The visual, experiential, and research dimensions of police coercion

Over the past year the number of questionable police use-of-force incidents has been ever present. The deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Missouri, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio, are but just a few tragic cases.

Thanks to technological advances (e.g. cell phone videos, police dashboard and body-worn cameras), police-citizen encounters are increasingly captured in video format. If the old adage is that “a picture tells a thousand words” then how many words does a video tell? Minimally, a video offers quite a bit in terms of seeing how varying police-suspect encounters actually unfold, as opposed to the version provided by police officers in their written reports or those offered by interested bystanders witnessing the event. In addition, a video can be streamed to millions within an instant, thereby opening up the process for many people to see as opposed to a select few, such as police departmental officials.

This isn’t to suggest that the use of video is without limitations. For one, the general citizenry may come to a rush to judgment, despite little knowledge as to what appropriate force entails legally. Further, a video may be shot from a single or limited angle, or fail to capture preceding events, thereby presenting a distorted image of the incident. Nonetheless, on the whole, the use of video brings light to police actions with at least the hope of greater accountability, which is good. Moreover, the growing documentation of video evidence tells those who live outside distressed urban America neighborhoods – where race and class often intersect – what those who live inside such neighborhoods have been saying for the better part of American history: the police abuse their power and those in highly “concentrated disadvantaged” areas share a disproportionate burden.

While empirical evidence can be found in support, and in dispute, of race and class differences in regard to police coercion, unless one is deliberately biased or simply ignorant, it is difficult to dispute that such correlates play at least some role when it comes to coercive police authority. There is too much research showing that race and class matter. Research conducted in multiple cities shows that males, non-whites, poorer, and younger citizens are treated more coercively by the police. Further, neighborhood context is an important predictor of police use of force. More specifically, controlling for a host of situational factors (e.g. suspect resistance, presence of a weapon) and officer-based determinants (e.g. age, education, and training), police officers are significantly more likely to use higher levels of force when suspects are encountered in disadvantaged neighborhoods (i.e. higher levels of poverty and unemployment, a greater proportion of female-headed households, and a higher proportion of minority residents).

Research also shows that police agencies rarely sustain citizen complaints of excessive force or discipline accused officers, and that officers who adhere more strongly to depictions of a traditional police culture (e.g., an “Us versus Them” ideology toward the public, greater suspicion toward citizens, belief structure that the police should always “maintain the edge”) are more coercive toward citizens. It is no wonder police trust and legitimacy have come under intense scrutiny.

Thus, is police misuse of force an issue that deserves and even demands a greater emphasis and call to action from politicians, criminal justice agencies, and the public citizenry? Absolutely. But I would also urge a considerable degree of caution on several fronts before overstating the problem and subsequently recommending changes to something that may not be as “broken” as may appear.

First, rarely are “proper” use-of-force incidents captured on video and broadcast to the world in a similar fashion to incidents involving more questionable behavior. There are countless incidents handled on a daily basis by nearly 900,000 sworn police officers across nearly 18,000 police agencies throughout the USA that are simply not questionable. They don’t make the nightly news. They don’t go viral on YouTube. They don’t become fodder for neighborhood association meetings. In other words, one has to be careful not to overgeneralize based on just the bad cases we see.

Second, there are an untold and undocumented number of police-citizen encounters daily whereby police officers are able to resolve a potentially contentious incident without having to use any physical or weapon-based force. Such good policing rarely receives public attention and almost never gets documented into an official record.

Third, from a research standpoint, the literature is fairly silent on how often officers use less, not more force. With the exception of studies employing a Social Systematic Observation (SSO) methodology, which is rare, it is nearly impossible to determine how well officers perform in this regard. Having the good fortune to conduct such a project, I found that officers are far more likely to use less force than permitted by law, not more (excessive) force, when faced with resistant suspects. That is, officers were much more apt to de-escalate situations when suspects were attempting to escalate the level of conflict. Unfortunately, this form of good policing often gets overlooked within the national debate.

Finally, it is important to recognize that the available research to date doesn’t capture the full spectrum of understanding when it comes to proper and improper force. There is much work yet to be done in this area. Nonetheless, irrespective of the research informing on the topic, one must be ever cognizant that citizen perceptions and experiences matter. When everyday citizens view a video of police behavior (or witness it in person) and consider it a questionable application of force, police officials need to recognize such perception. Too often, officials hunker down into defense mode seeking to justify the behavior, which just causes the citizenry to become even more distrustful of the police and the cycle continues benefitting no one.

Headline image credit: That’s The Sound of the Police, Occupy Oakland Move In Day (13 of 31) by Glenn Halog. CC-BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr.