Police Encounters and Use of Force

The study of police encounters is the study of police action taken by individual officers at the situational level (encounter or contact with citizen), and these are sometimes called "tactical" encounters. It is important to note that a "tactical" encounter involves a short-term solution (more closely associated with the idea of discretion) than a long-term strategic solution (more closely associated with the idea of style). A subsequent lecture deals more extensively with discretion as an object of study, and this lecture focuses more on the split-second decisionmaking associated with use of force issues.

An "encounter" with the police can be broken down into three stages -- (1) contact, (2) processing, and (3) exit stages. The idea of breaking encounters down into three stages comes from Bayley (1986), although this whole approach to structuring or breaking things down to a frame-by-frame analysis has many roots. For example, it can be found in Donald Black's approach to the sociology of law, William Chambliss' approach to ghetto policing, or James Fyfe's "split-second syndrome" approach to police use of deadly force.

It is fairly easy to find numerous studies that count and characterize the type of calls for service (CFS) police get and how they respond to them, and you can get numbers to support just about any argument you want to make. The one thing they all have in common is a focus on the interactions of police outside the police organization, a phrase that encapsulates a much broader line of research started by Reiss (1971). Some fairly accurate generalizations can be made from the literature, however:

Here's some of the most typical behaviors at each stage of an encounter. Please don't focus on the exactness of the percentages, just the behaviors and their rank order of use.

CONTACT

PROCESSING

EXIT

1 - 54% Questioning
2 - 38% Passive listening
3 - 9% Restraint
4 - 1% Divert attention

Force at contact only occurs about 5% of the time. Restraint can be verbal or physical.

1 - 29% Accept citizen definition of situation
2 - 26% Follow citizen advice or suggestion
3 - 23% Devise compromise solution
4 - 20% Indicated nothing police can do

1 - 29% Simply leave
2 - 19% Friendly advice
3 - 14% Pointed advice
4 - 15% Arrest
5 - 5% Referral
6 - 4% Promise

The study of the impact of police encounters is the study of citizen satisfaction with police. Improving the quality of daily interaction between patrol officers and citizens is the best way for police to improve public satisfaction. Certainly there are some factors the police cannot do anything about to affect satisfaction rates, such as demographics (older, female Caucasians tend to have positive attitudes toward police) and perceptions about quality of life. However, satisfaction with delivery of police services at the encounter level has been time and time again proven correlated with overall satisfaction.

Dean (1980) found that the quickest way to improve citizen satisfaction is by enhancing access to Calls for Service (CFS). People who are likely to call the police are often the ones most likely to have strong positive opinions about the police. Furstenberg & Wellford (1973), however, found that satisfaction can be significantly increased by police explaining their course of action at all stages of the encounter level. Explanation of course of action is especially important at traffic stops and other situations where the citizen did not desire the police contact. All citizens expect police to behave in a professional manner, avoid sarcasm, and act courteously and respectfully.

Expectations for police behavior differ from one type of encounter to another. For example, research shows that drivers expect police officers to tell them why they were stopped during traffic encounters and how to handle the ticket. Burglary victims expect police to arrive on the scene in a timely manner, dust for fingerprints, and keep them informed on case status.

While there are many issues relating to the study of "police use of force," we shall confine ourselves to the general nature of situational encounters in the most generic of terms, whenever there is an element of chance in the situation. Too often, students jump into study of the advanced issues, like racial and gender differences, without first understanding the basic characteristics of a use of force encounter.

The use of force is an integral part of a law enforcement officer's job, particularly when arresting criminal suspects. No one disputes that police should be permitted to protect themselves and others from threats to safety, but what is often disputed is an officer's assessment of a threat and the level of force selected to counter it. As a general principle, the level of force used should be tailored to the nature of the threat that prompted its use. As a constitutional principle, (Tennessee v. Garner 1985), the level of force must be reasonable -- not the most minimal level possible, just reasonable. As a common law principle, there should be some warning beforehand by the police before force is used; however, since Amato v. U.S. 1982, this warning is only required before deadly force. Since Graham v. Connor (1989), encounters involving police use of force are legally evaluated on at least four criteria -- need, amount, extent, and application. The Garner case is most frequently mentioned as grounding all police use of force in a 4th Amendment "reasonableness framework" akin to the concept of seizure, with all the Constitutional safeguards therein. The Connor case (see excerpt below) is generally understood as providing an "objective reasonableness" standard for when an officer is forced to make a split-second decision, or in other words, not only why (no hindsight allowed) force was used, but how it was used.

