Continuing the Criminal Justice theme of my last few posts this one will cover Police Use of Force from a research paper I wrote in my senior seminar.

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Abstract

Examining the historical context of use of force by law enforcement in order to gain compliance when enforcing the law compared to the appearance of increasingly using force to mete out punishment. The evolution of modern policing from its inception to current situation with a focus on the changes for use of force and the tools provided. An examination of the key turning points in modern policing and the effects the War on Drugs and the War on Terror had in respect to law enforcement use of force.

Historical Policing

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The enforcement of the law prior to the advent of modern policing was one of vigilantism, mob justice, public law enforcement volunteers, and private paid law enforcement. Modern policing is best described as professional policing; with rules, regulations, standards, and training. The advent of modern policing began during the Industrial Revolution with the large influx of population to cities which showed that the current system of policing was unable to handle the increased strain. The first modern police force was established by Sir Robert Peel who created the London Metropolitan Police Services while serving as Home Secretary.

The shift in law enforcement methods necessitated by this strain required standardized responses, tactics, and procedures; the effect this had on use of force was to create levels of response which were graduated based on the circumstances. Prior to this the use of force was solely up to the individual officer and was not standardized with the rest of the agency. The use of training and procedures ensured that not only were the officers adequately capable of handling most situations but also that the public would be reassured by the professionalism and uniformity in law enforcement.

Use of Force

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The purpose of the use of force in policing is to apprehend a suspect who is unwilling to submit of their own accord. The level of force used is necessitated by the actions of the suspect and by policy should be the minimum force required. This policy is commonly referred to as the Use-of-Force Continuum and outlines the broad levels of force used. The first is no force, followed by verbal commands, physical control through the use of holds or punches, less-lethal which includes batons, Tasers, and pepper spray, and finally lethal force involving a firearm. This policy is extremely valuable to both law enforcement and the public as it clearly delineates the levels of force used and what steps are required to reach them.

This delineation has at times become muddled, especially in the cases of protests where excessive force is used against crowds of people in order to disperse them. Notable examples include the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s and more currently the Occupy and Ferguson protests. These protests garnered large responses from the police which saw the widespread use of less-lethal methods to gain compliance with police orders, which in these cases were to disburse the protest. The use of force in these scenarios highlights the growing trend in less public encounters with the police in which the officer uses force to gain compliance with an order, rather than using force to apprehend the individual for detainment. The Taser was originally marketed as an alternative choice to the officer’s firearm when confronting a suspect with lethal force; however since its adoption by law enforcement it has become instead a commonly used compliance tool and in several publicized instances a torture device.

Alpert summarizes the police use of force as:

“Of course, in a perfect world, citizen compliance with laws would not be coercive and the use of force by police would be unnecessary; in our complex society however, expecting citizen compliance is a gamble at best. As Bittner noted thirty years ago, the use of force is at the core of the police role; however, the true skill of a well-trained police officer is the ability to accomplish the police mission while avoiding the use of force or only using minimal levels of force as situationally justified.”

(Alpert, 2004)

The examination of this summary by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that of 1,000 agencies using software to capture use of force statistics in 1995 to 1997 that there were 62,411 reported incidences, seven percent using chemical force, and five percent using firearms. A smaller report which calculated the ratio of use of force to calls estimated 4.19 per 10,000 calls. (Adams, et al., 1999) A more recent study of police behavior during traffic stops in 2011 found that 26% of the population aged 16 or older had contact with law enforcement during that year based on the NVCS supplement Police-Public Contact Survey. The report found that six percent of traffic stops involved use of force incidences and that 75% of them the driver believed the use of force was not necessary. (Langton & Durose, 2013)

