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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for police use of force (u.s.)
8 results foundAuthor: Terrill, William Title: Final Technical Report Draft: Assessing Police Use of Force Policy and Outcomes Summary: While force continuum policies are frequently discussed in the policing literature by academics and practitioners alike, little is known concerning how many agencies actually use a continuum. Moreover, given potential variation in both continuum design (e.g., linear, matrix, wheel, etc.) and tactical placement (e.g., OC spray, CED, etc.), even less is known with respect to whether differences in continuum policies matter, and if so, in what way. Within this context, this project set two separate, but interrelated goals: to identify the extent of variation in use of force policies being used by police agencies throughout the country, and determine whether certain types of policies offer more beneficial outcomes to police practitioners. Stated more directly, the project sought to (1) identify existing variation in use of force policies, particularly those employing a force continuum approach and (2) determine which types of policies offer more beneficial outcomes to police practitioners, which are measured in terms of the degree to which varying policies: (a) provide officers assistance and guidance with respect to force decision-making, and (b) are associated with less force (i.e., by amount and type), injuries to suspects and officers, citizen complaints, and lawsuits levied for improper force. As one reads through this executive summary (and the 200 plus pages of the final report) undoubtedly, like ourselves, there may be a sense of letdown. Ideally, one would want to walk away from this study knowing which use of force policy (or policies) is the best and which policy (or policies) should be avoided. Unfortunately, one of the greatest strengths of the empirical approach taken (i.e., examining multiple outcomes) is also potentially its greatest weakness. As such, we cannot unanimously endorse or condemn one use of force policy over another. What is abundantly clear from the many analyses and rankings conducted is that there is no ideal (or flawed) policy approach across all outcomes. The good news is that we provide empirical evidence of various strengths and weaknesses across many important police outcomes. We leave it to police executives to consider those outcomes most important or relevant to them and their constituents, and see which policy approaches performed more favorably in those respects. As just a single example, if one is looking to reduce citizen injuries and complaints as top policing concerns, St. Petersburg’s approach may be worth considering. However, one has to also be cognizant that officers generally did not view St. Petersburg’s policy in a favorable light. A “cop’s cop” police leader may thus prioritize such officer-related concerns and dismiss St. Petersburg’s policy, and instead endorse Knoxville’s approach that received outstanding feedback from patrol officers (irrespective of the fact that Knoxville patrol officers were injured at the highest rate of all cities). Any number of other examples could be given as well with other cities. In the end, one must weigh the advantages and drawbacks of each policy approach against various desirable (or undesirable) outcomes. Of course, readers must also use caution interpreting the findings presented throughout this summary and the full report. Although this is the most comprehensive less lethal use of force study conducted to date, as one astute reviewer accurately points out - we have just begun to scratch the surface with respect to how varying types of policies may influence varying types of outcomes. Details: Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, 2011. 287p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 28, 2012 at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237794.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237794.pdf Shelf Number: 124306 Keywords: Evaluative ProceduresPolice BehaviorPolice Policies and ProceduresPolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: James, Lois Title: The Influence of Suspect Race and Ethnicity on Decisions to Shoot in a Deadly Force Judgment and Decision-Making Simulator Summary: During the past several decades substantial research has addressed the broad public concern that suspect race and ethnicity influences police use of deadly force. Previous research based on incident reports of police shootings and experimental research using still images as stimuli prompts have supported two, contrasting hypotheses: (1) that police in the United States disproportionally shoot Black suspects because of racial bias, or (2) that police disproportionally shoot Black suspects because they were more likely than Whites to constitute a threat. The goal of this dissertation was to shed empirical light on these competing hypotheses by advancing the methodological techniques used to examine the influence of suspect race and ethnicity on police use of deadly force. After developing and testing a novel set of sixty realistic, high definition video deadly force scenarios based on thirty years of official data on officer-involved shootings in the United States, three experiments were conducted testing participant responses to the scenarios in computerized simulators. In each experiment, participants were presented with White, Black and Hispanic suspects in potentially deadly situations. In the first experiment (n = 24), we found that participants took longer to shoot Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to fail to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White or Hispanic suspects. In the second experiment (n = 48), we found that participants experienced higher levels of neurophysiological arousal in response to Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, but still took longest to shoot Black suspects. In the third experiment (n = 30), we found that across both fatigued and rested conditions participants took longer to shoot Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects. In sum, this research demonstrated that neither of the two dominant hypotheses is sufficient to explain racial and ethnic bias in police use of deadly force. Despite evidence of implicit racial bias, participants displayed significant bias favoring Black suspects in their decisions to shoot. The results of these three experiments using a more externally valid research design have challenged the results of less robust experimental designs and have shed additional light on the broad issue of the role that status characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, play in the criminal justice system. Future research should assess whether this finding holds among other populations of research subjects, determine whether bias favoring Black suspects is a consequence of administrative measures (e.g., education, training, policies and laws), and identify the cognitive processes that underlie this phenomenon. Details: Pullman, WA: Washington State University, Department of Criminal Justice, 2011. 138p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 16, 2013 at: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2376/3010/James_wsu_0251E_10245.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2376/3010/James_wsu_0251E_10245.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 128384 Keywords: Police Decision-MakingPolice Use of Deadly ForcePolice Use of Force (U.S.)Racial Discrimination |
