Use of Force

The legal authority to use force against members of the public is one of law enforcement’s most defining characteristics. This power has also presented law enforcement with some of its greatest challenges regarding when to use force and to what degree. According the U.S. Justice Department’s “Principles for Promoting Police Integrity: Examples of Promising Police Practices and Policies:”

Policing requires that at times an officer must exercise control of a violent, assaultive, or resisting individual to make an arrest, or to protect the officer, other officers, or members of the general public from risk of imminent harm. Police officers should use only the amount of force that is reasonably necessary to effectively bring an incident under control while protecting the lives of the officers and others.

Police-community tensions, litigation, and at times, criminal prosecution of officers accused of using excessive force, can arise in relation to different views regarding whether force, or the amount of force used, was reasonable or necessary.

Publications

Geoffrey P. Alpert and Roger G. Dunham, “Analysis of Police Use-of-Force Data,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 2000.

Geoffrey P. Alpert and Michael R. Smith, "Police Use of Force Data: Where We Are and Where We Should be Going," Police Quarterly, March 1999.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey,” 2004.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/cpp02.txt

Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey,” 2001.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpp99.pdf

Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Policing and Homicide, 1976-98: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons,” 2001.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ph98.pdf

Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Use of Force by Police: Overview of National and Local Data,” 1999.
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/176330-1.pdf

Liqun Cao, “Curbing Police Brutality: What Works? A Reanalysis of Citizen Complaints at the Organizational Level, Final Report,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, February 2002.

Community Relations Service, U.S. Department of Justice, Police Use of Excessive Force: A Conciliation Handbook for the Police and the Community,” June 1999 (updated June 2002).
http://www.usdoj.gov/crs/pubs/pdexcess.pdf

James Fyfe and Jerome Skolnick, “Above the Law: Police and Excessive Use of Force,” New York: The Free Press, 1993.

William A. Geller and Michael S. Scott, “Deadly Force: What We Know” Police Executive Research Forum, 1992.
www.policeforum.org

International Association of Chiefs of Police, “Use of Force Model Policy” and “Use of Force Concepts and Issues Paper.”
http://www.theiacp.org/pubinfo/PolCtr.htm

Police Executive Research Forum, “Chief Concerns: Exploring the Challenges of Police Use of Force,” May 2005.
www.policeforum.org

U.S. Department of Justice, “Principles for Promoting Police Integrity: Examples of Promising Police Practices and Policies,” January 2001. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojp/186189.pdf