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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for police deadly force
5 results foundAuthor: Lande, Brian Jacob Title: Bodies of Force: The Social Organization of Force, Suffering, and Honor in Policing Summary: This dissertation is an ethnographic description of how police recruits learn to use force. I became a police recruit at two academies in order examine the process whereby police recruits learn to deploy calibrated physical force as a body technique (Mauss 1979) central to policing. Body techniques are traditional, technical and efficacious ways of using the body that are embedded in contexts of social value and symbolic significance. Police force, as calibrated body technique, is social: they pre-exist and outlive individual recruits; have to be learned and passed on from staff to recruits; they are to a degree constraining as recruits encounter social pressures to use their bodies in institutionally appropriate ways (as their bodily practices are praised, rewarded, evaluated, made fun of, and stigmatized). A police officers forceful bodily techniques are also social in the sense that they differ from how groups like boxers, soldiers, or gang members use their bodies forcefully. In other words, groups create forceful body techniques that inculcate and give meaning to the technique as well as delimit the boundaries of the group. I challenge the prevalent view of police force as deriving from attitudes and values by focusing on force as an embodied action. Police force - pursuing, command presence, searching and seizing, handcuffing, shooting, swinging a baton - is an intensely corporeal activity; and in tensely unfolding social encounters, new police officers are expected to react with skilled use of their bodies to the dangers and conflicts that they face. A police officer's embodied forceful acts are not the result of conscious deliberation but follow from practical reasons only to later be translated into articulate, verbal accounts after the fact, e.g. during report writing or the demand from supervisors to justify past actions. For police recruits learning to understand force isn't an act of "comprehension" so much as of "apprehension" by apprehending hands. "Knowing" how to be forceful is just being able to do it. Theoretically approaching police force as a calibrated bodily technique allows us to bring together the subjective life of the recruit's body with its objective social situation. Body techniques are subjective in the sense that they are forms of knowledge and understanding. But these same techniques are also objective in that they are social facts characterized by a social distribution and origin and they are encountered as external constraints, meaning that recruits feel compelled to use their bodies in certain ways. I also don't treat the forceful skills as only technical. Recruits do invest themselves in forceful practices as preparation for often-inflated perceived dangers. But I show that more importantly, recruits embrace police force because, in the daily experience of the academy, having a forceful body - a body imbued with fighting potential, strength, speed, and physical skill- confers recognition and respect from the academy staff and from peers. To be overweight, poor with a firearm, bad at driving, unable to keep up on a run, or seemingly incapable of tolerating pain, is to be relegated to a stigmatized status by staff and peers. By attending to how body techniques are learned I discovered a central conflict in the academies use of force training: the perceived need to overcome recruits' own "normal" and therefore pacific dispositions. Since most recruits are new-comers to using their bodies forcefully, there was persistent talk and training regarding how to make seemingly pacified recruits forceful but not too forceful. This was because recruits were initially incompetent in using force and academy staff had to make force "explicit" so recruits would "get it." In attempting to balance the need to make pacified recruits forceful and at the same time temper the use-of-force, I show how recruits sensibilities toward the use of force are honed, affect economies cultivated, and calibrated force is routinzed as a skillful response to social encounters. The introduction, chapter one, defines the problem of learning to be forceful. It shows how being forceful is a central concern of the academy and central to the very definition of competence. Chapter two reviews the literature on police academies, police socialization, and police culture to reveal large gaps in the literature. The research on academies has neglected the question of how recruits learn force and has been preoccupied with how police recruits learn to see themselves as members of a professional group. The literature on police socialization and has favored ruminations over how police officers talk and think about force, often long after it has occurred. I respond to the literature by outlining how Mauss's notion of bodily technique and Bourdieu's notion of habitus can fill in the gap and give a more complete picture of police culture and how it is learned. I also examine how other social groups provide objective social contexts in which subjective bodily knowledge is collectively shaped. Chapter three outlines the methods and procedures I used to conduct this study. It also describes the recruit classes and the training staff of the two academies I studied. In chapters four and five I examine how academy staff try to teach recruits use their bodies forcefully. In chapter four I begin by examining how recruits learn their hand to "search and seize." Recruits use their hands more than any other part of their body, other than their mouths, to be forceful. Because forceful use of the hands is routine, it is an ideal place to begin examining how recruits learn to use their bodies to exert situational dominance over another using their body. Academy staff refer to this colloquially as "control." In chapter five I describe in detail how police recruits learn to use deadly force with their firearms. Unlike skilled use of hands firearms are rarely used by police but intense value is placed on mastering shootings skills. I examine how a particular technique of shooting, "double tapping" is learned as a bodily technique. Once this bodily technique is mastered as a system of postures and coordinated movements it is normalized and made familiar as a skillful bodily response to perceived "threats." I