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-397 (1989)

"The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving - about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation."

Most police training in use of force involves a use of force continuum approach. There is some speculation about whether this approach is the best one theoretically possible, or even the best one to satisfy judicial opinion on the matter, but police departments across the country have found it helpful in keeping litigation to a minimum. In other words, the continuum approach has held up in court adequately. The continuum approach is based on analyzing use of force encounters by two criteria -- intensity and necessity. Specifically, the continuum approach provides officers-in-training with the skills and abilities to escalate and de-escalate the level of force in an encounter as the situation merits, and that is about as good as it gets. The following table lists these levels:

THE CONTINUUM OF FORCE
Suspect's Resistance Level:	Officer's Level:
1. Suspect presence	1. Interview stance
2. Verbal resistance	2. Verbal commands
3. Passive resistance	3. Passive techniques (handcuffs)
4. Defensive resistance	4. Chemical agents
5. Active physical resistance	5. Physical tactics/impact weapons
6. Firearms/deadly force	6. Firearms/deadly force

There are several reasons why a focus on non-deadly force is appropriate, not the least of which is the reason that it is the most common type of force. The study of non-deadly force (as opposed to deadly force) may very well shed light on matters of psychology involving the "normal" or "typical" officer, whether or not a police subculture exists that has developed around being "tough enough" but not "too tough," and whether or not any criminological theories can be used to explain violence in policing (Verrill 2004).

Most of the literature on non-deadly force (e.g. Friedrich 1980; Worden 1995) analyzes the phenomenon from a psychological, organizational, or sociological perspective, and these perspectives are sometimes referred to as the individual level, the organizational level, and the situational level.

Individual (psychological) level
There is considerable research on whether police personality characteristics are related in any way to police use of force, and it is safe to say that the psychological research in this regard has produced mixed findings. Many studies (e.g. Hochstedler 1981) have found no correlation between any hypothesized police "types" and a predilection toward use of force. A number of other studies have been inconclusive regarding whether any MMPI subscales or peer ratings predict who is most likely to become a violent-prone officer. It may very well be that police departments do a fairly good job of screening out applicants who are violent-prone. However, individual variables of a socio-demographic nature do tend to make good predictors of which officers use force more frequently, especially if such force is measured by the number of citizen complaints. For example, Terrill and Mastrofski (2002) found that young, White, male officers are more likely to receive citizen abuse of force complaints (and youthful age and/or inexperience is sometimes a factor in deadly force incidents as well).

Organizational level
A line of research going back at least to Westley (1953) has argued that something about the interactions of officers in the workplace, or their work group relationships, has a connection to the legitimization of abuse of force. For instance, Black (1980) argues that violence is not only positively sanctioned by the work group (for peer respect), but serves as the way in which police see themselves as enforcers of the law and social control (for citizen respect of at least their power). Much of this writing is more theoretical than empirical, but a rich tradition exists in criminal justice regarding the dynamics of organizational life which make such ideas plausible, and then there is widespread interest in the phenomenon of police culture. However, most of these ideas about organizational life and culture are based on large-scale, or at least medium-sized, organizations, which is not the norm in policing, and it may very well be that special units (within policing) have the subculture of interest rather than policing as a whole.

Situational (sociological) level
Most of the research along this line looks at things like suspect demeanor, suspect intoxication, suspect resistance to arrest, and so forth. For example, Worden (1995) and Garner et. al. (1996; 2002) all postulate that the most important factor may very well be suspect resistance. It is probably important to note how much it matters whether the critical factor is suspect demeanor or suspect resistance. In the former case (demeanor), it's much more likely that emotional dynamics are involved, and any police use of force will reveal anger as a cause. In the latter case (resistance), it's much more likely that police restraint (and calm, cool, reasonable judgment) is involved.

