Police Use of Force: Overview

Introduction

The use of excessive physical force, including beating citizens with hands or batons, or using stun guns (such as Tasers), tear gas, and even lethal weapons, by police is considered police brutality. While antiracist activists' awareness of and protests against police use of force, particularly against Black Americans, was not new, technological changes and a rise in highly publicized incidents by the 2010s made it increasingly difficult to ignore allegations of police brutality. Video cameras had become commonplace both in squad cars, facing in front of the car, where interactions with citizens take place after motor vehicle stops, and in police stations, where prisoners are held and transported. A greater number of departments had also instituted the use of body cameras by officers. Moreover, with the accessibility of camera phones and the internet, average citizens could quickly and discreetly record incidents of police violence that they happen to witness and share them with the public.

High-profile incidents in the 2010s and 2020s brought the police use of force issue to even greater prominence; these included Darren Wilson's deadly shooting of Michael Brown in 2014; Daniel Pantaleo's illegal chokehold that killed Eric Garner that same year; Jeronimo Yanez's fatal shooting of Philando Castile in 2016; a Louisville, Kentucky, police officer's fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor during a botched raid of her apartment in 2020; Derek Chauvin's killing of George Floyd through a neck restraint in 2020; and the 2023 fatal beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Mississippi. All of these incidents involved Black victims. However, while such incidents increasingly brought the issue to light, it did not lessen the rate at which they occurred. In January 2024, the Guardian reported that, according to the Mapping Police Violence database, 2023 was the "deadliest year for homicides committed by law enforcement in more than a decade," with over 1,230 Americans killed by police that year.

In the wake of Floyd’s death, many people, especially people of color, protested what they perceived to be systemic police brutality and a lack of justice for those killed or injured by police. Proponents of movements such as Black Lives Matter made renewed calls for deeper investigations into the issue, as well as structural reforms. At the same time, people who supported police officers and the Blue Lives Matter movement emphasized the inherent dangers of the work and that individual cases of excessive force were not necessarily representative of the institution of policing as a whole. Others voiced concerns that heightened anti-police sentiment and increased accusations of excessive force could lead to a rise in crime if police officers became less proactive. As the debate continued, it was largely agreed, overall, that more comprehensive data on and systems for the reporting of police use of excessive force were needed to better understand the issue.

Understanding the Discussion

Black Lives Matter: A social justice movement that was founded in 2013 and, through activism and the widespread use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media, had grown in public awareness globally by the 2020s; sometimes abbreviated BLM.

Blue Lives Matter: A countermovement to Black Lives Matter formed around 2014 in response to what its founders and organizers saw as an increase in negative views toward and attacks against police officers in general; it was designed to provide and foster support for law enforcement in part by promoting an understanding of the perspective of police.

Chokehold: In policing, a technique that has been used to restrain suspects by putting pressure on their windpipe and restricting airflow.

Civil rights: The collective rights and freedoms given to citizens. In addition to laws against discrimination, as well as the right to due process of law during criminal trials, citizens have the right to be free from undue government interference.

Taser: A brand-named weapon (also known as a "stun gun") carried by many police officers that, upon firing, delivers an electroshock. The shock is intended to be nonlethal but sufficient to temporarily incapacitate an individual.

History

As long as there have been formalized governments with an organized army or police force, there have been incidents in which soldiers or officers have abused their power over citizens. It is important to note at the outset that it can become necessary for police to use violence in certain situations, such as when they or other citizens are placed in danger by an individual or group, or when an individual will not consent to a peaceful arrest or detention. When fearful for their lives, such as when a suspect is brandishing a gun, police officers are even authorized to use deadly force as a last resort. The line between when an officer feels in danger and uses authorized force, and when an officer abuses their authority and engages in violence when it is not necessary, or engages in violence that is egregious in a given situation, has varied over time and jurisdiction.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, and several Supreme Court decisions have provided lower courts and officials broad guidance on how to interpret and uphold Fourth Amendment rights. In 1967, the Supreme Court allowed government officials and employees to claim qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that shields officials from personal liability, as a defense when they were sued for violating a plaintiff’s constitutional rights. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in Terry v. Ohio that law enforcement officers could stop and frisk an individual without probable cause if they had a reasonable suspicion that the person had committed, was committing, or was about to commit a crime and also had a reasonable belief the person “may be armed and presently dangerous.” In Tennessee v. Garner (1985), the court ruled that “the use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable,” thus striking down a state statute that allowed police to use all means necessary to arrest individuals they suspected of fleeing or forcibly resisting arrest. In Graham v. Connor (1989) the court stated that in determining whether police used excessive force, courts and officials must consider the severity of the crime, whether the suspect poses an immediate safety threat, and whether the suspect is “actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”