War on Drugs

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The reason this trend began is rooted in an adversarial approach to policing which grew in popularity due to the War on Drugs. By adopting the mentality that law enforcement were soldiers fighting a battle against drugs, the population became the enemy. This “Us vs. Them” mentality based itself in sociological tribalism which furthered the divide between law enforcement and the population. Prohibited substances require producers, transporters, distributors, and consumers; the same as any other commodity. By targeting all of these links in the drug chain, the police increased the necessity for searches and raids. The methodology for fighting the War on Drugs became an odds game; by increasing the number of searches during routine law enforcement encounters the chances of discovering drugs or drug paraphernalia increased as well. In addition to searches during routine encounters, raids on suspected distributors or producers became commonplace. This increase in searches and the desire to combat drugs escalated common encounters and recreated ones not used since the prohibition era. This escalation and the resulting tensions caused by it added additional danger to the enforcement of laws which saw an increase in the use of force by both law enforcement and suspects. Due to the nature of the War on Drugs, the destruction of evidence was of paramount importance to gaining a conviction. Thus methods were developed to prevent the destruction of evidence such as no-knock raids, undercover narcotics divisions, and the use of drug dogs to detect residue.

The catalyst for this focus was not the drug laws alone, but the federal funding incentives for agencies. Personnel, equipment, and training grants were offered by the federal government to increase local police departments’ abilities when dealing with narcotics. Further, many of the sources of funding were results based and along with civil forfeiture laws, constituted a significant portion of agencies budgets. This catalyst led the way for an increase in operational tempo in order to secure the agencies funding. By policing for profit, the law enforcement officers had a vested interest in obtaining as many convictions as possible which led to them escalating encounters and performing an increasing number of raids. These raids start at the threat of lethal force level and are in large part the reason for increased use of force incidences.

An examination of the number of raids starting in the 1980s and ending in 2000 due to the War on Drugs shows an increase from 3,000, to 45,000 SWAT raids utilizing the equipment and training provided under federal grants. (Kraska, Militarization and Policing—Its Relevance to 21st Century Police, 2007) This statistic is further broken down by the author in a separate piece which investigated individual agency use of SWAT teams by 548 departments surveyed. The results were “Moving from one call-out per month to four or five.. Respondents reported that the majority of call0outs were to conduct what the police call a “high risk warrant work,” mostly “drug raids” Warrant work accounted for 75.9% of all paramilitary activity in 1995.” (Kraska & Kappeler, Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units, 1997)

Officer Safety

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The main focus of law enforcement over the last few years has been officer safety. At its core it involves additional training, providing adequate protection equipment such as body armor, and also providing backup to reduce the likelihood of violence from the suspect through the threat of overwhelming force. The issue at hand with officer safety and use of force is that of training; by training officers to be prepared for a potentially lethal contact at all times, the officers are escalating encounters based on perceived threats. These encounters range from physical handling and detainment of a suspect due to unwillingness to comply including the use of less-lethal means, to the use of lethal force under supposition of a threat to the officer.

The argument over officer safety versus public safety has been the largest contention point between law enforcement and the populous they are supposed to protect. The law enforcement side is that the job is inherently dangerous and that measures must be taken to promote officer safety; while the opposing side argues that this also applies to the subject in the encounter. The excessive use of force provides that the officer is safe, however goal should be for both parties to leave the encounter safely and that is current issue. An examination of the shooting of Kajieme Powell by the Washington Times phrased the issue “The No. 1 job of a police department is not “officer safety,” as Chief Dotson claims… No, the No. 1 job of a police officer is public safety, which includes civilians, police officers and, yes, even suspects.” (Hurt, 2014)

The events in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina outline a side effect of the officer safety issue in that an overzealous application of the measure results in officers attempting to cover-up misdeeds perpetrated originally due to a fear for their safety. The Danziger Bridge Shooting involved a call reporting gunfire on the bridge and a possible officer down. The responding officers fearing for their safety arrived and before identifying the situation immediately opened fire on a family crossing the bridge. The officers covered up the events as the family was not armed or attempting to harm the officers, and were indicted after an investigation. The author Silverii states in his conclusion that “These cases, and other targeting police officers for criminal indictments, are causing the community of law enforcement to become more segregated from the civilian population because the code of silence was broken, and officers were held accountable for illegal actions. (Silverii, 2015) His analysis on the segregation of law enforcement and the civilian population furthers the issue of adversarial policing examined earlier.

