Excessive Use Of Force Essay

Reducing ‘Use of Force’ / ‘Excessive Force” Incidents through Intervention

The use of force is a power inherited with the role police hold given the authority granted to them by the state to satisfy the objectives of law enforcement, such as the prevention of crime and the maintenance of law and order. The use of this power however is an option to be utilized as a last resort within reasonable levels and only in regards to resistance. On occasion an officer may be required to use force, this is determined by the act and level of resistance that can range from verbal resistance to the threat of life. With each incidence of resistance and the factors driving the police-citizen interaction, there is the potential for misjudgment in the use of force resulting in excessive force or to overstep authority to use force. Though the abuse of this authority has been expressed as an international issue, as highlighted at times in the media, it is a rare occurrence in comparison to the daily actions and interactions that police have among the citizenry. Still in the United States it remains a pervasive abuse of citizens’ rights.

The added attention by the media only builds upon the mistrust of the police by the people who are driven by ideas of racism and inequality. This paper will examine the question of whether incidents of force and its extreme, excessive force, can be reduced through pragmatic self-correcting forms of intervention to alter practice and or behavior of police officers (PO) during interactions with citizens, so that law enforcement can rebuild a trusting relationship with the citizenry and become a more effective role within the communities it serves.
Hypothesis
Police have enforced social and criminal control on behalf of the authorities in charge since early history, so incidents of abuse of authorized force has most likely occurred, though the lack of information would make it difficult to define such incidents. With changes in society and cultures, so does the influence of those changes are upon subcultures such as law enforcement. In a democratic society, like that of the United States (US), law enforcement are obligate to follow the social norms and governing laws, they must balance their daily activities and decisions with the demand of society to have order, safety and wellbeing. Events and social unrest escalating since the 1960s have demanded that law enforcement or more specifically policing be more accountable and reflect a more democratic model of its society. In 1994 Congress signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA) that provided provision to; aide state and local law enforcement agencies to hire officers and develop community policing strategies; and to track annually excessive force incidents (Terrill, Alpert, Dunham, & Smith, 2003).
One can infer from the act of Congress that the existing policing strategies, at the time, needed reform and more accountability, but can that happen? Can law enforcement agencies with the authority to use force and prone to misuse it, change the way they police citizens. I will use research from (Prenzler, Porter, & Alpert, 2013) as my primary source with supportive research and material from (Bogats Jr., 2015), (Marenin, 2007), (Micucci & Gomme, 2005), (Palmiotto, 2017) & (Terrill, Alpert, Dunham, & Smith, 2003) to prove that departmental intervention significantly decreases incidents of force and consequently excessive force by uniformed officers.
Literature Review
Case studies and prospects. The paper covers several cases in which police departments at various levels of government generated positive results after implementing intervening strategies or programs. These cases were selected because all had trackable measures that were identified to be the result of the intervention applied upon the police department in each case. They were selected because each case included a model of evaluation in terms of control groups and measures of impact upon several years.
The literature also included a section of discussion where a review of the case studies is done to emphasize the reductions in use of force and harms from force can be obtained through a range of interventions that include participatory forms that address behaviors from individual, cultural and organization influences. There is suggestive explanation given as to the reasons behind behaviors that lead to use of force at the individual, cultural and organizational levels with attention given to those cases that have had success addressing those behaviors or influences at each level. What is clearly evident is that the cases have all had diagnosing research to identify use of force issues using set standards, that data was then assessed and analyzed for a directed intervention program, tailored to that organization, its environment and members. Further, all cases appeared to have leadership that was committed to improving their organizations and the perceptions of the people they police.
