountable. I believed that greater openness would reduce the errors that had cost lives. One promise I made was to fundamentally change how cases are handled when a police officer kills a civilian - to end the traditional system where the prosecutor privately reviewed police reports, then decided if an officer should be charged. That secrecy - which appeared arbitrary without a public investigative report - undermined community confidence. It was clear we needed a more rigorous, independent investigation of police use of deadly force cases. Although not required by Ohio law, I now have all evidence reviewed not just by the prosecutor or this office, but by the citizens of the Grand Jury sitting as an investigative panel. They hear all the evidence and make the final call. Our office also shares with the public completed independent investigative reports so that there will be no mystery or rumors about what occurred in a citizen's death. This transparency gives our community an opportunity to correct errors in policy, training, tactics, hiring or equipment far more quickly - instead of waiting, sometimes for years, until the opportunity and enthusiasm for reform are lost. We want lessons learned and applied. That is what we have done and will do in all 20 use of deadly force cases that have come to this office in the past three years. Today, a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury completed its thorough investigation into the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on November 22, 2014 at the Cudell Recreation Center. Based on the evidence they heard and on the law as it applies to police use of deadly force, the Grand Jury declined to bring criminal charges against Cleveland Police Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback. That was also my recommendation and that of our office after reviewing the investigation and the law. Details: Cleveland, OH: Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, 2015. 74p, Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 18, 2016 at: http://prosecutor.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_prosecutor/en-US/Rice%20Case%20Report%20FINAL%20FINAL%2012-28a.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://prosecutor.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_prosecutor/en-US/Rice%20Case%20Report%20FINAL%20FINAL%2012-28a.pdf Shelf Number: 139096 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Use of Force |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: License to Kill: How Lax Concealed Carry Laws Can Combine with Stand Your Groud Laws to Produce Deadly Summary: The shooting death of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman's subsequent acquittal have focused the nation's attention on expansive self-defense laws - so-called Stand Your Ground laws - that enable an individual to use deadly force even in situations in which lesser force would suffice or in which the individual could safely retreat to avoid further danger. Leaders from around the country, including President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, have questioned how Florida's law - which is similar to laws enacted in 21 other states-may have contributed to the circumstances that led to Martin's death. Yet the Martin case also implicates another set of laws: the state laws governing who may carry concealed firearms - the laws that put a gun in Zimmerman's hands in the first place. Under Florida law, even individuals such as Zimmerman, who have a criminal history and a record of domestic abuse, are generally entitled to a concealed carry permit, as long as they are not barred from gun possession under federal law and as long as their offense does not meet a very narrow range of additional exclusions under state law. If Zimmerman had applied for a permit in one of the many states with stronger permit requirements, his history of violence and domestic abuse would likely have disqualified him from obtaining a concealed carry permit. This case might then have had a very different outcome. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 29p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 19, 2016 at: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/StandYrGround.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/StandYrGround.pdf Shelf Number: 130127 Keywords: Concealed Carry LawsDeadly ForceGun ControlGun PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceStand Your Ground Laws |
Author: Police Executive Research Forum Title: Guiding Principles On Use of Force Summary: American policing is at a critical juncture. Across the country, community members have been distressed by images of police officers using deadly force in questionable circumstances. These incidents are an infinitesimal fraction of the millions of interactions that take place between the police and the public every week. Most police officers never fire their guns (except during training) throughout their entire careers, yet they face enormous challenges and risks to their own safety on a regular basis and they perform their jobs admirably. But police chiefs tell us that even one bad encounter can damage trust with the community that took years to build. Others tell us that there is an upheaval within the policing profession itself. Officers who in the past exuded great pride in wearing the badge now feel underappreciated by some members of the public, who seem to question their every move and motive. PERF members also tell us that there is a crisis of public safety and officer safety. Violent crime shot up in many U.S. cities last year-the result, some have said, of the so-called "You Tube effect," with some officers hesitant to police proactively for fear of becoming the subject of the next viral video, and residents who have grown reluctant to partner with the police in community policing efforts. At the same time, violence against police officers, including attacks on officers just for being police officers, seems to have become more brutal and senseless. As a research organization of law enforcement executives, PERF hears from police chiefs and other officials every day. And what we are hearing is that the policing profession must take the initiative and address the serious challenges confronting it today. That means rethinking some of the fundamentals of policies, training, tactics, and equipment regarding use of force. We need to challenge the conventional thinking on how the police approach some potential use-of-force situations, in particular those that involve people with mental illness who do not have a firearm. Many of the strategies recommended in this report, such as Crisis Intervention Team training and de-escalation, are already in place in many police agencies, and have been for years. Other strategies, such as the Critical Decision-Making Model, are just beginning to be adopted by leading police agencies. This report reflects the latest thinking on police use-of-force issues from the perspective of many of the nation's leading police executives. These leaders are quoted in this report and in four previous PERF reports on these issues, three of which were released within the last year. Details: Washington, DC: PERF, 2016. 136p. Source: Internet Resource: Critical Issues in Policing Series: Accessed May 23, 2016 at: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/30%20guiding%20principles.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/30%20guiding%20principles.pdf Shelf Number: 139122 Keywords: Assaults Against PoliceCrisis InterventionDeadly ForcePolice LegitimacyPolice Use of ForcePolice-Citizen InteractionsPolicing Training |
Author: Magaloni, Beatriz Title: Killing in the Slums: An Impact Evaluation of Police Reform in Rio de Janeiro Summary: This paper evaluates the causal impact of Rio de Janeiro's Pacifying Police Units (UPPs), probably the largest-scale police reform initiative taking place in the developing world. The main goals of the UPPs were: 1) to regain control of territories previously dominated by armed criminal groups; and 2) to improve security for these communities through reduction of lethal violence. In the course of six years, more than 9,000 police officers were permanently assigned to the UPPs, servicing close to half million residents in the city slums (favelas). We are interested in understanding the process through which governments supply a basic public service - the police - in poor urban neighborhoods that have long been abandoned to the arbitrary rule of non-state armed actors. Moreover, our paper documents Rio de Janeiro's painful trajectory of police violence, illuminating some of it major institutional facilitators. Painstakingly geo-coding homicides and police killings from 2005 to 2013, we provide answers to some of the most critical questions about police use of lethal force, including the determinants of variations in who is targeted by police repression and how different strategies for policing the slums have impacted police killings. To evaluate the UPP impact on lethal violence, we use a variety of causal identification strategies that leverage spatial and temporal variation in the introduction of the UPP as well as geo-referenced data of more than 22,000 incidents of lethal violence. Our empirical models reveal that the UPP had mixed results. The introduction of the UPPs did not play a significant role in reducing murders in the favelas that were pacified. The UPP's failure to reduce homicides imply that the poor in the slums continue to be subject to two or three times higher murder rates than the white middle class. Nonetheless, the UPP is breaking long-held practices of extreme use of police lethal violence. Our empirical results convincingly demonstrate that police killings would have been 60 percent larger without the UPP intervention. Details: Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), 2015. 55p. Source: Internet Resource: CDDRL Working Paper: Accessed June 8, 2016 at: http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/cddrl_working_paper_dec15_rio.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Brazil URL: http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/cddrl_working_paper_dec15_rio.pdf Shelf Number: 139326 Keywords: Deadly ForceDrug TraffickingFavelasGang ViolenceHomicidesPacifying Police UnitsPolice ReformPolice Use of ForceSlums |
Author: Adil, Kamran Title: How is Police Violence Legitimized in Pakistan? Summary: People come into contact with the criminal justice system in Pakistan largely through the police, and therefore, much of the outcome of the system is dependent on the interaction among the different components of the system. The police functions that are assigned by the law can broadly be divided into riot control and investigation of criminal cases categories. Whereas the use of force for riot control is sanctioned by the law - with some limitations, it is totally prohibited for the purposes of investigation. Nevertheless, police violence is regularly applied in the second category and it is prevalent in three forms: (a) the use of force to extract evidence for prosecution, (b) the use of force as a police strategy by undertaking extrajudicial killings to control crime, and (c) the use of force to ensure compliance with the orders of courts, especially in the suo motu jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Through interviews with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and police officers, the research shows that with all three forms of violence, interactions between the various parties involved in the criminal justice system of Pakistan legitimize the use of force. Details: Bielefeld, Germany: Universitat Bielefeld, 2015. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Violence Research and Development Project - Papers - No. 9: Accessed June 11, 2016 at: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/icvr/docs/adil.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Pakistan URL: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/icvr/docs/adil.pdf Shelf Number: 139375 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice EthicsPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force |