The events in California in relation to the Christopher Dorner incident provide further issues with the focus on officer safety as in two separate occasions officers believed they had identified Dorner in a vehicle and opened fire. On both occasions the officers were mistaken and due to the emphasis on their safety, three innocent people were shot. These events highlight the issues with placing officer safety at the forefront and not that of law enforcement’s motto “To serve and protect”. (Altman, 2013)

The statistics concerning officer safety based on a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice report show that 57,268 officers were assaulted. The report goes on to examine causes of death among 124 officers who were killed in 2011 accidental deaths are down while homicides are up. A chart showing the falling violent crime rate is juxtaposed by an increasing trend of fatal officer shootings. (Fiedler, 2015) These percentages are based on 59 officers being killed in 2010, and 68 in 2011 with 21 and 33 gunfire fatalities and 27 and 18 traffic incidents respectively out of over 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. (National Law Enforcement officers Memorial Fund, 2011) (National Law Enforcement officers Memorial Fund, n.d.)

War on Terror

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The War on Terror has become the largest budget provider for law enforcement agencies. Federal grants to train, equip, and staff police forces to handle terror threats inside the United States have provided police departments with the ability to purchase military surplus armored personnel carriers, automatic weapons, and furnish SWAT training. With all of this equipment and the rarity of terror attacks, police departments have been utilizing it to perform routine operations instead. With the Boston Bombing and the manhunt for Christopher Dorner being the only two recent events which may have necessitated their use. The use of this equipment and training in routine operations has further escalated the use of force by introducing military tactics into civilian policing. The rise of Swatting is a direct symptom of this issue as the caller creating the hoax is guaranteed a militarized response against their target. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013) These events are predicated on law enforcement using overwhelming force and militarized tactics to respond to the call in the hopes that the use of force will be escalated to a lethal level. The Boston Marathon Bombing shows the level at which law enforcement has militarized in response to the terror threat and its overuse in routine operations. “That day, April 19, the Boston area was put on lockdown, with schools closed, public transportation service suspended and people advised to stay inside their homes, as police conducted door-to-door searches in Watertown and military-style vehicles patrolled the streets.” (History.com, 2014)

Law Enforcement Mindset

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Law enforcement requires a certain type of individual for successful police work and the hiring practices, requirements, and institutional knowledge of law enforcement further refines this personality for what they consider useful. Professional policing has evolved through several stages and has involved different typology styles. The first is the Crime Fighter, an officer who believes that fighting crime is the core component of law enforcement, this mentality is fostered by the War on Drugs. The second is the Social Agent and serving the public through community service. The third is the Law Enforcer, similar to the Crime Fighter, the focus is on enforcing the law as written with little to no discretion. The fourth is the Watchman which focuses on maintaining order be it by enforcing the law or helping the community as long as it maintains the order the community desires. These different styles of policing require varying personalities and the training for one is not appropriate for the other.

In Policing in Modern Society William G. Doerner is quoted as saying:

“I maintain that the work group molds the officer’s personality. I call it street survival. Rookies find themselves under tremendous pressure and tend to gravitate from one end of the pendulum to the other… Hence, rookies tend to be impetuous, aggressive, and very rough around the edges.”

(Berg, 1999)

This quote summarizes the effects of the institutional knowledge and actions of the law enforcement agency on how future police officers are molded to fit the mindset they deem necessary. Further, an examination of the social identities associated with police and non-police mentalities found that “The policeman's social identity as a law enforcement officer, and therefore as an intruder, is a "master status." It overrides all other aspects of his public identity… Presumably the policeman withdraws into his own circle of friends and defines the public in deviant terms just as he is so defined by them.” and that the “Us vs. Them” mentality is fostered not by just the police but by the community itself. (Balch, 1972)

Effect on Use of Force

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The effect these examinations have on use of force is that while it is expected the use of force is needed to apprehend suspects in certain circumstances, and that there is a clear demarcation on the levels of use of force, that the increased use of higher levels of force is one of systemic issue. A Department of Justice report on the use of Tasers as part of the use of force continuum warned that “their ease of use and popularity among officers raise the specter of overuse” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2011) this issue is shown in an article on the Houston Police Department’s adoption of Tasers and their use.