Given the tentative and relatively weak research base in this area, it ultimately seems to depend upon how one wants to perceive police officers as a whole. Are they the kind of self-restraining individuals capable of calmly choosing appropriate degrees of force along a continuum as the Supreme Court would have want to believe? Or, is there something to the idea that putting people in relatively ambiguous power relationships over other people might lead to some kind of insidious enjoyment of force by the people in power? It's possible that we might have the answers soon, as criminological insight comes to bear on these questions. For example, Kane (2002) has attempted to apply social disorganization theory to police misconduct, and others (Hickman et. al. 2001) have explored the utility of control balance theory. However, there are too few theoretical inquiries, and like so much else in policing, the research has reached a "saturation point" where theory, or at least a new direction for research, urgently needs to be taken.

PRINTED RESOURCES
Alpert, G. & Smith, W. (1994). "How Reasonable is the Reasonable Man: Police and Excessive Force." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 85(2): 481-501. [author's website]
Alpert, G. & Dunham, R. (2004). Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity. NY: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Bayley, D. (1986). "The Tactical Choices of Police Patrol Officers" Journal of Criminal Justice 14.
Black, D. (1970). "The Production of Crime Rates" American Sociological Review 35: 733-40.
Black, D. (1980). The Manners and Customs of the Police. NY: Academic Books.
Chambliss, W. (1994). "Policing the Ghetto Underclass" Social Problems 41: 177-94.
Cohen, H. & Feldberg, M. (1991). Power and Restraint. NY: Praeger.
Dean, D. (1980) "Citizen Ratings of the Police: The Difference Contact Makes," Law and Policy Quarterly 2: 462.
Friedrich, R. (1980). "Police Use of Force: Individuals, Situations, and Organizations." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 452: 82-97.
Furstenberg, F.F., and C.F. Wellford. (1973) "Calling the Police: The Evaluation of Police Service," Law and Society Review 7: 402.
Fyfe, J. (1981). "Observations on Police Deadly Force" Crime and Delinquency 18: 376-89.
Fyfe, J. (1988). "Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform" Justice Quarterly 5: 165-206.
Garner, J., Buchanon, J., Schade, T. & Hepburn, J. (1996). Understanding the Use of Force By and Against Police. Washington DC: NIJ Research in Brief.
Garner, J., Maxwell, C. & Heraux, C. (2002). "Characteristics Associated with the Prevalence and Severity of Force Used by the Police." Justice Quarterly 19(4): 705-746.
Hickman, M., Piquero, A., Lawton, B. & Greene, J. (2001). "Applying Tittle's Control Balance Theory to Police Deviance." Policing 24(4): 497-519.
Hicks, W. (2004). "Constraints in the Police Use of Force," American Journal of CJ 28(2): 255-70.
Hochstedler, E. (1981). "Testing Types: A Review and Test of Police Types." Journal of Criminal Justice 9(6): 451-466.
Jacobs, D. & O'Brien, R. (1998). “The Determinants of Deadly Force: A Structural Analysis of Police Violence.” American Journal of Sociology 103(4): 837-862.
Kane, R. (2002). "The Social Ecology of Police Misconduct." Criminology 40(4): 867-896.
Kappeler, V. (1993). Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
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Terrill, W. (2001). Police Coercion: Application of the Force Continuum. NY: LFB Scholarly Publishing.
Terrill, W. & Mastrofski, S. (2002). "Situational and Officer-Based Determinants of Police Coercion." Justice Quarterly 19(2): 215-248.
Verrill, S. (2004). "Police Use and Abuse of Non-Deadly Force: Research Perspectives and Criminological Theory." LAE Journal 66/67: 7-10.
Westley, W. (1953). "Violence and the Police." American Journal of Sociology 59(1): 34-41.
Westley, W. (1970). Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Worden, R. (1995). "The Causes of Police Brutality: Theory and Evidence on Police Use of Force." Pp. 31-60 in W. Geller & H. Toch (eds.) And Justice For All: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force. Arlington, VA: Police Executive Research Forum.