Author: Pang, Min-Seok Title: Armed with Technology: The Effects on Fatal Shootings of Civilians by the Police Summary: The police in the United States shot and killed 986 civilians in 2015. Deaths of civilians by the police in recent years have led to protests and disruptions in several large cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Baltimore. In this study, we investigate how the use of technology by the police affects use of lethal force on civilians. Drawing upon signal detection theory, we propose a simple, stylized model on a police officer's decision to shoot. This model posits how the use of technology for intelligence access (e.g., statistical analyses of crime data) and evidence gathering (e.g., wearable body cameras) affects use of deadly force on civilians by the police. Empirical investigations with a large-scale dataset on fatal shootings revealed both encouraging and surprising findings. We found that both the use of smartphones and the statistical analyses of crime data are associated with a decrease in deadly shootings. In contrast, the use of wearable body cameras is related to an increase in the deaths of civilians by the police, contrary to an intuitive expectation that the adoption of body cameras would prevent deadly shootings. Interestingly, we also found that the observed effect of technology use is more pronounced for African Americans or Hispanics than Whites or Asians and for armed suspects than unarmed ones. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating the far-reaching role of technology use in novel contexts, specifically in highly risky, violent environments Details: Philadelphia: Fox School of Business, Temple University, 2016. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 22, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2808662 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2808662 Shelf Number: 139793 Keywords: Body-Worn CamerasDeadly ForceFatal ShootingsPolice AccountabilityPolice Use of Force |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "Such a Brutal Crackdown": Killings and Arrests in response to Ethiopia's Oromo Protests Summary: Since mid-November 2015, Ethiopia's Oromia region has been rocked by largely peaceful protests triggered by Ethiopian government plans to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, and displace ethnic Oromo farmers. State security forces have used excessive and lethal force to respond to the protests, killing an estimated 400 people and injuring thousands. Security forces have also arrested tens of thousands of people and hundreds of others have been forcibly disappeared. Based on more than 125 interviews conducted inside Ethiopia and abroad, "Such a Brutal Crackdown" describes and analyses a grossly underreported crisis that poses a massive political challenge for Ethiopia's government. Although the demonstrations initially concerned the government's expansion plans, the killings and arrests, coupled with longstanding grievances from the Oromo community, have further fueled the protests. Many of those killed or detained were students under 18. The authorities have also arrested opposition politicians, musicians, teachers and other influential Oromos. Some have been prosecuted under Ethiopia's draconian counterterrorism law. The government has also sought to restrict information about the protests by detaining journalists covering the events and blocking social media and other means of communication. Although the protests have largely subsided since mid-April, thousands of students and others have fled their homes or are in detention, education has been disrupted in many locations, and tensions remain high. This underscores the need for the Ethiopian government to support a credible investigation into the events, release those who have been wrongfully detained, and take other urgent measures to redress the serious abuses that have been committed. Details: New York: HRW, 2016. 86p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 25, 2016 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/ethiopia0616web.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Ethiopia URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/ethiopia0616web.pdf Shelf Number: 139838 Keywords: Deadly ForceDisappearancesHuman Rights AbusesProtest MovementsUse of Force |
Author: Ross, Cody T. Title: A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011-2014 Summary: A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of police-involved homicide, this data set is less likely to be biased by police reporting practices. County-specific relative risk outcomes of being shot by police are estimated as a function of the interaction of: 1) whether suspects/civilians were armed or unarmed, and 2) the race/ethnicity of the suspects/civilians. The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates Details: PLOS One, 2015. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 30, 2016 at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854.PDF Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854.PDF Shelf Number: 139900 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice ShootingsPolice Use of ForceRacial BiasRacial DiscriminationRacial Profiling in Law Enforcement |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division Title: Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department Summary: This report present the outcome of the Department of Justice's investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department (BP D). After engaging in a thorough investigation, initiated at the request of the City of Baltimore and BPD, the Department of Justice concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law. BPD engages in a pattern or practice of: (1) making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests; (2) using enforcement strategies that produce severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches and arrests of African Americans; (3) using excessive force; and (4) retaliating against people engaging in constitutionally -protected expression. This pattern or practice is driven by systemic deficiencies in BPD's policies, training, supervision, and ac countability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of the federal law. We recognize the challenges faced by police officers in Baltimore and other communities around the country. Every day, police officers risk their lives to uphold the law and keep our communities safe. Investigatory stops, arrests, and force - including, at times, deadly force - are all necessary tools used by BPD officers to do their jobs and protect the safety of thems elves and others. Providing policing services in many parts of Baltimore is particularly challenging, where officers regularly confront complex social problems rooted in poverty, racial segregation and deficient educational, employment and housing opportunities. Still, most BPD officers work hard to provide vital services to the community. The pattern or practice occurs as a result of systemic deficiencies at BPD. The agency fails to provide officers with sufficient policy guidance and training; fails to collect and analyze data regarding officers' activities; and fails to hold officers accountable for misconduct. BPD also fails to equip officers with the necessary equipment and resources they need to police safely, constitutionally, and effectively. Each of these systemic deficiencies contributes to the constitutional and statutory violations we observed. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2016. 164p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 25, 2016 at: http://civilrights.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/20160810_DOJ%20BPD%20Report-FINAL.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://civilrights.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/20160810_DOJ%20BPD%20Report-FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 140031 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice BrutalityPolice DiscretionPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force |
Author: Carbado, Devon W. Title: From Stopping Black People to Killing Black People: The Fourth Amendment Pathways to Police Violence Summary: 2014 to 2016 likely will go down as a significant if not watershed moment in the history of U.S. race relations. Police killing of African Americans has engendered further conversations about race and policing. Yet, in most of the discussions about these tragic deaths, little attention has been paid to a significant dimension of the police violence problem: the legalization of racial profiling in Fourth Amendment law. This legalization of racial profiling is not a sideline or peripheral feature of Fourth Amendment law. It is embedded in the analytical structure of the doctrine in ways that enable police officers to force engagements with African Americans with little or no basis. The frequency of these engagements exposes African Americans not only to the violence of ongoing police surveillance, contact, and social control but also to the violence of serious bodily injury and death. Which is to say, Fourth Amendment law facilitates the space between stopping black people and killing black people. This Article demonstrates precisely how by employing a series of hypotheticals to reveal the ways in which the extraordinary violence police officers often use against Africans Americans can grow out of the ordinary police interactions Fourth Amendment law empowers police officers to stage. Details: Los Angeles: UCLA School of Law, 2016. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 16-41 : Accessed October 6, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2844312 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2844312 Shelf Number: 147823 Keywords: African AmericansDeadly ForceFourth AmendmentPolice Use of ForceRacial Profiling |
Author: Maryland. Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention Title: Second Report to the State of Maryland Under House Bill 954: Deaths Involving a Law Enforcement Officer 3-Year Report Summary: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report provides information relating to the cases where individuals died when law enforcement officers were present or when a law enforcement officer was killed in the line of duty. This report describes in detail the methodology used to gather and report on the information required under House Bill 954, "Deaths Involving a Law Enforcement Officer." While the report details statistical and demographic information regarding these cases, familiarization with the data collection methodology, as well as the underlying facts of each case is a crucial component of this report. INTRODUCTION On May 12, 2015, Governor Larry Hogan signed into law Maryland House Bill 954 (Chapter 134 of 2015, hereinafter HB 954), "Deaths Involving a Law Enforcement Officer" (Attachment A). For the first time in Maryland, a legal mechanism is now in place for capturing and reporting to the public each time a citizen dies during a police encounter, or a law enforcement officer dies in the line of duty. Effective July 1, 2015 each local and State Law Enforcement Agency in Maryland was required to provide the Governor's Office of Crime Control & Prevention with information about each officer-involved death, and officer death in the line of duty that involves a law enforcement officer employed by their agency. This report provides the data collected for the 3 year reporting period from January 1, 2013 – December 31, 2015. Details: Annapolis, MD: Governor's Office, 2016. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 10, 2016 at: https://goccp.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/deaths-involving-law-enforcement-2013-2015.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://goccp.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/deaths-involving-law-enforcement-2013-2015.pdf Shelf Number: 146419 Keywords: Deadly ForceLine-of-Duty DeathsOfficer-Involved Death |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "Bound by Brotherhood": India's Failure to End Killings in Police Custody Summary: Indian police often torture criminal suspects to punish them, to gather information, or to coerce confessions. Despite changes in laws and guidelines and the promise of police reforms since 1997, official data shows at least 591 people died in police custody between 2010 and 2015. While police blame most of the deaths on suicide, illness, or natural causes, in many such cases family members allege that the deaths were the result of torture; allegations sometimes supported by independent investigations. Bound by Brotherhood examines the reasons for the continuing impunity for custodial deaths in India, and recommends steps that authorities should take to end it. It details the scope of the problem drawing on in-depth Human Rights Watch investigations into 17 custodial deaths that occurred between 2009 and 2015. In most of these cases, family members, with the assistance of lawyers and activists, were able to seek new inquiries, thus providing access to witness testimonies, autopsy reports, or police statements. In each of the 17 cases, the police did not follow proper arrest procedures—including documenting the arrest, notifying family members, or producing the suspect before a magistrate within 24 hours—which made the suspect more vulnerable to abuse and may have contributed to a belief by police that any mistreatment could be covered up. In most of the cases, investigating authorities, mainly the police, failed to take steps that could have helped ensure accountability for the deaths. Human Rights Watch calls on the Indian government to strictly enforce existing law and guidelines on arrest and detention and ensure that police officers implicated in torture and other ill-treatment, regardless of rank, are disciplined or prosecuted as appropriate. Details: New York: HRW, 2016. 128p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 27, 2017 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/india1216_web_0.pdf Year: 2016 Country: India URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/india1216_web_0.pdf Shelf Number: 144918 Keywords: Deadly ForceDeaths in CustodyHomicidesPolice BrutalityPolice CustodyPolice Use of ForceTorture |