“Officers have used their Tasers more than 1,000 times in the past two years, but in 95 percent of those cases they were not used to defuse situations in which suspects wielded weapons and deadly force clearly would have been justified. Instead, more than half of the Taser incidents escalated from relatively common police calls, such as traffic stops, disturbance and nuisance complaints, and reports of suspicious people.”

(Khanna, 2007)

Which outlines the increasing trend of using easy use of force methods to gain compliance where no use of force would otherwise have been used.

The coupling of increasing uses of force during routine encounters with the increasing use of paramilitary raids in the War on Drugs made possible by federal funding and terror concerns reflects the methodology used by law enforcement agencies. A survey of new police officers reported “widespread use of excessive force by fellow officers. Corruption of authority was the most common deviant behavior noted, followed by sleeping on duty and then excessive force… Although police brutality was considered to be as common as sleeping on duty, it was seen as less deviant.” Gives insight into the issue of systemic institutional knowledge examined earlier. (William A. Geller, 1959) An examination of the Rodney King incident, its historical foundation, and the effects it caused on American policing states: “Most excessive force cases that reach the courts show that the questionable conduct either has happened because superiors are so indifferent to the misconduct as to be grossly negligent in the performance of their duties or occurs in the fulfillment of administrative policy…” (Fyfe & Skolnick, 1993) The use of force is outlined by the law enforcement administration and incidences are handled by them as well as the evidence that law enforcement officers’ actions and mentalities are based on administrative controls; thus it is necessary that the examination and control of use of force be handled at the administrative level by society when it is deemed appropriate or excessive.

References

Adams, K., Alpert, G. P., Dunham, R. G., Garner, J. H., Greenfeld, L. A., Henriquez, M. A., . . . Smith, S. K. (1999). Use of Force by Police: Overview of National. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Alpert, G. P. (2004). Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Altman, L. (2013, Febuary 7). Police confuse truck for Dorner's, shoot at 3 in Torrance. Retrieved from www.ocregister.com: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/police-494979-people-officers.html
Balch, R. W. (1972). Police Personality: Fact or Fiction, The. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 106-119.
Berg, B. L. (1999). Policing in Modern Society. Woburn: Gulf Professional Publishing.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2013, September 3). The Crime of ‘Swatting’ Fake 9-1-1 Calls Have Real Consequences. Retrieved from www.fbi.gov: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences
Fiedler, M. L. (2015, 3 1). Officer Safety and Wellness: An Overview of the Issues. Retrieved from usdoj.gov: http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/OSWG/e091120401-OSWGReport.pdf
Fyfe, J., & Skolnick, J. H. (1993). Above the Law : Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free Press.
History.com. (2014). Boston Marathon Bombings. Retrieved from www.history.com: http://www.history.com/topics/boston-marathon-bombings
Hurt, C. (2014, August 26). When officer safety is job No. 1, the public suffers. Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/26/hurt-when-officer-safety-is-job-no-1-the-public-su/?page=all
Khanna, R. (2007, January 14). Questions grow over HPD's use of Taser guns. Retrieved from www.chron.com: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Questions-grow-over-HPD-s-use-of-Taser-guns-1842941.php
Kraska, P. B. (2007, December 13). Militarization and Policing—Its Relevance to 21st Century Police. Retrieved from http://cjmasters.eku.edu/: http://cjmasters.eku.edu/sites/cjmasters.eku.edu/files/21stmilitarization.pdf
Kraska, P. B., & Kappeler, V. E. (1997). Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langton, L., & Durose, M. (2013). Police Behavior during Traffic and Street Stops, 2011. Washington D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
National Law Enforcement officers Memorial Fund. (2011). Officer Safety Statistics. NLEOMF.
National Law Enforcement officers Memorial Fund. (n.d.). Law Enforcement Facts.
Silverii, L. S. (2015). Cop Culture: Why Good Cops Go Bad. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
U.S. Department of Justice. (2011). Police Use of Force, Tasers and Other Less-Lethal Weapons. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
William A. Geller, H. T. (1959). Police Violence: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force. New Haven: Yale University.