argue that lethal force becomes "normal force" when it is grasped by recruits in a practical mode like any skill. In chapters three and four I also examine how staff teach recruits learn what is a "threat." While chapters four and five are about how recruits learn to deploy force, in chapters six and seven I look at how recruits are "hardened" in preparation for potentially violent and uncertain encounters on "the street." In chapter six I focus on daily negative rites like physical training that imbue recruits with a valued social body. This body is cultivated within a symbolic economy based on recognition and respect on the one hand and shame and insult on the other. The suffering of physical training also serves as a daily ordeal for recruits to overcome and that helps mark the police world as a separate sacred and heroic world that stands above the profane world recruits came from. In chapter seven I focus on an episodic negative rite, "Chemical Agents Day." During this rite recruits are expected to overcome the intense pain of exposure to chemical agents, with poise, in order to demonstrate their character. But in addition to be a test of moral self worthy by way of bodily self-control, the rite functions as a way of building a deep visceral bonding of the recruits to one another through a shared sense of pain and humiliation. Recruits also are bonded to their trainers as they overcome their suffering with the help of the very trainers who exposed them to physical pain and vulnerability. In the final empirical chapter, chapter eight, I provide one in depth interview with a recruit. This interview is important because it provides a sense of how a fairly typical recruit experienced the discipline, shame, as well as pride in bodily and emotional self-mastery. In particular we get to hear how a recruit thought and felt about the stressful and uncertain environment created by the academy staff in order toughen up recruits. Details: Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 2010. 234p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed January 31, 2015 at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4vk995z4 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4vk995z4 Shelf Number: 134506 Keywords: Police BehaviorPolice Deadly ForcePolice RecruitsPolice TrainingPolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: Fryer, Roland G., Jr. Title: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force Summary: This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force - officer-involved shootings - we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016. 63p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series, no. 22399: Accessed July 11, 2016 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf Shelf Number: 139612 Keywords: Non-Lethal WeaponsOfficer-Involved ShootingsPolice Deadly ForcePolice Use of ForceRacial DisparitiesStun Guns |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "Good Cops Are Afraid": The Toll of Unchecked Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro Summary: Since the release of Lethal Force in 2009, Rio de Janeiro has pursued several ambitious and innovative policies aimed at improving the effectiveness and professionalism of its police. These include the UPP program discussed in chapter 4, as well as the System of Goals and Results Tracking (Sistema de Metas e Acompanhamento de Resultados), a program that entails compiling and monitoring crime statistics, setting crime reduction targets for each policing district (Area Integrada de Seguranca Publica, AISP), and providing monetary rewards in the form of bonuses to all police officers in areas that meet those targets. These initiatives may have significantly contributed to the decrease in police killings- along with overall homicides-between 2009 and 2013.247 However, their impact has been severely undercut by the state's failure to address one of the main factors responsible for perpetuating the unlawful use of lethal force by police: impunity. The decrease in police killings came to a halt in 2013, and the numbers have since begun to climb dramatically, increasing by more than 50 percent in the past two years.248 Several state institutions share responsibility for this ongoing impunity, including the military police for failing to ensure that its officers preserve the evidence that investigators need to determine the lawfulness of police killings, and the civil police for failing to conduct proper investigations. Ultimate responsibility for this failure, however, lies squarely with the Attorney General's Office, for failing to exercise its oversight authority of the police with appropriate vigor, failing to conduct its own investigations of police killings, and failing to prosecute cases where evidence was available to do so. Details: New York: HRW, 2016. 118p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed October 9, 2018 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/brazil0716web_1.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Brazil URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/brazil0716web_1.pdf Shelf Number: 152862 Keywords: Extrajudicial ExecutionsHomicidesLethal ForcePolice Deadly ForcePolice Violence |
Author: Jack, Shane P.D. Title: Surveillance for Violent Deaths-- National Violent Death Reporting System, 27 States, 2015 Summary: Problem/Condition: In 2015, approximately 62,000 persons died in the United States as a result of violence-related injuries. This report summarizes data from CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) regarding violent deaths from 27 U.S. states for 2015. Results are reported by sex, age group, race/ethnicity, location of injury, method of injury, circumstances of injury, and other selected characteristics. Reporting Period: 2015. Description of System: NVDRS collects data regarding violent deaths obtained from death certificates, coroner/medical examiner reports, law enforcement reports, and secondary sources (e.g., child fatality review team data, supplemental homicide reports, hospital data, and crime laboratory data). This report includes data from 27 states that collected statewide data for 2015 (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin). NVDRS collates documents for each death and links deaths that are related (e.g., multiple homicides, a homicide followed by a suicide, or multiple suicides) into a single incident. Results: For 2015, NVDRS captured 30,628 fatal incidents involving 31,415 deaths in the 