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Use of Force by Police 4 Measuring the Amount of Force Used By and Against the Police in Six Jurisdictions by Joel H. Garner and Christopher D. Maxwell his study examines the amount of force forms, and constructing the measures of T used by and against law enforcement force reported here. The departments en- officers and more than 50 characteristics couraged officers to complete police survey of officers, civilians, and arrest situations forms and assisted the research team in associated with the use of more or less force. gaining access to suspects in local detention Data were gathered about suspects’ and centers. police officers’ behaviors from more than Throughout the project, these law enforce- 7,500 adult custody arrests1 in 6 urban law ment managers worked together as a group enforcement agencies. Joel H. Garner, Ph.D., is to promote the use of consistent measures Research Director, Joint The participating agencies were the across the six jurisdictions and to enhance Centers for Justice Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) the use of the findings by the participating Studies, Inc. Christopher Police Department, Colorado Springs departments. This collaborative design was D. Maxwell, Ph.D., is (Colorado) Police Department, Dallas intended; in fact, it is not clear whether Assistant Professor of (Texas) Police Department, St. Petersburg there was any other way to produce the Criminology, Michigan (Florida) Police Department, San Diego information included in this chapter. State University. (California) Police Department, and San Emerging from this research is a more com- Diego County (California) Sheriff’s plete understanding of the frequency with Department. which certain types of tactics are used and To organize, present, and understand the what types of weapons are displayed, threat- nature and characteristics of the force used ened, or actually used. The consistent find- in representative samples of arrests, this ings across all six jurisdictions are that most study developed four measures of the arrests do not involve any force by the police amount of force used by police officers and or by suspects. In those situations where four parallel measures of the force used by some type of force is used, typically no arrested suspects. weapon is used, threatened, or even dis- played. When police use some form of weap- The participating agencies also played a ma- onless tactic (hitting, kicking, wrestling, etc.), jor role in designing and implementing this the most frequent tactic involves grabbing research. Senior police managers in each de- only. partment actively contributed to delineating research goals, designing data collection 25 Use of Force by Police The Importance of Systematic tive of each department’s annual arrests. We Samples estimated that the number of arrests needed to obtain reliable estimates of the amount of Prior research on the use of force has, in force varied between 900 and 1,200 in the many instances, been limited to instances six jurisdictions. However, we did not draw where some type of force, usually deadly a random sample of arrests throughout the force, was used.2 This use of samples that do year because that would have entailed com- not represent all police behavior limits our plicated procedures for starting and stopping ability to describe when force is used and data collection by police officers. We chose to when it is not used. sample arrests continuously over a 2- to 7-week period, depending on the size of the One senior researcher, Albert J. Reiss, Jr., department and the rate at which officers has argued that the absence of systematic made arrests. samples of police behavior means that the entire approach to the study of deadly force Data collection began at different times in was flawed “because analysts of police use of different departments, so the total sample deadly force focus on situations in which the included arrests during the summer, fall, decision was made to use it, such as firing a and the winter of 1996–97. We began data weapon . they ignore all decisions where collection in the Colorado Springs Police De- force gave way to alternative ways of coping partment in mid-August 1996 and completed with situations.”3 data collection in Charlotte-Mecklenburg in the second week of February 1997. It took The flaws that Dr. Reiss identified can have 50 days to obtain data on 1,249 arrests in real-world, and sometimes disastrous, conse- Colorado Springs but only 2 weeks to obtain quences. For instance, the congressional data on 1,192 arrests in Dallas. investigation into the Challenger shuttle di- saster identified the failure of the engineers In all 6 jurisdictions, we obtained 7,512 us- at NASA to examine evidence from a sys- able surveys. The proportion of adult custody tematic sample of all of the previous 21 arrests for which we obtained completed, shuttle flights.4 The engineers examined usable surveys varied from 85 percent to 93 only the eight Shuttle flights with identified percent, and we determined that there were 0-ring problems, and among those flights, no systematic differences between arrests there was no correlation between 0-ring with or without a completed survey. The failures and temperature at the launch pad. large size and representative nature of our However, in the complete set of all 21 flights, sample provide a solid basis for describing the ultimately deadly correlation was clear. the nature of use of force in the six partici- pating departments. This research employed systematic samples The authors’ research was of adult custody arrests in order to provide This research also sought to avoid other supported under grant a comparison of circumstances when force is methodological flaws. We collected informa- number 95–IJ–CX–0066 used with the circumstances when force is tion both from police officers and from by the National Institute not used. This is an important characteristic. arrested suspects and did so in ways that of Justice. By using a complete set of police behavior, protected the confidentiality of officers and even when no force is involved, we have suspects (see sidebar “Measuring force”). In sought to avoid types of errors that occurred assessing the factors associated with the use in the Challenger study as well as most of of force, this study used multivariate statisti- the other police studies. cal tests appropriate for the measurements available and the hypotheses being tested. Our approach to data collection compro- Simple descriptive information alone can be mised ideal research procedures with the misleading, especially when research seeks to real-life necessities of working within an associate the use of force with characteristics operational agency. We wanted to obtain a of officers, suspects, and arrest situations. sample of adult custody arrests representa- 26 Chapter 4: Measuring the Amount of Force Used Our design has some limitations. There are weapon, or threatened to use a weapon. some circumstances in which the police use However, it is not always clear when a force but do not make an arrest, and our ap- weapon is actually used. Does a firearm have proach will miss those incidents. In addition, to be discharged to be “used”? In addition, is the primary source of our data is self- a firearm or a baton displayed just by being reported marks by police officers on a two- carried by an officer, or does display mean page form. These types of measures provide only removed from a holster? If a weapon is some uniformity but often miss important displayed, is an officer or a suspect threaten- distinctions that can be obtained by more ing to use it? We think the distinctions be- indepth interviews or firsthand observations tween use, threatened use, and display are by independent observers. important but acknowledge that the survey form might be an imprecise method to mea- For instance, we asked officers to record sure these differences. whether they used a weapon, displayed a Measuring force The primary means by which the research age procedures of the Joint Centers for project collected information on the use of Justice Studies. force was a one-page, front and back, form Under the legislation authorizing the re- completed by law enforcement officers on a search program at the National Institute of systematic sample of adult custody arrests. Justice, Congress made confidential re- This form, illustrated on the two following search data “immune from legal process” pages, was used to record characteristics of and specified that data identifiable to an the arrest situation, the suspect, the officer, individual shall not be “used for any pur- and the specific behavioral acts of officers, pose in any judicial, legislative, or admin- suspects, and bystanders in a particular istrative proceeding.”† This confidentiality arrest. The form was derived from a similar protection was communicated to officers study* conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, dur- by their departments and included on the ing 1994 but was modified to conform to the survey form; interviewed suspects were local characteristics, police terminology, and told of this protection prior to their agree- departmental policies of the participating ing to participate in the research. agencies. Similar items were asked of a smaller sample of suspects interviewed in These procedures increased the likeli- local jails shortly after arrest. hood that officers and suspects would provide more accurate information be- The forms were completed by arresting cause officers would be less constrained officers but were not reviewed or controlled by fears that their individual answers by police managers; thus, the forms were might be communicated to others within not departmental records but research the department and might even possibly data. Both the police officers completing be used against them. The confidentiality the forms and the suspects who were inter- provided to research subjects by the Con- viewed were research subjects, and the gress makes the findings of this research confidentiality of their responses was pro- more reliable and, therefore, more useful tected by the data management and stor- to congressional and other policymakers.
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