Police Use of Force
Wihbey and Kille (2016) indicated disparate views between citizens and police overuse of force by officers in the United States. It was important to first define use of force and the tools available to police officers in the scope of their duties. Terrill (2005) defined force by police officers as “acts that threaten or inflict physical harm on citizens, which includes forms of both verbal and physical force” (p. 115).
The use of force by a police officer could take many forms, including verbal commands, physical force (e.g., control holds, punching, kicking), Oleoresin Capsicum spray, electronic tasers, impact weapons (e.g., batons, flashlights), and firearms (Hoffman & Hickey, 2005). The 1989 Supreme Court set the legal precedent for justified use of force by a police officer in the landmark case of Graham v. Connor (1989). The standard, known as the objectively reasonable, states:
reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene… the calculus must embody an 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 necessary in a particular situation (Graham v. Conner, 1989, para. 22).
The reasonableness factor was perhaps the best-known cause for the incongruent views of citizens and police officers regarding the use of force by officers.
More than two decades after Rodney King and the 1992 L.A. riots, allegations of excessive force by police officers around the Unites State continued to generate national headlines (Wihbey & Kille, 2016). More recently, the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, illustrated the stark racial divide with the reactions of Whites (37%) versus Blacks (80%) who believed the case raised important issues about race (C. Doherty & Weisel, 2014). Controversies over the acquittal of police officers in widely covered cases by media involving the death of Black men generated concerns over equal justice and questions about police officer use of force (Hook, 2015; Wihbey & Kille, 2016).
Although media focus concentrated on police officer use of force against African Americans, Wihbey and Kille (2016) suggested confidence in law enforcement was relatively low and expectations of excessive force on suspects were high in both Latino and African American communities. The community’s assessment of the use of force was important to police as well as the community, “unfortunately for both, public expectations of the police are at times unreasonable” (R. R. Roberg, J. Kuykendall, & K. Novak, 2002). Although the media presented one narrative of excessive abuse of power and use of force, the numbers told a different story.
Use of Force by the Numbers:
An examination of data limitations fetters the understanding of police officer use of force, specifically deadly force. In the United States, police officers shoot and wound 1,200 people and kill on average approximately 600 citizens a year (R. Roberg et al., 2002). Geller and Scott (1992) stated that although the number of citizens injured due to resisting police authority was unknown, they estimated the number to be between 0.1 and 1%. Wihbey and Kille (2016) indicated the number was slightly higher with the percentage in 2005 reported at 1.6%. Although some argued citizens were at risk, a University of South Carolina study suggested police officers, rather than suspects, bore the brunt of injury when suspects resisted (M. R. Smith et al., 2010). The University of South Carolina study reported using physical force increased the odds of injury to police officers by more than 300% and to a suspect by more than 50% (2010).
Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences:
An analysis presented a narrative in stark opposition to that shared by media and groups like BLM that claimed a disproportionate number of Black people were killed at the hands of police officers (Garza, 2014; Kaste, 2016a; Quah & David, 2015). In 2016, Harvard University’s Department of Economics Professor Roland G. Fryer published an analysis that reviewed national data of 1,332 police shootings that occurred between 2000 and 2015. Fryer (2016) recognized the historical injustices that remained unhealed supported healthy discourse about policy, law enforcement, and race. Fryer (2016) concluded:
On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected cost of officer-involved shootings. (p. 35)
Hoffman and Hickey (2005) in a separate seven-year longitudinal study (1993-1999) of large suburban police departments concluded there was no statistically significant difference between female and male police officer use of force.
Media Sensationalism:
In her book, A Primer in the Politics of Criminal Justice, Marion (1995) discussed how the media tended to distort or overinflate the perception of the public through repetition. As in the case of media reporting on police corruption, misconduct, and abuse of power, Marion (1995) suggested news media’s propensity to show a story as it broke and then relentlessly show it repeatedly inflated the public’s reality of how often these incidents occurred. News media also distorted reality by selecting what they would and would not show to the public (Marion, 2002).
As in the Rodney King incident, MacDonald (2017), who coined the term Ferguson Effect, suggested the news media, BLM, and sports figures perpetuated rhetoric rather than fact. She further suggested the significant rise in homicides of Black people in 2016 (7,881), 900 more than 2015, were not due to being killed by the police or Whites, but by other Black people. She further pointed out, contrary to the BLM narrative, in 2015 police officers were “18.5 times more likely to be killed by a Black male, than an unarmed Black male was to be killed by a police officer” (MacDonald, 2017). Over the past decade, the data showed Black males accounted for 42% of cop-killers, yet only comprised 6% of the population (2017).
Conclusion:
The expectations by the public, elected officials and news media for these systemic issues that are the result of poverty, institutionalized welfare, lack of education or access to education, which are thrust upon law enforcement to address, often paired with the expectation to resolve related issues without the use of force, are completely unrealistic and unattainable. The unfortunate truth is when ill-equipped police officers, in the micro-fraction of highly volatile and dangerous situations, that they are not able to resolve, are caught on video, the news media exploits the event for financial gain by scathingly and repeatedly criticizing the actions of the police officers. The new gold standard for such events are situations that involve people of color and police officer use of force because of the ability of these stories to emotionally charge viewers and create greater levels of viral activity through social media, which in turn increases revenues for the media companies.
Unfortunately, in today's media climate, the scientific research that proves police officer bias, although present, is not a factor in police use of force – a fact that is rarely presented by liberal news media sources. This dangerous false narrative perpetuated by the liberal news media that police officers are racist and heavy-handed only serves to create greater separation and skepticism of each other by both community members and police officers.
(Excerpt from “The Muzzling of the Sheepdog: A Mixed-Methods Case Study of the Impacts of Media Reporting on Police Officer Performance”)