Author: Kreuzer, Peter Title: If they resist, kill them all: Police vigilantism in the Philippines Summary: In May of 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines and inaugurated into office on June 30. During the election campaign he was already focusing on ridding the country of drug-related crime and indicated his willingness to tolerate, if not support, the killing of suspects by the police. After entering office, he officially launched a comprehensive campaign against drug-related crime that has since cost the lives of several thousand suspects. While anonymous vigilantes are responsible for a significant share, if not the majority of these extralegal killings, in four months the police killed more than 1,000 suspects in so-called "legitimate encounters" that were justified as actions carried out in self-defense. This report then looks at a vastly under-researched phenomenon: extrajudicial police vigilantism involving killings by on-duty police officers that are masked as "legitimate encounters" with criminals. It argues that, while the Philippines have a strong tradition of death-squad killings, this has been complemented for a long time by a practice of "social cleansing" that did not make it necessary for agents of the state to deny complicity: official police vigilantism. On the contrary, such vigilante killings could be utilized as evidence of a strong state. However, in the past such police vigilantism was a local phenomenon. This changed under the new president, who nationalized the local practice and thereby changed its dynamics. This report provides an overview of the pattern of killings of suspects by members of the Philippine National Police while on duty currently taking place. The main section of the report analyzes past patterns of “legitimate encounters” in a number of selected regions and provinces of the Philippines. The integration of these two datasets allows for a comparison not only among regions and provinces but also over time. Consideration of this quantitative data is complemented by sketches of the dynamics driving current reactions to the new policy in a number of provinces and cities. Going beyond the Philippines, this study also provides a comparative dataset on similar forms of deadly police violence for a small set of countries, regions and cities that permits a comparison of past and present Philippines practice. The detailed analysis shows that: • in most, but not all of the various case studies, there has been a long tradition of police-vigilantism, • regions, provinces and cities that have exhibited higher levels of police vigilantism in the past tend to react more strongly to the presidential campaign that legitimized extralegal killings under the pretext of a "legitimate encounter," • those cases with the highest levels of police vigilantism both now and in the past tend to be the most "developed" ones, fulfilling a metropolitan function at either a national or regional level, • there is no link between threats to the police and their willingness to kill suspects in "legitimate encounters," • prior to the present wave of extrajudicial killings, the magnitude of violent "legitimate encounters" was moderate, although they were carried out by clearly vigilante police forces targeting suspects, • while the patterns of "legitimate encounters" have not changed in the current campaign, the number of extra-legal killings has risen dramatically since the election of President Duterte, • Philippines police officers did not have to learn a new practice; they did not have to unlearn firmly established convictions about due process. They transformed an established but sparingly used practice into a key instrument for reducing crime and for strengthening institutions, • local leaders' reactions to the presidential campaign depend to a significant extent on the local leaders' past perceptions of utilizing the police as a force for "social cleansing" and the leaders’ current power base in the face of rising pressure to conform to the central leadership’s expectations. Going beyond empirical analysis of the data on past and present police vigilantism in the Philippines, I maintain that the present administration uses police vigilantism on the national level to simulate a strong state and thereby achieve widespread public acclaim and acquiescence. By establishing the Philippine National Police as his power base, the new president has within a few months successfully hollowed out democratic checks and balances and installed himself as the foremost “boss” at the national level. While forceful personalities are a regular feature of Philippines politics, their power is normally limited by other bosses who contend for power and wealth. Like Ferdinand Marcos before him, Rodrigo Duterte is well on his way to neutralizing this division of powers – the only one that works well in the Philippines during "normal" times. Currently, it seems that the Philippines are on a direct path toward a regime that may be likened to an electoral dictatorship, where a president, through the shrewd manipulation of public discourse and the resulting outstanding public support, and with the help of the national police, is succeeding in subjugating the various political families that make up the Philippines political elite. Details: Frankfurt am Main: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2016. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: PRIF Report No. 142 : Accessed February 1, 2017 at: https://www.hsfk.de/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_publikationen/prif142.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Philippines URL: https://www.hsfk.de/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_publikationen/prif142.pdf Shelf Number: 145096 Keywords: Deadly ForceDrug OffendersExtrajudicial KillingsPolice BrutalityPolice Use of ForcePolice ViolenceVigilantism |
Author: Bromwich Group LLC Title: The Durability of Police Reform: The Metropolitan Police Department and Use of Force: 2008-2015 Summary: This report evaluates whether the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) remains in compliance with the June 2001 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between MPD, the District of Columbia, and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The 2001 MOA required MPD to adopt a broad set of reforms relating to the use of force by police officers, and to incorporate those reforms into policies, procedures, and training. The goal was to create a culture of accountability and constitutional policing within MPD. Although MPD is currently under no legal obligation to maintain these reforms, they establish meaningful benchmarks for assessing MPD's current management of the use of force. We were asked to undertake this review by the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA). This report reflects fieldwork conducted from May through late September 2015 and includes certain use of force data through the end of 2015. We have seen much that is positive in our review of MPD. MPD's command staff remains committed to limiting and managing use of force - and to fair and constitutional policing. MPD has reduced its use of the most serious types of force, including firearms, even during periods of increased crime in the District of Columbia. Importantly, we have seen no evidence that the excessive use of force has reemerged as a problem within MPD. But we have also identified some significant shortcomings that need to be addressed, including changes in the requirements for reporting and investigating use of force that impair MPD's ability to manage use of force, and declines in the quality of use of force investigations. In addition, we found systemic problems, involving both MPD and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (USAO), that result in excessive delays in resolving officer-involved fatal shootings. All of this is described in detail in this report. Our review, although limited to MPD, comes at a time of intense national focus on the relationship between local law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. Within the last two years alone, the use of force policies and practices of police departments across the country - in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City, Cleveland, Albuquerque, Newark, and, most recently, Chicago - have been the focus of community unrest, DOJ civil rights investigations, and intense media scrutiny. In addition, in December 2014, President Obama created the Task Force on 21st Century Policing with a mandate to examine use of force issues. MPD was one of the first local law enforcement agencies to successfully navigate a reform process initially triggered by profound concerns about its use of force and its management of use of force. Beginning in 1999, MPD experienced a comprehensive, two-year DOJ civil rights investigation focusing on use of force, a binding agreement by MPD and the District of Columbia to implement substantial reforms, and a multi-year period of outside independent monitoring. As far as we know, this review marks the first retrospective examination of its kind - an analysis of the durability of such use of force reforms many years after independent monitoring ended - of any of the law enforcement agencies investigated by DOJ during the period 1994-2004, the first decade during which DOJ had statutory authority to investigate such matters. Because of limitations of time and resources, we did not review all aspects of MPD's continued adherence to the MOA. Instead, we selected issues that we considered among the most significant reforms embodied in the MOA and implemented within MPD. We focused on the adequacy of MPD's use of force policies; MPD's use of force investigations; the operations of MPD's Use of Force Review Board (UFRB); MPD's systems for dealing with at-risk officers; and the operations of MPD's Office of Risk Management, the Department's internal oversight entity. In addition, we reviewed three officer-involved fatal shooting cases, and examined issues related to the alleged "use and potential abuse" of charges for alleged assaults on police officers. The Review Team received excellent cooperation from MPD throughout this project, from our project liaison up to and including Chief Cathy L. Lanier. From the outset, Chief Lanier and her command staff showed strong interest in the results of our work and demonstrated a willingness to promptly address some of the deficiencies we identified. In early December, we circulated a draft of this report to MPD, inviting its comments and its responses to the report's 38 recommendations. We met with Chief Lanier and her staff for approximately four hours on December 16, and received a 42-page written response from MPD on December 22. We believe this process, and MPD's deep engagement with it, have resulted in a better report. Of our 38 recommendations, MPD has said it agrees with and will implement 15, agrees in part with 13, and disagrees with 10 - although of the 10 with which it disagrees, four relate to a new MPD program, and MPD therefore views the recommendations as premature. Details: Washington, DC: Office of the District of Columbia Auditor, 2016. 343p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 6, 2017 at: http://www.dcauditor.org/sites/default/files/Full%20Report_2.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.dcauditor.org/sites/default/files/Full%20Report_2.pdf Shelf Number: 146028 Keywords: Civil Rights ViolationsDeadly ForcePolicePolice AccountabilityPolice BrutalityPolice ReformPolice Use of Force |