A management tool for evaluating. The literature comes from the research on the application of a methodology to collect data and evaluate the factors involved in use of force by police officers. Focus is given on defining what constitutes excessive force, although consensus is still pending, agreement on appropriate force is that which is reasonable. The author supports existing descriptive measures to capture incidents involving use of force and believes that both ‘Force Reports’ and ‘Force Continuum’ can serve as a starting point in determining reasonable use of force. Use of force or supervisor control-of-person reports are highlighted and preferred over other forms of mechanism that capture officer behavior for their practical and systematic features. On review the author give preference to the supervisor control-of-person reports for the added level of supervisory assessment that is added to incidents, as well as expansion of detail on factors involved in the incident. I found the example on the Miami-Dade Police Department relevant in regards to the collection of information related to the citizen and officer/s involved in incidents. With regards to the force continuum, the author sets early on that force reports, directed by a collection strategy must be linked to a continuum, a program of force policy. One aspect of the continuum is the definition of escalating force to resistance levels that have expected severities attached. It is a tool to be utilized by individual officers and managing supervisors in dealing, in an incrementalistic way, with the escalation of force. I found the force factor tables useful in gaging levels of force to perceived resistance and fell in agreement with the author that force factor measures should be incorporated within force continuums.
Overall the paper was informative and offered a solid approach to measuring and assessing use of force incidents and I believe that the suggested combination of force reports to collect and assess incidents information; force factor scoring to help officers better assess relative use of force, and a force continuum to provide a standardization to guide officers through a resistance encounter while assuring they are compliant with current policy would offer the best measuring methodology. The literature was strong in providing a process of collecting measures and assessing it and had ample examples to gage its usefulness over time. It is my estimation that this process is complex and would require training and commitment to implement but would serve as an optimal tool for use of force assessment so that finding can be carried over into a form of intervention.
Influence of training and agency policy. Influence of training and policy is the focus of this paper which is to study the affect these factors have on PO to decide what level of force to use to counter resistance from a suspect in the field. Generally, the literature supports the application of training and policy as guidance in the use of force, with the goal to have law enforcement improve their risk management abilities to reduce their liabilities. The study used a deontological approach to assess the participants and reveal their ethical standards to uphold their obligations and duty to society while dealing with the delimit of deciding if they are ethically correct with the pursuit of the training and policy that guides them. In effect, can training and adherence to policy help an officer make better rational decisions. The study engaged nine experienced officers to collect information on use of force to counter resistance and decision-making process in the usage of force and the guidance behind such decisions.
The study first supports its position with a review of literature that progresses through the development of less lethal principles and methodologies to manage use of force, liabilities that arise from not following use of force policy, assessing the variations in the use of force and influencing factors, and a discussion on the officer’s requirements in the use of force. The literature also addresses use of force rational, scope of force usage, and type of resistance that an officer perceives. The author is well sourced in the support that training and policy are an officer’s primary resource in use of force decisions. The particulars of the study are later clearly defined, in perception and design. The findings of the literature were that an officer acts on the authority given to them by law guided by their knowledge of organization policy. When a defined policy is not used to direct officers procedurally through a use of force incident then there is failure in the officer’s response, thus availing the opportunity for excessive force. I found the study to be an excellent source for understanding the relevance training and policy support the decision-making process of an officer in the field and how much reliance is placed on the organization to reduce their exposure by equipping their officers with effective training and policy to minimize liability.
Police training for democracy.

The literature takes the position that the training of POs must be done with the purpose that officers must be responsive to social demands but must refrain from being overly responsive and resist execution of such a response that would violate the protected rights of citizens. The training supported is of the type of mutual involvement, between the expert and the novice, to further the educational process. The author notes the difficulties of policing in a democratic society while balancing the daily decisions of conflicting value with the expectation of society, organization and law. The usage of the type of training stems from the demand of society to establish democratic policing system the hold democratic values in all areas of an organization. The literature noted a currently used model, Community Oriented

Policing.
The author supports training through a holistic approach and defines a path but the literature come off weak due to lack of elaboration. In general, the paper is an argument for police training to have democratic values, but its view is narrow in perspective because the author comes off as an outsider. My review of this literature is that it is basically a wish list of what society wants from policing organizations to be, but it lacks the knowledge in the complexities that police officers deal with within their subcultures and daily activities.