27 states included in this report. The majority (65.1%) of deaths were suicides, followed by homicides (23.5%), deaths of undetermined intent (9.5%), legal intervention deaths (1.3%) (i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force, excluding legal executions), and unintentional firearm deaths (<1.0%). (The term "legal intervention" is a classification incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision [ICD-10] and does not denote the lawfulness or legality of the circumstances surrounding a death caused by law enforcement.) Demographic patterns varied by manner of death. Suicide rates were highest among males, non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Natives, non-Hispanic whites, adults aged 45-54 years, and men aged ≥75 years. The most common method of injury was a firearm. Suicides often were preceded by a mental health, intimate partner, substance abuse, or physical health problem, or a crisis during the previous or upcoming 2 weeks. Homicide rates were higher among males and persons aged <1 year and 20-34 years. Among males, non-Hispanic blacks accounted for the majority of homicides and had the highest rate of any racial/ethnic group. Homicides primarily involved a firearm, were precipitated by arguments and interpersonal conflicts, were related to intimate partner violence (particularly for females), or occurred in conjunction with another crime. When the relationship between a homicide victim and a suspected perpetrator was known, an acquaintance/friend or an intimate partner frequently was involved. Legal intervention death rates were highest among males and persons aged 20-54 years; rates among non-Hispanic black males were approximately double the rates of those among non-Hispanic white males. Precipitating circumstances for legal intervention deaths most frequently were an alleged criminal activity in progress, the victim reportedly using a weapon in the incident, a mental health or substance abuse problem (other than alcohol abuse), an argument or conflict, or a recent crisis (during the previous or upcoming 2 weeks). Unintentional firearm deaths were more frequent among males, non-Hispanic whites, and persons aged 10–24 years; these deaths most often occurred while the shooter was playing with a firearm and most often were precipitated by a person unintentionally pulling the trigger or mistakenly thinking the firearm was unloaded. Deaths of undetermined intent were more frequent among males, particularly non-Hispanic black and American Indian/Alaska Native males, and persons aged 30–54 years. Substance abuse, mental health problems, physical health problems, and a recent crisis were the most common circumstances preceding deaths of undetermined intent. In 2015, approximately 3,000 current or former military personnel died by suicide. The majority of these decedents were male, non-Hispanic white, and aged 45-74 years. Most suicides among military personnel involved a firearm and were precipitated by mental health, physical health, and intimate partner problems, as well as a recent crisis. Interpretation: This report provides a detailed summary of data from NVDRS for 2015. The results indicate that deaths resulting from self-inflicted or interpersonal violence most frequently affect males and certain age groups and minority populations. Mental health problems, intimate partner problems, interpersonal conflicts, and general life stressors were primary precipitating events for multiple types of violent deaths, including suicides among current or former military personnel. Public Health Action: NVDRS data are used to monitor the occurrence of violence-related fatal injuries and assist public health authorities in the development, implementation, and evaluation of programs and policies to reduce and prevent violent deaths. For example, Virginia VDRS data are used to help identify suicide risk factors among active duty service members, Oregon VDRS suicide data are used to coordinate information and activities across community agencies that support veterans and active duty service members, and Arizona VDRS data are used to develop recommendations for primary care providers who deliver care to veterans. The continued development and expansion of NVDRS to include all 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia are essential to public health efforts to reduce deaths due to violence. Details: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Summaries / Vol. 67 / No. 11: Accessed December 6, 2018 at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6181254/pdf/ss6711a1.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6181254/pdf/ss6711a1.pdf Shelf Number: 153921 Keywords: Child DeathsGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesMurdersPolice Deadly ForcePublic Health IssuesSuicides Violence |
Author: Ristroph, Alice Title: The Constitution of Police Violence Summary: Police force is again under scrutiny in the United States. Several recent killings of black men by police officers have prompted an array of reform proposals, most of which seem to assume that these recent killings were not (or should not be) authorized and legal. Our constitutional doctrine suggests otherwise. From the 1960s to the present, federal courts have persistently endorsed a very expansive police authority to make seizures - to stop persons, to arrest them, and to use force if the arrestee resists. This Article reveals the full scope of this seizure authority. Of particular importance are the concepts of resistance and compliance. Demands for compliance with officers, and a condemnation of resistance that authorizes police to meet resistance with violence, run throughout constitutional doctrine. Ostensibly race-neutral, the duty of compliance has in fact been distributed along racial lines, and may be contrasted with a privilege of resistance (also race-specific) elsewhere protected in American law. Tracing resistance and compliance helps reveal the ways in which the law distributes risks of violence, and it may help inspire proposals to reduce and redistribute those risks. Details: Unpublished paper, 2016. 58p. Source: Internet Resource: Seton Hall Public Law Research Paper: Accessed January 28, 2019 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2847300 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2847300 Shelf Number: 154406 Keywords: Fourth AmendmentPolice Deadly ForcePolice Use of ForcePolice ViolenceRacial Profiling in Law EnforcementRacismStop and SearchTraffic Stops |