Author: African American Policy Forum Title: Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women Summary: In 2015 alone, at least six Black women have been killed by or after encounters with police. For instance, just before Freddie Gray's case grabbed national attention, police killed unarmed Mya Hall "a Black transgender woman" on the outskirts of Baltimore. Alleged to be driving a stolen car, Hall took a wrong turn onto NSA property and was shot to death by officers after the car crashed into the security gate and a police cruiser. No action has been taken to date with respect to the officers responsible for her death. In April, police fatally shot Alexia Christian while she was being handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser. And in March in Ventura, California, police officers shot and killed Meagan Hockaday - a young mother of three - within 20 seconds of entering her home in response to a domestic disturbance. Say Her Name responds to increasing calls for attention to police violence against Black women by offering a resource to help ensure that Black women's stories are integrated into demands for justice, policy responses to police violence, and media representations of victims and survivors of police brutality. The brief concludes with recommendations for engaging communities in conversation and advocacy around Black women's experiences of police violence, considering race and gender in policy initiatives to combat state violence, and adopting policies to end sexual abuse and harassment by police officers. Details: New York: African American Policy Forum, 2015. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 8, 2017 at: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/55a810d7e4b058f342f55873/1437077719984/AAPF_SMN_Brief_full_singles.compressed.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/55a810d7e4b058f342f55873/1437077719984/AAPF_SMN_Brief_full_singles.compressed.pdf Shelf Number: 146005 Keywords: African AmericansDeadly ForceMinoritiesPolice BrutalityPolice MisconductPolice Use of ForceViolence Against Women |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "License to Kill" : Philippine Police Killings in Duterte's "War on Drugs" Summary: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs" has produced a campaign of unlawful killings by Philippine National Police personnel and unidentified "vigilantes" that has resulted in the deaths of more than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers since July 1, 2016. Duterte's public endorsement of the campaign implicates him and other senior figures in possible incitement to violence, instigation of murder and in command responsibility for crimes against humanity. "License to Kill": Philippine Police Killings in Duterte’s “War on Drugs,” is based on several dozen interviews with family members of victims of police killings, witnesses, journalists and human rights activists. The report exposes the falsehood of official police reports that invariably assert self-defense to justify unlawful police killings. Instead, police routinely carry out extrajudicial killings of drug suspects and then cover-up those crimes. In several instances Human Rights Watch investigated, suspects in police custody were later found dead and classified by police as "found bodies," casting doubt on government assertions that most killings have been committed by vigilantes or rival drug gangs. The report also documents the lack of a cohesive approach by the Philippines’ allies, including the United States, Japan and the European Union, to pressure the government to stop these killings and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The report calls for Duterte to publicly denounce extrajudicial killings and press for the investigation and prosecution of police and other officials implicated in such abuses. In addition, the United Nations should launch an independent international investigation into the killings. Finally, the report urges foreign donors to immediately suspend any assistance or weapons sales to the police until the "drug war" killings end and meaningful investigations into those killings are underway. Details: New York: HRW, 2017. 134p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed march 2, 2017 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Philippines URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf Shelf Number: 141291 Keywords: Deadly ForceDrug EnforcementExtrajudicial ExecutionsPolice Use of ForceVigilantesWar on Drugs |
Author: Subramanian, Ram Title: To Protect and Serve: New Trends in State-Level Policing Reform, 2015-2016 Summary: In 2015 and 2016, 34 states and the District of Columbia passed at least 79 bills, executive orders, or resolutions to change some aspect of policing policy or practice. This is significant, since policing reform is largely the province of local jurisdictions or specific police departments. In contrast, in the three years prior to the study period-between 2012 and 2014-there were few pieces of state legislation that dealt with policing. In reviewing legislative activity over the last two years, the Vera Institute of Justice found that states focused reform efforts in the following three areas: > improving policing practices around use of force, racial profiling, and vulnerable populations; > documenting police operations through the increased use of body-worn cameras, enhanced protections for public recordings of police, and new requirements for maintaining and reporting data on police operations; and > improving accountability in instances of police use of force and misconduct cases, especially those incidents that result in death. By providing concise summaries of representative legislation in each area, this report aims to inform policymakers and members of the public who are looking to understand state-level changes in policing policy and practice. Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 8, 2017 at: https://www.vera.org/publications/protect-and-serve-policing-trends-2015-2016 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.vera.org/publications/protect-and-serve-policing-trends-2015-2016 Shelf Number: 144751 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice AdministrationPolice EffectivenessPolice LegitimacyPolice ReformPolice Use of ForcePolicing |
Author: Rostker, Bernard D. Title: Evaluation of the New York City Police Department Firearm Training and Firearm-Discharge Review Process Summary: The discharging of a firearm by a member of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) is a significant event. Every time an NYPD officer's weapon is fired, except when it is fired (or discharged) at a firing range, the officer makes a report and the department undertakes an investigation to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident. In January 2007, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly wanted to make sure that his department was doing everything necessary to minimize the unnecessary discharge of firearms. He asked the RAND Corporation to examine the quality and completeness of the NYPD's firearm-training program and identify potential improvements in the design and delivery of the curriculum, the technology used, the frequency and duration of training sessions, the tactics and procedures on which the training is based, and the police department's firearm-discharge review process. Starting in February 2007, an interdisciplinary team from RAND met with NYPD officials to observe training and to collect data for future analysis. During the spring and summer of 2007, the team met numerous times with the senior uniformed and civilian staff at headquarters, at the academy, at the range, and (with officers) at precincts. Over the subsequent nine months, RAND researchers talked with NYPD plainclothes and uniformed members, collected and reviewed policy documents, and examined the relevant general literature on policing, the use of force, and reflexive and contagious shooting. In addition, the team analyzed firearm-discharge cases; NYPD personnel data; and stop, question, and frisk report data, as well as data derived from the automated, online booking system. The RAND team also collected information from a number of other police departments and sponsored a daylong discussion of the issue with a panel of independent national experts. The panel discussions were helpful in checking preliminary findings and identifying areas for further investigation. While the subject of this study is firearm discharge and a good deal of the general police literature on this subject is in the context of the training in, and use of, the weapon, the link between firearm training and the subsequent use of deadly force is not clear and has led some researchers to question the role that firearm training plays in subsequent uses of deadly force. Moreover, as sociologist Albert J. Reiss Jr. pointed out, "To understand how one might avert or preclude the use of deadly force in situations in which it might be a likely alternative, we need to understand how the organization of police departments and of police work regulate and restrict the use of deadly force and alternatives to its use" (Reiss, 1980, p. 133). Accordingly, the RAND team observed the in-service training that recruits and members of the service (MOSs) receive on the use-of-force continuum, a continuum that ranges from "verbal persuasion" to the use of "deadly force" (NYPD Police Academy, 2007a, p. 7); how to deal with uncooperative suspects; and how to control situations to minimize the use of firearms. During the study, we became acutely aware that we were reviewing only cases in which officers discharged their weapons. We recognize that different officers will approach similar situations in different ways and that there is no single test to determine the correctness of an officer's decision to use deadly force. The legal standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Graham v Connor is "reasonableness" (490 U.S. 386, 109 S. Ct. 1865, May 15, 1989). Certainly, in the future, a great deal may be learned from cases in which an officers could deescalate the situation and did not have to revert to deadly force. However, such an inquiry was beyond the scope of this study. Details: Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008. 142p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 13, 2017 at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/RAND_FirearmEvaluation.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/RAND_FirearmEvaluation.pdf Shelf Number: 110813 Keywords: Deadly ForceFirearm Training Police Education and Training Police Shootings Police Use of Force |
Author: Morrison, Gregory B. Title: Police Firearms Training Survey: Final Report Summary: The Police Firearms Training Survey was administered to departments around the US during the late summer and fall of 2008. The purpose was to collect data on handgun/deadly force training policies and practices. There have been previous surveys on firearm training, most recently two in Washington State during the late 1990s, and in the early 2000s one focused on larger municipal, urban county and state departments. The present survey, however, sought a national snapshot of programs. As expected, the largest group of participants was comprised of local (i.e. city and county) departments. This report therefore focuses on the policies and practices of several hundred (n=312) local departments regarding instructor staffing and development; training that includes tactics and judgment; requalifying; and the assessment of officer-involved shootings (OIS). As found through past surveys, the over-arching characteristic of in-service handgun/deadly force training was the wide latitude exercised by departments. This variability is unlikely to surprise experienced practitioners or researchers who study police training. The nature and extent of this latitude, however, raise concerns about how prepared many police officers are for encounters that reasonably could involve the use or threatened use of deadly force. Some findings are encouraging, but others appear likely to have serious implications for officer and public safety; influence the public's perception of police progress on accountability; and impact on costs as measured in lives, serious injuries, disabilities and civil litigation. Staffing and instructor development: Some departments rely solely on fulltime instructors whose principal responsibility is firearms and related training. Most departments, however, depend on instructors for whom this responsibility is a collateral duty (i.e. a secondary extra responsibility) and, thus, is a relatively infrequent undertaking. The source of certification for handgun/deadly force instructors varies, though state-run or -approved courses are the norm. Continuing education and training for these instructors is far from universal, however, and varies in both its frequency and duration. Little is known about its content or the quality of its delivery. Training and requalifying: Over the past two decades, a clearer distinction has grown between "training" to maintain existing skills and introducing new ones, and rote "requalifying" on basic marksmanship skills. Departments nevertheless vary widely in their allotment of resources to these two major activities. Some departments requalify to the near exclusion of training, while many roughly split their resources evenly between training and requalifying. Others, however, primarily spend their resources on training, such as scenario-based activities that have in recent years become relatively common. As a result, these particular departments minimize their use of resources for rote marksmanship testing so as to concentrate on what are believed to be far more beneficial experiences. Yet scenario-based training takes three forms: computer-based, projected images of unfolding encounters; role-playing between trainers and trainees using either firearms modified to fire marking cartridges, paint-ball "guns" or non-firing props; and live-fire scenarios at conventional firing ranges where targets are used present varying threat levels and placement, and officers must contend with obstacles and make suitable use of cover and/or concealment. Not only do these three formats provide substantially different experiences qualitatively, but departments also vary widely on how many scenarios officers participate in during the typical training year. Assessing performance: Conveying vital officer performance information from field shootings and other high-risk encounters to trainers who design and deliver programming is indispensable. Nevertheless, few departments appear to have implemented such feedback loops, ones not to be confused with administrative investigations to determine adherence to policy and/or consider criminal charges against officers. Furthermore, trainers often are not provided access to the results of administrative investigations that could provide some useful information for continuously improving programs. History suggests that much of this disconnectedness is attributable to the combination of a protectiveness born of civil litigation and the lethargic development of handgun/deadly force training until the 1990s. The PFTS, along with previous research on deadly force training, point to several shortcomings that need attention from practitioners and researchers. For one, there should be training-specific feedback loops at larger municipal and urban county departments. The nature and extent of this feedback needs to revolve around evaluating a full array of connections between (1) training program content, delivery and certifying assessments and (2) officer performances in high-risk field encounters. Because larger departments experience high-risk encounters and officer-involved shootings on a relatively regular basis, sufficient data to support meaningful research and program evaluation projects would be available for internal analysis as well as larger projects examining performance across departments. The longstanding practice of academy qualifying followed by in-service requalifying is overdue for a conceptual overhaul because it remains deeply rooted in narrow tests of marksmanship and gunhandling. This is inadequate given contemporary assortments of training activities that feature tactics and judgment that, one hopes, positively influences the outcomes of high-risk encounters. Finally, a promising avenue for addressing these and other important aspects to contemporary deadly force training will be practitioner-researcher collaborative studies. Even though maximizing officer performance potential would enhance both police and public safety, the role of science in improving training for high-risk encounters is far from being fully exploited. This report provides one contribution to a body of knowledge that needs to be more fully developed during the remainder of the first quarter of the 21st century. We have learned many things about training and the use of deadly force in recent years, but there is much we do not know. We therefore need to work diligently to fill the gaps, some of which this study describes and discusses. The focus of future efforts should be to identify approaches that have a compelling empirical record on maximizing the safe, appropriate and effective use or threatened use of deadly force in high-risk encounters. Model programs beneficial to a wide range of federal, state and local police clearly comprise a worthwhile longterm goal. Details: Muncie, IN: Ball State University, 2011. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 28, 2017 at: ibrarian.net/navon/paper/Police_Firearms_Training_Survey___Final_Report.pdf? Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: ibrarian.net/navon/paper/Police_Firearms_Training_Survey___Final_Report.pdf?. Shelf Number: 146911 Keywords: Deadly ForceOfficer-Involved ShootingsPolice Education and TrainingPolice Firearms TrainingPolice Use of Force |
Author: Fuller, Doris A. Title: Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters Summary: An estimated 7.9 million adults in the United States live with a severe mental illness that disorders their thinking. Treatment in most cases can control psychiatric symptoms common to these diseases, but the system that once delivered psychiatric care for them has been systematically dismantled over the last half-century. Today, half the population with these diseases is not taking medication or receiving other care on any given day. Hundreds of thousands of these men and women live desperate lives. They sleep on the streets, overflow emergency rooms and, increasingly, overwhelm the criminal justice system. Numbering somewhat fewer than 4 in every 100 adults in America, individuals with severe mental illness generate no less than 1 in 10 calls for police service and occupy at least 1 in 5 of America's prison and jail beds. An estimated 1 in 3 individuals transported to hospital emergency rooms in psychiatric crisis are taken there by police. Individuals with mental illness also make up a disproportionate number of those killed at the very first step of the criminal justice process: while being approached or stopped by law enforcement in the community. Enormous official and public attention has become focused on the official undercounting of fatal police shootings; barely noted in the uproar has been the role of severe mental illness - a medical condition that, when treated, demonstrably reduces the likelihood of interacting with police or being arrested, much less dying in the process. By all accounts - official and unofficial - a minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness. At this rate, the risk of being killed during a police incident is 16 times greater for individuals with untreated mental illness than for other civilians approached or stopped by officers. Where official government data regarding police shootings and mental illness have been analyzed - in one U.S. city and several other Western countries - the findings indicate that mental health disorders are a factor in as many as 1 in 2 fatal law enforcement encounters. Given the prevalence of mental illness in police shootings, reducing encounters between on-duty law enforcement and individuals with the most severe psychiatric diseases may represent the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States. Evidence-based treatment for severe mental illness exists. The disproportionate risk for criminal justice involvement associated with mental illness occurs chiefly among the less than 2% of the adult population with untreated severe mental illness. Treating the untreated is a proven practice for reducing the role of mental illness in all criminal justice involvement, including in deadly law enforcement encounters. But - in a data- and cost-driven world - making the case to invest in any solution requires reliable data about the scope and nature of the problem to be addressed. Reliable data about fatal law enforcement encounters in general do not exist, much less data about the role of mental illness in them. Details: Arlington, VA: Treatment Advocacy Center, 2015. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 1, 2017 at: http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/overlooked-in-the-undercounted.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/overlooked-in-the-undercounted.pdf Shelf Number: 148679 Keywords: Deadly ForceMental Health Services Mentally Ill Persons Officer-Involved Shootings Police Shootings Police Use of Force |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "Special Mission": Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo Languages Summary: Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 62 people and arrested hundreds of others during protests across the country between December 19 and 22, 2016, after President Joseph Kabila refused to step down at the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit. In the lead-up to the December protests, and as pressure on Kabila escalated, senior Congolese security force officers had mobilized at least 200 and likely many more former M23 rebel fighters from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda to protect Kabila and help quash the anti-Kabila protests. M23 fighters were integrated into Congolese army, police, and Republican Guard units and given explicit orders to use lethal force, including at "point-blank range" if necessary. With more protests planned in the coming weeks - nearly one year past the end of Kabila's constitutional mandate - the findings in this report raise concerns about further violence and repression. "Special Mission": Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo is based on over 120 interviews, including with victims and witnesses of abuses, 9 Congolese security force officers, and 21 M23 combatants, commanders, and political leaders. Research was conducted in Kinshasa, Goma, and Lubumbashi in Congo, and in Rwanda and Uganda from December 2016 to November 2017. Human Rights Watch calls on President Kabila and other senior officials to end all unlawful and excessive use of force and other forms of repression against protesters, activists, and the political opposition, and to cease all recruitment of M23 fighters to participate in such repression. Congo's international partners should increase the pressure on Kabila to step down as required by the constitution and support a peaceful transition and credible elections. Details: New York: HRW, 2017. 81p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 17, 2018 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/drc1217_web2_0.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Congo, Democratic Republic URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/drc1217_web2_0.pdf Shelf Number: 148848 Keywords: Deadly ForceHuman Rights AbusesProtests and DemonstrationsSecurity Forces |
