Duluth Police Department Case Study

Minnesota Duluth Police Department: DPD talks about how use of force is only to be used in a reasonable way. They suggest that since there is no program that can predict every scenario that a “well reasoned discretion” should be used to determine the level of force to use. According to their department use of force may be used in the following scenarios: making an arrest, executing a legal process, maintaining order in a court of law, acting on any lawful duty, preventing an escape or attempting to capture an inmate who escaped, preventing someone who is mentally ill from hurting him/herself or another person, and when defending oneself or another. They go on to describe the factors used to determine reasonable force, which include: sudden …show more content…
They state that since there is no one-fits-all approach, they may use discretion reasonably to determine the level of force to use. According to their department use of force may be used in arrests, averting an escape, or when dealing with resistance. They then describe the factors which may reasonably lead to use of force, which include: sudden and grave risk to officers or others, the behavior of the person being confronted, the physical factors of both the officer and person being confronted (age, size, relative strength, skill level, injuries sustained etc.), if subject is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the mental state of the person,the accessibility of weapons or objects that can be used as weapons, the effectiveness of the restraint put on the subject and if that restrain is enough, weighing options and how likely it is to be successful, how grave the suspected offense might be or how the situation came to be, how much experience the officer has, prospective injury to either the officer, the subject, or others, if resisting is occurring in forms of escape attempt or attacking the officer, the potential risks of an escape, the perceived need to immediately get a handle of the situation, if the behavior of the subject has de-escalated to where he is no longer a grave threat to officer or others, prior experiences with the subject when it comes to violence, and other exigent circumstances. Moreover, they describe pain compliance techniques. They suggest factors to take into account when using these techniques which include: how the use of the technique can be controlled when the subject is resisting, if the subject is able to comply with the instructions given by the officer, if the subject has been given a chance to follow the instructions, and that the use of these techniques should be terminated if subject