When Americans think of the history of police use of excessive force, there are several historical events that form the backdrop for this social problem. The organized efforts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to conduct patrols to locate and force enslaved people back to their enslavers influenced the development of policing systems in certain regions. At the same time, other parts of the country saw local law enforcement units brought in to quell unrest in sectors such as labor. Although thousands of undocumented and unrecorded incidents of police brutality likely had occurred, it was not until the advent of videotape that Americans who previously had no knowledge of police brutality began to become more aware of this issue. The civil rights movement in the 1960s was accompanied by many incidents of police brutality committed against Black Americans and their supporters. The pictures and videos of these incidents, broadcast on national television, included nonviolent protestors being tear-gassed, beaten with billy clubs, and even sprayed with fire hoses. The severe beating of Rodney King at the hands of several members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1991, videotaped by a bystander, led to rioting across Los Angeles. After being confronted by police after a car chase, King, a Black American, was severely beaten with batons and kicked and punched by a group of officers. In all, King was hit with a stun gun, received over fifty baton blows, and was kicked and punched several times. In 1992, after three of the officers involved were acquitted in state court on excessive force charges, citizens began to riot in Los Angeles, eventually causing dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries. The Rodney King beating brought the issue of police brutality into the homes of all Americans and led to a number of studies and investigations into why police brutality occurs and how it could be stopped.

In the years after the Rodney King beating, police cars became fitted with cameras that point in front of the squad car, commonly called dash cams, thus capturing on videotape routine police traffic stops, and even incidents of abuse and brutality—whether those are committed by the stopped motorist, by the police officer, or by another party. Increased attention was paid to such brutality, though it was difficult to determine the causes or behavioral characteristics that led to such behavior. One potential explanation that has been proposed has commonly been referred to as a "Blue Code of Silence." It has been suggested that under an unwritten code present in many police forces across the nation, it is standard practice for an officer to refuse to report incidents of another officer's abuse or any violation of departmental rules. Even if questioned concerning an incident about which an officer has knowledge, he or she will refuse to answer questions or will claim to have no knowledge of the incident. It then becomes very difficult to investigate a citizen's complaint about a particular officer and, consequently, difficult to prosecute a case of police brutality.

Another somewhat related explanation has been that the internal investigation processes used by police departments fail to punish officers that abuse citizens and, thus, fail to take measures to prevent police brutality. In a study concerning the Chicago Police Department (CPD), it was found that "85 percent of officers accused of police abuse are not interviewed in person about the incident and are allowed time to corroborate their story with involved parties." The study noted that in Chicago, between the years 2002 and 2004, slightly over 10,000 complaints of police abuse were filed. Only nineteen of the complaints resulted in "meaningful discipline," a suspension of one week or more. Consequently, this explanation suggests that the police cannot adequately police themselves. Although no single explanation can account for all instances of police violence, studies such as that conducted on the CPD helped to illuminate potential causes of police brutality.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization that seeks to protect citizens from violations of civil and constitutional rights, has proposed several steps that could be taken to reduce police brutality. One important step included ensuring local police forces adopt and enforce a written policy governing physical violence. Another important goal was establishing an "early warning system" aimed at identifying those officers who are involved in a disproportionate number of incidents of on-the-job physical violence. Depending on the nature of the violence, such officers could be disciplined, transferred, or offered counseling in an attempt to eliminate their propensity to engage in violent acts. Finally, another important suggested step was for officers to develop good habits in their training at the police academy. In addition to training on weaponry and car chases, new officers should learn about de-escalation strategies, violence reduction, dealing with difficult citizens, and race relations, among other subjects.

Police brutality began coming even more to the forefront of public debate during the nationwide Occupy Wall Street protests in the autumn of 2011. Allegations of excessive force on the part of officers—often corroborated by video evidence—came from Occupy camps across the country. Widely seen images of officers pepper-spraying peaceful protesters in New York and California coupled with dozens of anecdotal claims of brutality once again put police behavior in the national spotlight. In September 2011, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez announced a revitalized approach to investigating police brutality, revealing that the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Civil Rights Division had seventeen open investigations targeting officer misconduct at various law enforcement agencies. The announcement came following the conviction of several New Orleans police officers in the Danziger Bridge shooting case.

On August 9, 2014, an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The police officer, Darren Wilson, was later acquitted of any wrongdoing. The resulting protest and furor in Ferguson and across the country brought national attention to the issue of police brutality against Black Americans. The DOJ conducted a review of the Ferguson Police Department. Following Brown’s death, an increasing number of high-profile cases of police violence against Black citizens came to light, such as Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Such incidents caused many to reconsider the culture of police officers in the United States and, in large part, spurred the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement that had initially formed in 2013 after a community-watch member who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was acquitted; among other social activism, this movement works to protest police violence against Black people.

