Use of Force

It amazes me that there are police agencies out there that do not provide every available option to their officers. The agency I work for has as close to all the tools available that I can think of. Our patrol division carries ASP batons, pepper spray, Tasers, assault rifles and handguns. Our supervisors carry all of the same tools with the exception of the assault rifle. Instead they carry shotguns and can deploy beanbag rounds if needed. My brother, who is an officer with the Memphis Police Department, carries pepper spray, an ASP baton, and a handgun. They are not given Tasers and are very limited, due to quantity. Who can carry a long gun. The city he works for is far more dangerous than my city, and yet we have many more tools to work with. Unfortunately for him, his use of force is limited as well.

Use of force as defined by the National Institute of Justice, is the, “amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject.” There are two types of force that can be used in any given situation. The first type is less lethal and the second is lethal. The model bellow puts use of force into a staircase. The model was taken from canadianawareness.org and was designed by Dr. Franklin Graves.

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This model gives us an idea of what response should be used based on the subject’s actions. There are several “tools” an officer can use before resulting in deadly force.

        The first tool is the officers command presence. Most subjects will cooperate simply because there is an officer present. Sometimes the officer may need to use voice control, but both are completely nonphysical uses of force. The first use of force that is physical in nature is the soft-handed control technique. Often times an officer will go hands on simply to direct a subject in a certain direction or into a certain position. Another tool most officers have is pepper spray. Pepper spray is painful, but causes no physical injuries to subjects. Before it gets to the stage of hand to hand fighting, some agencies have equipped their officers with Tasers. Tasers can be deployed when the threat of a subject becoming physical is eminent. The Taser will send 50,000 volts of electricity through the subject and interferes with the body’s neuromuscular system. Most often than not, the Taser will send the subject to the ground. If an officer does not have a Taser, or the Taser is not effective, then the officer can go to hard-handed control techniques. This occurs when an officer has to fight with a subject. This can be one of the most dangerous of the uses of force. It not only puts the officer at risk to be physically hurt, but it also puts the officer in close proximity of the subject, close enough the subject could try and grab the officer’s service weapon. It is at this point that an officer could use an impact weapon. NA impact weapon is usually a wooden or metal baton, but could also be a flashlight or any other hard object. This use of force will normally result in physical injury. The final straw is deadly force. If all of these tools fail, or if the officer is thought to be threatened by deadly force, or the officer believes someone else’s life is in danger, then the use of deadly force can be used.

        One way departments have attempted to control or guide its officer with use of force, is by adopting the use of force continuum. It is similar to the above chart in that it shows a stepping stone with how the use of force is authorized. With each increase comes a new level of force that can be used. As the threat level rises the officers can use verbalization, firm grip, compliance holds, intermediate force and finally deadly force. With this model the officer is expected to use the force which minimizes the likelihood that the officer or suspect could be injured.

        One of the more interesting cases involving the use of deadly force came out in 1985. The state of Tennessee allowed, at the time, for officers to shoot fleeing felons. The statute gave permission for officers to shoot those subjects that were fleeing from felony crimes. The idea was to make sure they did not get away. In 2014 it seems crazy that any state would have allowed for this to happen. But back then it was thought that being a police officer was much more dangerous than it is today. The state of Tennessee cited the fact that most officers worked alone and they lacked the sophisticated communication technology that would allow them to successfully track fleeing suspects.

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