Author: California. Office of the Attorney General Title: URSUS: Use of Force Incident Reporting Summary: URSUS, 2016 presents a summary overview of use of force and discharge of firearm incidents as defined in Government Code section 12525.2. Due to the narrow definition of this statute, the data contained in this report only represent incidents where use of force resulted in serious bodily injury or death or the discharge of a firearm. Caution should be used in making comparisons or generalizations with this data set as it does not contain the full spectrum of use of force incidents that occurred in California. - In 2016, there were 782 incidents that involved use of force resulting in serious bodily injury or death of a civilian or officer; or the discharge of a firearm. - Of the 782 incidents, 328 reported a discharge of a firearm. - Of the 782 incidents, 49.0 percent (383) occurred during a call for service, 17.8 percent (139) resulted from a vehicle/bike/pedestrian stop, and 16.2 percent (127) occurred while either a crime was in progress or while officers were investing suspicious persons or circumstances. - Of the 782 incidents, 75.7 percent (592) resulted in an arrest. (Tables 2A and 2B) - In 2016, 832 civilians were involved in incidents that involved the discharge of a firearm or use of force resulting in serious bodily injury or death. - Of the 832 civilians, 92.3 percent (768) were male, 6.0 percent (50) were female, and 1.7 percent (14) fled the scene and their gender was unknown. - Of the 832 civilians, 42.2 percent (351) were Hispanic, 30.0 percent (250) were white, and 19.6 percent (163) were black. - Of the 832 civilians, 30.9 percent (257) were hit by the discharge of a firearm, 16.7 (139) and 13.7 percent (114) received force by control hold/ takedown tactics and electronic control device deployment, respectively. - Of the 832 civilians, 63.8 percent (531) were injured, 15.6 percent (130) were not injured, and 18.9 percent (157) died. (Table 21) - Of the 832 civilians, 476 were perceived armed and 354 were confirmed armed. were involved in incidents that involved the discharge of a firearm or use of force resulting in serious bodily injury or death. - Of the 1,729 officers, 95.0 percent (1,642) were male and 5.0 percent (87) were female. - Of the 1,729 officers, 56.5 percent (977) were white, 31.7 percent (548) were Hispanic, 4.8 percent (83) were Asian/Pacific Islander, and 3.4 percent (59) were black. - Of the 1,729 officers, 43.7 percent (755) did not receive force, 24.2 percent (419) received force during physical contact with a civilian, and 9.8 percent (169) received force by the discharge of a firearm. - Of the 1,729 officers, 20.2 percent (349) were injured, 79.5 percent (1,374) were not injured, and 0.3 percent (6) died. - Of the 1,729 officers, 1,603 reported use of force to affect arrest/take into custody (1,209), to overcome resistance (381), or to prevent escape (13). Details: Sacramento: The Office, 2016. 68p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 12, 2018 at: http://www.jrsa.org/pubs/sac-digest/vol-27/ca-ursus-2016.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.jrsa.org/pubs/sac-digest/vol-27/ca-ursus-2016.pdf Shelf Number: 149440 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice BehaviorPolice StatisticsPolice Use of Force |
Author: Johnson, Odis, Jr. Title: Race, Gender, and the Contexts of Unarmed Fatal Interactions with Police Summary: In the post-Ferguson era, public opinion remains divided about the ways that race and gender intersect in relation to law enforcement's use of lethal force. Addressing this tension within research, we explored race-gender differences in the likelihood of being killed while unarmed. More specifically, we identified 1762 fatal interactions with police that occurred over a 20 month time period, and merged them with the nationally representative Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, Uniform Crime Reports data, and census characteristics. Using hierarchical linear models, we find the odds that black Americans will be killed by police when unarmed are nearly 7 to 1-more than double the odds found in research to date-and due primarily to the unarmed status of black women. Details: St. Louis, MO: Washington University in St. Louis, 2018. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 20, 2018 at: https://cpb-us-west-2-juc1ugur1qwqqqo4.stackpathdns.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/b/1205/files/2018/02/Race-Gender-and-Unarmed-1y6zo9a.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://cpb-us-west-2-juc1ugur1qwqqqo4.stackpathdns.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/b/1205/files/2018/02/Race-Gender-and-Unarmed-1y6zo9a.pdf Shelf Number: 149534 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice BrutalityPolice Use of ForceRacial Disprities |
Author: Morin, Rich Title: Behind the Badge: Amid protests and calls for reform, how police view their jobs, key issues and recent fatal encounters between blacks and police Summary: Police work has always been hard. Today police say it is even harder. In a new Pew Research Center national survey conducted by the National Police Research Platform, majorities of police officers say that recent high-profile fatal encounters between black citizens and police officers have made their jobs riskier, aggravated tensions between police and blacks, and left many officers reluctant to fully carry out some of their duties. The wide-ranging survey, one of the largest ever conducted with a nationally representative sample of police, draws on the attitudes and experiences of nearly 8,000 policemen and women from departments with at least 100 officers. It comes at a crisis point in America's relationship with the men and women who enforce its laws, precipitated by a series of deaths of black Americans during encounters with the police that have energized a vigorous national debate over police conduct and methods. Within America's police and sheriff's departments, the survey finds that the ramifications of these deadly encounters have been less visible than the public protests, but no less profound. Three-quarters say the incidents have increased tensions between police and blacks in their communities. About as many (72%) say officers in their department are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons. Overall, more than eight-in-ten (86%) say police work is harder today as a result of these high-profile incidents. At the same time that black Americans are dying in encounters with police, the number of fatal attacks on officers has grown in recent years. About nine-in-ten officers (93%) say their colleagues worry more about their personal safety - a level of concern recorded even before a total of eight officers died in separate ambush-style attacks in Dallas and Baton Rouge last July. The survey also finds that officers remain deeply skeptical of the protests that have followed deadly encounters between police and black citizens. Two-thirds of officers (68%) say the demonstrations are motivated to a great extent by anti-police bias; only 10% in a separate question say protesters are similarly motivated by a genuine desire to hold police accountable for their actions. Some two-thirds characterize the fatal encounters that prompted the demonstrations as isolated incidents and not signs of broader problems between police and the black community - a view that stands in sharp contrast with the assessment of the general public. In a separate Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults, 60% say these incidents are symptoms of a deeper problem. A look inside the nation's police departments reveals that most officers are satisfied with their department as a place to work and remain strongly committed to making their agency successful. Still, about half (53%) question whether their department's disciplinary procedures are fair, and seven-in-ten (72%) say that poorly performing officers are not held accountable. Details: Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2017. 97p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 26, 2018 at: https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/01/06171402/Police-Report_FINAL_web.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/01/06171402/Police-Report_FINAL_web.pdf Shelf Number: 149577 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice ReformPolice Use of ForcePolice-Citizen InteractionsPolice-Minority Relations |
Author: Eguienta, Ophelie Title: Twenty-First Century Police Brutality against African Americans: The Case of Ferguson, Missouri, and the "Black Lives Matter" Movement Summary: African American history is riddled with violence, as early as Africans' very arrival on the continent as slaves. Their fight for freedom became a fight for equality after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, as the southern states passed segregation laws and racial discrimination, although not institutionalized, remained pervasive in the North. Resulted a century of social, economic, and political inequalities for black people in the entire country, punctuated by lynching, and white supremacist attacks carried in impunity. As the Civil Rights Movement rose in the 1950s, marches and demonstrations for racial equality were met by a virulent opposition, leading to the murders of many civil rights activists and the assassinations of leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Yet, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were passed and effectively made segregation and any other form of racial discrimination illegal. Since then, a variety of policies has been implemented to decrease the opportunity gap between black and white Americans, and, with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, a substantial part of the population has come to believe that racism mostly is an issue of the past, and that equality for African Americans has finally been reached. However for some scholars, this colorblindness has led to another form of blindness about racism, which only has deepened racial inequalities as policies instituted to decrease them have been reduced or abandoned. Yet as the death of an unarmed black young man by a police officer spurred massive protests in the small Missouri city of Ferguson in 2014, the debate on racism in America started again through the notion of a systemic racist police brutality. Police brutality is a societal issue that has been the subject of many studies, by academics but also former officers, who have tried to understand its origins, its extent, its perpetuation, its repercussions on society, and how society reacts to it. Research on racially biased police brutality has also been prolific, especially during the second-half of the twentieth century, as some instances sparked demonstrations and even riots. However, secondary sources are still scarce on the events that followed Michael Brown's death - and thus on the Black Lives Matter movement - since they only happened a few years ago, and at the time, nothing indicated that the protest movement would be lasting and would reach such a scale. I chose to research this issue because even though I have never considered myself to be ignorant of racism and police brutality anywhere in the world, I was deeply shocked by the events that occurred in Ferguson, Mo, in 2014. I remember reading different online newspapers regularly, Le Monde and Le Nouvel Obs for the French ones, the BBC and The Guardian for the British ones, and The New York Times and The Washington Post for the American ones. Indeed, I heard about what had happened through social media at first, and was hoping to have had a distorted version of the facts, as it often happens; and then I was anxious to get different perspectives (namely from other countries), in order not to have too biased sources and try and balance the flow of information available. I closely followed the events for months, and watched the Black Lives Matter movement rise, with astonishment, wonder and fascination. I witnessed demonstrations and protests being organized, support coming from the entire country and the entire world, but also saw the opposition to this tsunami of indignation increase, with various movements such as All Lives Matter, White Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. Thus, in order to fully understand the importance and the scale of racist police brutality and the protests that ensued, I decided to make them my research project this year. This thesis explores the factors that led Michael Brown's death to spark a string of nation-wide protests: the context of tensions between police officers and black people, the disproportionate rate at which black people are killed by officers, and the lack of repercussions when these deaths are questionable. It also focuses on the stakes and the impact of the Ferguson protests on society, studying the Black Lives Matter movement - its origins, the novelty in its goal and actions, etc. - as well as the other movements that emerged first on social media to oppose it. This research will help analyze how divided the American population is and how such divisions can be accounted for. In order to assess the relationship between African Americans and the police, it was essential to rely on the multiplicity of secondary sources on African American history, and on police brutality in the United States; the vast number of studies available allowed for a balanced overview. However secondary sources are lacking on the events at the core of the research, namely the anti-police brutality protests that started in 2014. Indeed, because these events are recent, it is complex for scholars to analyze the scope of the BLM movement and the shift in media representation of such events, while they are still occurring. On the other hand, primary sources are abundant: every black and mainstream news outlet covered the protests at length, as did individual people via social media - sharing accounts, pictures and videos of the events as well as their reactions to them, and various organizations issued reports on the situation (and a number of organizations were even created as a result). These sources were confronted and taken with a necessary step back to determine any possible bias. Following the increased news coverage of police killings of black people, many opinion polls have been conducted, which helps establish how divided the American population is on the question of police behavior, but also on the role of the government in this matter. To conduct this research, I relied on secondary sources when establishing the historical context of today's African Americans' place in society, and a mix of primary and secondary sources when studying the racial inequalities that persist, the debate over a postracial society, and the relationship between police officers and black people - i.e. the lack of black people in the police force and its consequences, racial bias, distrust, etc. On the other hand, primary sources were almost exclusively used when dealing with what happened at Ferguson in 2014, and with the BLM movement. Indeed, news articles from various outlets and a few social networks allowed to analyze the social and political repercussions of the protests. The relation between mainstream news and the opinion of most of the population - as they influence each other - was analyzed, especially since the influence that the protests had on the news is relatively unusual. Moreover, a detailed research of the significance of social media in the BLM movement was conducted: given the importance social media have in everyday life nowadays, it seemed relevant to analyze the presence of BLM on Twitter - which is at the origin of the movement - and Facebook - the most used social medium among Americans. Some of the few available secondary sources on the topic have been of great help for this part. The research on Twitter --a social media platform that played an important role in the protests - provided significant pieces of information on this social medium which requires payment to give access to some of its user data. As there were no statistics or data available on the matter, and since Facebook's search engine did not allow for a filtered search, I created a database categorizing the thousands of Facebook groups and pages which concerned Black/All/White/Blue Lives Matter, according to a few criteria (number of people, frequency of posts, etc.). This database enabled a comparative study of these movements on Facebook, and allowed me to articulate theories about their importance. However, this research has limitations, as some more detailed indications could have helped paint a more precise picture: very little information is obtainable about closed groups and there are hidden groups only visible to members; some pieces of information are extremely difficult to retrieve (especially for a single person with a limited amount of time), such as the date of creation of the group/page, the number of active members out of the total amount, and the periods when people joined a group or liked a page. Thus, in order to address the issue of police brutality against African Americans in the twenty-first century, this work will start with a brief presentation of the place occupied by the black community in society through a selection of key events in history and their impact on today's society; the second part will be an overview of police brutality, zooming in on brutality against black people; third, the circumstances of Michael Brown' death and the aftermath will be under scrutiny, from the protests, their representation in the news, and their consequences, to the change of this representation in the media; finally, the BLM ALM WLM and BlueLM movements will be analyzed, alongside the role that social media played in these movements. Details: Toulouse: University of Toulouse II Jean Jaures, 2017. 165p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed March 27, 2018 at: http://dante.univ-tlse2.fr/4122/1/Eguienta_Oph%C3%A9lieM22017.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://dante.univ-tlse2.fr/4122/1/Eguienta_Oph%C3%A9lieM22017.pdf Shelf Number: 149587 Keywords: African AmericansBlack Lives MatterDeadly ForcePolice BrutalityPolice MisconductPolice Use of ForcePolice-Minority RelationsRacial DiscriminationSocial Media |
Author: Flanders, Chad Title: Police Use of Deadly Force: State Statutes 30 Years after Garner Summary: The recent rash of police shootings has raised troubling questions about when, if ever, police are justified in using deadly force against a suspect. Some police shootings may simply represent wanton violence. But others may present close cases. How do we decide when a police officer can not only use force, but shoot at a suspect - even shoot to kill? When is a police killing a justifiable homicide, and when is it just a homicide? One place to start in drawing the line between justified and unjustified uses of deadly force is the Supreme Court's 1985 opinion in Tennessee v. Garner. Reading the majority opinion in Garner is a bracing experience. Justice White's extended discussion of the common law standard of police use of force makes clear on many levels that he did not merely want to replace the common law rule: he wanted to bury it. That police could use any amount of force, including deadly force, to "seize" a fleeing felon - the common law rule which at issue in Garner - was not only constitutionally infirm, it made little sense as a policy matter. As powerful as the Garner decision was, it also was an importantly limited one. Garner was a case involving a suit under Section 1983, the federal civil rights statute. In deciding such a suit, the Court has to announce what the constitutional rule is - and so in Garner's lawsuit, the Court had to say what amount of force counted as "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment. But deciding the constitutional standard for Garner's civil rights suit didn't disturb what the standard had to be for state criminal law prosecutions. States still have the authority to dictate under what circumstances police could justifiably use deadly force, and so avoid punishment under state law. Many states did change their laws after Garner, so compelling was Garner's reasoning. This essay updates the count of states who still hang on to the common law rule in their statutes, thirty years after Garner and by the same token, records the number of states who have changed their laws. The structure of our essay is as follows: after a recapitulation of Garner - including a discussion of the ambiguity of what is ultimately its holding (Part I) - we turn to our updated count of states that still retain the common law rule (Part II). Part III explains why, contrary to the belief of many, the decision in Garner did not require states to abandon the common law rule. Part IV looks at the most recent legislative efforts to reform the use of police force statute in Missouri. Details: St. Louis, MO: Saint Louis University - School of Law, 2016. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Saint Louis U. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2016-1: Accessed April 27, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725926 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725926 Shelf Number: 149930 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice BrutalityPolice Use of ForceTennessee v. Garner |
Author: Frankham, Emma Title: Victim or Villain? Racial/ethnic differences in the portrayal of individuals with mental illness killed by police Summary: Using an intersectional approach toward race/ethnicity and mental illness, this paper examines racial/ethnic differences in how 301 individuals with mental illness killed by police during 2015 and 2016 were portrayed in news reports. Content analysis indicates that frames that portray individuals as being victims of mental illness are most common in news reports about Whites, while African-Americans are most likely to be portrayed as victims of police actions. Graphic content is much more prevalent in news reports about African-Americans, serving as a visceral reminder of the actions of police.Hispanics are most likely to be portrayed as 'villains' through discussions of substance use, criminal records, and expressions of support for police. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of theory on the attribution of personal responsibility and the portrayal of 'victims' and 'villains' crime news, as well as research on the portrayal of individuals with mental illness and racial/ethnic minorities in crime news. Details: Unpublished paper, 2018. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 10, 2018 at: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v8fbx Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v8fbx Shelf Number: 150138 Keywords: Deadly ForceMass MediaMentally Ill PersonsPolice Use of ForceRacial Disparities |
Author: Eiler, Brian A. Title: The Behavioral Dynamics of Shooter Bias in Virtual Reality: The Role of Race, Armed Status, and Distance on Threat Perception and Shooting Dynamics Summary: There are clear racial disparities in police violence such that being Black puts one at a higher risk of being killed by police (Mapping Police Violence, 2016). One hypothesized mechanism for this disparity is "shooter bias", which refers to the tendency to shoot unarmed Black men more often, and armed Black men more quickly, than Whites in a shoot/no-shoot task (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). The current project addressed four potential influences on threat perception and shooting decision-making (biological complexity, implicit racial bias, armed status, and distance). A novel, yet simple, bias awareness feedback method as a potential intervention to reduce discriminatory shooting was also tested. Participants viewed a series of Black and White, armed and unarmed avatars at various distance locations in two experiments. In Exp. 1, participants judged each avatar in terms of threat level while in Exp. 2, participants made shooting decisions, both in virtual reality using a hand held controller. Feedback was given on the shoot/no-shoot task between two trial blocks. Heart rate was measured via the Empatica E4 and implicit bias was measured via a mouse-tracking version of the IAT using the MouseTracker Software. Participants demonstrated stronger associations for stereotype congruent pairings of race and armed status and had higher heart rate during incongruent trial blocks of the IAT. In Exp. 1, results revealed main effects of distance, race, and armed status (no interaction effects) such that armed avatars and closer distances produced the highest threat ratings. White avatars were perceived as more threatening than Black avatars. In Exp. 2, results revealed that participants performed more accurately for White targets than Black targets and held the trigger down for longer (and were more variable) when the target was Black. These trigger pull dynamics were also related to dynamic measures of implicit bias. Finally, performance feedback, resulted in improved performance (i.e., correct shoot/no-shoot decisions). Moreover, participant post-feedback trigger pull dynamics were no longer associated with implicit bias. The results of the pre-experimental testing demonstrated that participant heart rate increased (i.e., higher arousal/stress) during stereotype incongruent trials, illustrating the potential link between arousal and implicit bias. Exp. 1 demonstrated that threat perception was related to armed status and distance. However, participants rated Whites avatars as more threatening than Black avatars, indicating that threat perception can be influenced by social desirability concerns (i.e., aversive racism. The results of Exp. 2, however, were largely consistent with the hypothesis that Black avatars would produce biased shooting performance and shooting dynamics compared to White avatars. The results of Exp. 2, also validated the modified VR paradigm for measuring shoot/no-shoot decision making and the more nuanced dynamical measures of shooter bias employed (i.e., trigger dynamics). Furthermore, results implicated trigger pull dynamics as the underlying link between implicit bias and shooting decision making. Importantly, the results of Exp. 2 also demonstrated that racial differences in shooting behavior may be altered by a simple bias awareness feedback intervention that disrupts the association between race and weapons. Details: Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 2017. 121p. Source: Internet Resource: May 17, 2018 at: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:ucin1511798377909988 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:ucin1511798377909988 Shelf Number: 150255 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice Decision-MakingPolice Use of ForcePolice ViolenceRacial Disparities |