Author: Police Executive Research Forum Title: Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned Summary: On July 24, 2012, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a plan to overhaul the New Orleans Police Department that was broader in scope and more detailed than any other consent decree the DOJ had issued since it was given the authority 18 years earlier to investigate local police departments. The 2012 New Orleans consent decree is expected to last at least five years and cost more than $11 million, though the agreement likely will take longer and cost more to carry out, if recent patterns of DOJ involvement with local law enforcement agencies are any indication. The shape and substance of recently issued consent decrees, in Seattle as well as New Orleans, share little resemblance to the first one the DOJ obtained involving a major metropolitan police force. These consent decrees were made possible by the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which gives DOJ’s Civil Rights Division authority to investigate state and local law enforcement agencies that it believes have unconstitutional policies or engage in unconstitutional patterns or practices of conduct. The law is intended to address systemic issues, rather than individual complaints. The alleged misconduct cannot be an isolated incident. And there is no private right of action under the 1994 law; only the Justice Department is given authority to launch investigations and litigation under this statute. The law arms DOJ with the authority to file civil lawsuits against local governments in order to force them to adopt reforms. However, cities typically settle these cases before they go to trial or before a lawsuit is filed. More than 25 police departments have experienced some form of DOJ involvement in the past two decades. When Pittsburgh—the first major case—came under a consent decree in 1997, the mandate focused on two particular areas of policing, produced generalized requirements, and lasted a relatively tidy five years. Some later investigations and reform processes have taken 10 years or more. But one constant in the DOJ’s oversight of police departments accused of discriminatory and unconstitutional activity is the primary types of wrongdoing that have triggered federal involvement: improper use of force by police, unlawful stops and searches, and biased policing. That’s what recently brought DOJ attention to police departments in New Orleans and Seattle. That’s what initiated DOJ involvement in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Detroit and Cincinnati in the early 2000s. And that’s what brought Pittsburgh under DOJ’s watch in 1997. Details: Washington, DC: PERF, 2013. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Critical Issues in Policing Series: Accessed July 18, 2013 at: http://policeforum.org/library/critical-issues-in-policing-series/CivilRightsInvestigationsofLocalPolice.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://policeforum.org/library/critical-issues-in-policing-series/CivilRightsInvestigationsofLocalPolice.pdf Shelf Number: 129450 Keywords: Civil RightsPolice BehaviorPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: Fachner, George Title: Collaborative Reform Model: Six-Month 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 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, while insuring 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 resulted in a total of 75 reforms and recommendations. These included both new recommendations from the team and reforms that LVMPD initiated prior to and during the assessment process. CNA published and distributed 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" in the remainder of this document), throughout LVMPD and the community. However, the publication of the 2012 report did not complete the process. The COPS Office, CNA, and LVMPD continue in their collaboration in order to ensure that LVMPD implements the recommended reforms as committed to by the sheriff. It has been 18 months since the beginning of the reform process, and seven months since the reforms have been recommended. Beginning in January 2013, the COPS Office and CNA have been assessing LVMPD's progress in implementing the remaining 41 recommendations. There are a total of 80 agency reforms: 89% (71) are complete or in progress; 11% (9) are incomplete or have not been assessed because the assessors were unable to make a judgment due to insufficient information available at the time of this report. This status report is the first of two that CNA will publish on LVMPD's progress. The purpose of this status report is to inform all stakeholders (i.e., LVMPD, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Las Vegas community) of LVMPD's progress to date. Details: Washington, DC: CNA Analysis & Solutions; U.S. Department of Justice, Community Oriented Policing Services, 2013. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 16, 2014 at: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/LVMPD_6Months.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/LVMPD_6Months.pdf Shelf Number: 132469 Keywords: Police BrutalityPolice MisconductPolice ReformPolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
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: Amnesty International Title: On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson Summary: Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed African American man, was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. Brown's death set off a long-overdue conversation on race, policing and justice as well as protests that, as of this publication, are ongoing. The events in Ferguson have also raised a range of human rights concerns, including the right to life, the use of lethal force by law enforcement, the right to freedom from discrimination and the rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Amnesty International wrote to Ferguson Police Department on August 12 and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 13, reminding authorities of their international human rights obligations. On August 14, a delegation of Amnesty International observers was deployed to Ferguson. This briefing outlines some of the human rights abuses and other policing failures witnessed by those observers and include key recommendations on the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers and the policing of protests. Details: New York: Amnesty International USA, 2014. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 3, 2014 at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/onthestreetsofamericaamnestyinternational.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/onthestreetsofamericaamnestyinternational.pdf Shelf Number: 133933 Keywords: Human Rights AbusesPolice DiscretionPolice MisconductPolice Use of Force (U.S.) |
Author: 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: 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.) |