At the same time, some, including many active and retired police officers, formed groups such as Blue Lives Matter around 2014 to counter Black Lives Matter and defend law enforcement officers against what they perceived as a harmful increase in anti-police sentiment based on a misrepresentation of the institution as a whole following the widespread reports of these incidents. In several of these cases, videos captured on cell phones by bystanders and released accessibly in a widespread capacity to the public, often through online social media, further fueled the debate. Some police departments responded by introducing body cameras and other methods of increased transparency in policing.

In May 2015, the DOJ launched a civil rights investigation into the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) following the death of Freddie Gray, who died of a neck injury sustained while in police custody in 2015, and subsequent protests and riots in the city. In August 2016, the DOJ released a damning report, which concluded "there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law" and outlined the BPD's practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests; using excessive force; and disproportionately targeting Black Americans for stops, searches, and arrests. The report concluded that many of the abuses stemmed from the department's inadequate training of officers and its zero-tolerance policy of law enforcement. In April 2017, a federal judge approved a consent decree to overhaul the BPD, which was to include independent oversight and changes to the BPD's training program designed to prevent discrimination and the use of excessive force.

Police Use of Force Today

Despite the increased attention to cases in which police officers were accused of using excessive force against people of color, including many who were unarmed, very few of the officers responsible were indicted, and a number were acquitted. Notably, in December 2017, former South Carolina officer Michael Slager was sentenced to twenty years in prison for second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the killing of Walter Scott, who was unarmed, in 2015. Subsequent DOJ investigations found unconstitutional, disproportionate use of force against young Black Americans and Latinos by the CPD and underreporting of use-of-force incidents in Cleveland, Baltimore, Newark, and Seattle. Within weeks of video having been released of Minnesota officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on unarmed George Floyd's neck for over nine minutes until he went unconscious and ultimately died in 2020, Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter while three other officers at the scene faced charges of second-degree aiding and abetting.

As protests over Floyd's death, which gained support from various communities of people of color, took place in cities throughout the country in 2020, there were adamant calls from those who alleged that these issues were systemic to reform the institution structurally, which included increasing propositions of drastic changes such as defunding and even abolishment. They often argued that while some internal reforms such as training on implicit bias and de-escalation tactics had been attempted, they had been largely ineffective because the issues were so deeply rooted and pervasive. As part of the immediate response, by mid-2020 a number of cities and states had begun instituting restrictions or total bans on neck restraints such as the chokehold, and considerations of such policies were being made at the federal level.

In 2021, the Floyd murder trial also proved a notable exception, breaking the so-called blue wall of silence. Unusually, four fellow officers testified against defendant Derek Chauvin, who was convicted and sentenced to twenty-two and a half years in prison for the cruel killing and abuse of authority. A federal grand jury also indicted Chauvin, who would go on to plead guilty to the charges in late 2021, and other officers on the scene in a related civil rights case. While Tou Thao and J. Alexander Keung, two of the involved officers, were convicted in early 2022 of violating Floyd's rights by consciously failing to intervene during the incident, former officer Thomas Lane was convicted along with them for failing to provide medical aid for Floyd.

Another trial that took place in 2021 also saw a police officer held judicially accountable for an instance of excessive use of force. In December 2021, Kimberly Potter was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter for shooting and killing Daunte Wright, a Black man, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in April of that year; she received a prison sentence of two years. Meanwhile, former Louisville officer Brett Hankison, who had been accused of wanton endangerment of nearby residents after discharging his weapon several times during the raid on Taylor's apartment launched by a no-knock warrant, remained the only officer to have been charged in the case when he was acquitted in March 2022.

At the same time, civil rights probes by the Justice Department into violations of police use of force had continued into the 2020s. The Memphis Police Department was investigated by the DOJ in early 2023 for alleged discriminatory actions and violations in its use of force. The investigation, which stemmed from the brutal beating that resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man, following a traffic stop, led to the release of a report in 2024 in which the DOJ found that Memphis officers consistently violated their constitutional authority and engaged in discrimination against Black people.

The use-of-force debate has also been complicated by the fact that it has remained difficult for the DOJ and other national agencies to report or analyze consistent data on police use of force nationwide because of the disparity and incomplete nature of reporting and record-keeping among police departments across the country. A number of public databases, such as the Guardian's The Counted and MappingPoliceViolence.org, were launched in efforts to address the lack of information.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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