Police use of force is a very controversial subject which takes up a lot of media time, and influences how people view the police. Many people in our American society think that that police should have more restrictions on the amount of force they are allowed to use. Other people think that if officers receive better training on when to use force, that would result in fewer cases of reported excessive force. In this paper, I will show the effectiveness of police use of force, what I think should be done to ensure officer safety along with protecting an individual’s civil rights, and I will show evidence from a variety of scholarly sources, including a New York Times article.
Police use of force is defined as the amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject. This definition is quite broad and allows for a significant grey area.
There are many different tactics that officers can employ to use force on a progressive scale. Use of force options start with simple officer presence, and then verbal commands. If the subject is still uncooperative, officers are allowed to escalate and use their hands followed by a taser, if necessary. There are other forces the officer can use to get the subject to comply. Included in the other forces is as follows: chemical agents, using the canine unit, …show more content…
In a New York Times article (Apuzzo, Cohen. 2015) data collected regarding the accounting of all uses of force, the results varied immensely. This is due to the fact that some cities where the data was taken from would report a use of force, such as punching a suspect, while another city would not report that use of force. This inconsistency in reporting has shown a flaw in the system, which allows for less accountability for police officers if they know that there will be no consequences for their actions in the
Police use of force is defined as the amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject. This definition is quite broad and allows for a significant grey area.
There are many different tactics that officers can employ to use force on a progressive scale. Use of force options start with simple officer presence, and then verbal commands. If the subject is still uncooperative, officers are allowed to escalate and use their hands followed by a taser, if necessary. There are other forces the officer can use to get the subject to comply. Included in the other forces is as follows: chemical agents, using the canine unit, …show more content…
In a New York Times article (Apuzzo, Cohen. 2015) data collected regarding the accounting of all uses of force, the results varied immensely. This is due to the fact that some cities where the data was taken from would report a use of force, such as punching a suspect, while another city would not report that use of force. This inconsistency in reporting has shown a flaw in the system, which allows for less accountability for police officers if they know that there will be no consequences for their actions in the