Author: Gonzales Rose, Jasmine B. Title: Racial Character Evidence in Police Killing Cases Summary: The United States is facing a twofold crisis: police killings of people of color and unaccountability for these killings in the criminal justice system. In many instances, the officers' use of deadly force is captured on video and often appears clearly unjustified, but grand and petit juries still fail to indict and convict, leaving many baffled. This Article provides an explanation for these failures: juror reliance on "racial character evidence." Too often, jurors consider race as evidence in criminal trials, particularly in police killing cases where the victim was a person of color. Instead of focusing on admissible evidence, jurors rely on race to determine the defendant's innocence, the victim's propensity for violence, and the witnesses' credibility. This Article delineates the ways in which juror racial bias is utilized to take on evidentiary value at trial and constructs evidence law solutions to increase racial equality in the courtroom. Details: Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 2018. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: ; U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2018-13. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3183408: Accessed May 30, 2018 at: Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3183408 Shelf Number: 150382 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice KillingsPolice MisconductPolice Use of ForceRacial Disparities |
Author: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Title: Police Use of Force: An Examination of Modern Policing Practices Summary: The relationship between law enforcement and many communities in the U.S. is fraught and challenging, particularly for those who experience violent crimes coupled with intensive police presence and surveillance. A number of recent developments suggest a renewed commitment to resolving this issue. For the first time in decades, the country has witnessed ubiquitous and sustained protests by young people, communities of color, and other impacted populations in cities all across the country. Further, in hope of fostering better community-police relationships, many law enforcement and city officials around the country have started implementing reform strategies to allay communities' concerns about actual or perceived unfair and unequal policing. Reform advocates often acknowledge the positive steps that some jurisdictions are undertaking, but reported cases of excessive force remain a national concern. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the fundamental rights of both law enforcement and the communities they serve, whose rights are protected under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. While allegations that some police force is excessive, unjustified, and discriminatory continue and proliferate, current data regarding police use of force is insufficient to determine if instances are occurring more frequently. The public continues to hear competing narratives by law enforcement and community members, and the hard reality is that available national and local data is flawed and inadequate. A central contributing factor is the absence of mandatory federal reporting and standardized reporting guidelines. Former FBI Director James Comey stated that: Not long after riots broke out in Ferguson [in 2014], I asked my staff to tell me how many people shot by police were African-American in this country. I wanted to see trends. I wanted to see information. They couldn't give it to me, and it wasn't their fault. Demographic data regarding officer-involved shootings is not consistently reported to us . . . [b]ecause reporting is voluntary, our data is incomplete and therefore, in the aggregate, unreliable. Until recently, data on officer-involved shootings were extremely rare; moreover, the data that are available is most frequently compiled by grassroots organizations, nonprofits, or media sources.5 Data are not only lacking regarding fatal police shootings, but data regarding all use of force are scant and incomplete: Data on lower level uses of force, which happen more frequently than officer-involved shootings, are virtually non-existent. This is due, in part, to the fact that most police precincts don't explicitly collect data on use of force, and in part, to the fact that even when the data is hidden in plain view within police narrative accounts of interactions with civilians, it is exceedingly difficult to extract. Without accurate data on police use of force, allegations by community members and actions by law enforcement not only sow distrust among communities and the police, making policing more dangerous, but also jeopardize public safety. Research consistently shows that positive relationships between community members and law enforcement are essential for safer communities. Citizens are more likely to aid in crime reduction and partner with police if they believe that law enforcement are engaging in equitable treatment and are impartial towards all. Communities are calling for greater transparency and accountability on the part of the police. Similarly, law enforcement officials are calling for better data on current practices, and instituting policies aimed at reducing bias and improving community relationships. All citizens in every community in this country live subject to police enforcement practices, and therefore benefit from effective, constitutionally sound police practices. Against this backdrop, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) investigated rates of police use of force; questioned whether rates and instantiations of that use of force violate the civil rights of persons of color, persons with disabilities, LGBT communities, and low-income persons; and evaluated promising or proven policies and practices worth replicating to minimize unnecessary use of force and the perception and reality of discrimination in police use of force. The Commission held a briefing on April 20, 2015, on police practices and the use of deadly force in the U.S. The panels consisted of community leaders and police reform advocates, law enforcement and court officials, scholars, and legal experts. These experts convened to discuss the longstanding and emergent causes of the recent police-involved fatal shootings of people of color and other disadvantaged populations. Since 2015, several of the Commission's state advisory committees have also investigated police practices, and testimony and findings from their briefings are incorporated throughout the report. No single solution stands out as an immediate fix to the complex problem of police unauthorized use of force. After examining the literature and data available regarding police use of force in Chapters 1-3, the Commission highlights the following findings and recommendations, discussed in full in Chapter 4: Highlighted Findings: Police officers have the difficult and admirable job of providing crucial services to the communities they protect and serve. Their job sometimes puts them in harm's way and may require the use of force. Accordingly, police officers must operate with the highest standards of professionalism and accountability. Every community resident should be able to live, work, and travel confident in an expectation that interactions with police officers will be fair, operate consistent with constitutional norms, and be guided by public safety free from bias or discrimination. Unfortunately, today, too many communities are not confident in that expectation and do not trust fair police-community interactions. Communities have demanded reforms to foster better community-police relations and to prevent unjustified and excessive police uses of force. Accurate and comprehensive data regarding police uses of force is generally not available to police departments or the American public. No comprehensive national database exists that captures rates of police use of force. The best available evidence reflects high rates of use of force nationally, and increased likelihood of police use of force against people of color, people with disabilities, LGBT people, people with mental health concerns, people with low incomes, and those at the intersections of these groups. Lack of training and lack of funding for training leave officers and the public at risk. Critical training areas include tactical training, de-escalation techniques, understanding cultural differences and anti-bias mechanisms, as well as strategies for encounters with individuals with physical and mental disabilities. Repeated and highly publicized incidents of police use of force against persons of color and people with disabilities, combined with a lack of accurate data, lack of transparency about policies and practices in place governing use of force, and lack of accountability for noncompliance foster a perception that police use of force in communities of color and the disability community is unchecked, unlawful, and unsafe. Details: Washington, DC: The Commission, 2018. 230p. Source: Internet Resource: Briefing Report: Accessed January 23, 2019 at: https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018/11-15-Police-Force.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018/11-15-Police-Force.pdf Shelf Number: 154381 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice AccountabilityPolice BrutalityPolice Decision MakingPolice MisconductPolice Use of ForcePolice-Citizen InteractionsPolice-Community Relationships |
Author: Krieger, Nancy Title: Police Killings and police Deaths Are Public Health Data and Can Be Counted Summary: Summary Points - During the past year, the United States has experienced major controversies-and civil unrest-regarding the endemic problem of police violence and police deaths. - Although deaths of police officers are well documented, no reliable official US data exist on the number of persons killed by the police, in part because of long-standing and well-documented resistance of police departments to making these data public. - These deaths, however, are countable, as evidenced by "he Counted," a website launched on June 1, 2015, by the newspaper The Guardian, published in the United Kingdom, which quickly revealed that by June 9, 2015, over 500 people in the US had been killed by the police since January 1, 2015, twice what would be expected based on estimates from the US Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI). - Law-enforcement-related deaths, of both persons killed by law enforcement agents and also law enforcement agents killed in the line of duty, are a public health concern, not solely a criminal justice concern, since these events involve mortality and affect the well-being of the families and communities of the deceased; therefore, law-enforcement- related deaths are public health data, not solely criminal justice data. - We propose that law-enforcement-related deaths be treated as a notifiable condition, which would allow public health departments to report these data in real-time, at the local as well as national level, thereby providing data needed to understand and prevent the problem. Details: PLoS Medicine, 2015. 7p, Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 11, 2019 at: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001915&type=printable Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001915&type=printable Shelf Number: 155359 Keywords: Deadly ForcePolice BrutalityPolice ShootingsPolice Use of ForcePublic Health Data |