Understanding the Use of Force By and Against the Police in Six Jurisdictions in the United States, 1996-1997

This study examined the amount of force used by and against
law enforcement officers and more than 50 characteristics of officers,
civilians, and arrest situations associated with the use of different
levels of force. An important component of this multijurisdiction
project was to employ a common measurement of elements of force and
predictors of force. Data were gathered about suspects' and police
officers' behaviors from adult custody arrests in six urban law
enforcement agencies. The participating agencies were the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department, Colorado
Springs (Colorado) Police Department, Dallas (Texas) Police
Department, St. Petersburg (Florida) Police Department, San Diego
(California) Police Department, and San Diego County (California)
Sheriff's Department. Data collection began at different times in the
participating departments, so the total sample included arrests during
the summer, fall, and winter of 1996-1997. Forms were completed and
coded for 7,512 adult custody arrests (Part 1). This form was used to
record officer self-reports on the characteristics of the arrest
situation, the suspects, and the officers, and the specific behavioral
acts of officers, suspects, and bystanders in a particular
arrest. Similar items were asked of 1,156 suspects interviewed in
local jails at the time they were booked following arrest to obtain an
independent assessment of officer and suspect use of force (Part
2). Officers were informed that some suspects would be interviewed,
but they did not know which would be interviewed or when. Using the
items included on the police survey, the research team constructed
four measures of force used by police officers -- physical force,
physical force plus threats, continuum of force, and maximum
force. Four comparable measures of force used by arrested suspects
were also developed. These measures are included in the data for Part
1. Each measure was derived by combining specific actions by law
enforcement officers or by suspects in various ways. The first measure
was a traditional conceptual dichotomy of arrests in which physical
force was or was not used. For both the police and for suspects, the
definition of physical force included any arrest in which a weapon or
weaponless tactic was used. In addition, police arrests in which
officers used a severe restraint were included. The second measure,
physical force plus threats, was similar to physical force but added
the use of threats and displays of weapons. To address the potential
limitations of these two dichotomous measures, two other measures were
developed. The continuum-of-force measure captured the levels of force
commonly used in official policies by the participating law
enforcement agencies. To construct the fourth measure, maximum force,
503 experienced officers in five of the six jurisdictions ranked a
variety of hypothetical types of force by officers and by suspects on
a scale from 1 (least forceful) to 100 (most forceful). Officers were
asked to rank these items based on their own personal experience, not
official policy. These rankings of police and suspect use of force,
which appear in Part 3, were averaged for each jurisdiction and used
in Part 1 to weight the behaviors that occurred in the sampled
arrests. Variables for Parts 1 and 2 include nature of the arrest,
features of the arrest location, mobilization of the police, and officer
and suspect characteristics. Part 3 provides officer rankings on 54
items that suspects might do or say during an arrest. Separately,
officers ranked a series of 44 items that a police officer might do or
say during an arrest. These items include spitting, shouting or
cursing, hitting, wrestling, pushing, resisting, fleeing, commanding,
using conversational voice, and using pressure point holds, as well as
possession, display, threat of use, or use of several weapons (e.g.,
knife, chemical agent, dog, blunt object, handgun, motor vehicle).