Archival Version

This study examined the amount of force used by and against law enforcement officers and more than 50 characteristics of officers, civilians, and arrest situations associated with the use of different levels of force. An important component of this multijurisdiction project was to employ a common measurement of elements of force and predictors of force. Data were gathered about suspects' and police officers' behaviors from adult custody arrests in six urban law enforcement agencies. The participating agencies were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department, Colorado Springs (Colorado) Police Department, Dallas (Texas) Police Department, St. Petersburg (Florida) Police Department, San Diego (California) Police Department, and San Diego County (California) Sheriff's Department. Data collection began at different times in the participating departments, so the total sample included arrests during the summer, fall, and winter of 1996-1997. Initial data collection began in the Colorado Springs Police Department in mid-August 1996, and data collection was completed in Charlotte-Mecklenburg in the second week of February 1997. One-page, two-sided forms were completed and coded for 7,512 adult custody arrests (Part 1). This form was used to record officer self-reports on the characteristics of the arrest situation, the suspects, and the officers, and the specific behavioral acts of officers, suspects, and bystanders in a particular arrest. Officers filled out the form following the arrest and handed it in with their arrest paperwork. The form completed by the police officers was derived from a similar study conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, during 1994 (PHOENIX [ARIZONA] USE OF FORCE PROJECT, JUNE 1994 [ICPSR 9926]) but modified to conform to the local characteristics, police terminology, and departmental policies of the participating agencies. One crucial difference in these forms from the ones used in Phoenix was the ability to identify the arrest incident. This improved the study's ability to link data from these forms with other departmental records about arrests. In addition, the researchers were able to more easily link information from suspect interviews with officer survey responses. The completion of the form by the officers was encouraged by management at roll call and by directives and videos. Police management helped disseminate blank forms but purposefully did not have possession of the completed forms, and they did not know if a particular officer completed or did not complete the form. The forms went into locked boxes that research staff collected. Research staff did not know if both an officer survey and a suspect interview had been received for an arrest until months later, when the data were coded. The ranking forms could be and likely were completed by officers who also completed an arrest survey form. However, there was no connection between an individual officer completing an arrest survey form and a ranking form. Items similar to those asked on the police survey were asked of 1,156 suspects interviewed in local jails at the time they were booked following arrest to obtain an independent assessment of officer and suspect use of force (Part 2). The researchers scheduled interviews during shifts throughout the week, but typically during the late evening and early morning hours. Officers were informed that some suspects would be interviewed but they did not know which would be interviewed, or when. Using the items included on the police survey, the research team constructed four measures of force used by police officers -- physical force, physical force plus threats, continuum of force, and maximum force. Four comparable measures of force used by arrested suspects were also developed. These measures are included in the data for Part 1. Each measure was derived by combining specific actions by law enforcement officers or by suspects in various ways. The first measure was a traditional conceptual dichotomy of arrests in which physical force was or was not used. For both the police and for suspects, the definition of physical force included any arrest in which a weapon or weaponless tactic was used. In addition, police arrests in which officers used a more severe restraint (prone cuffing, hobble, body cuff, or leg cuff) were included. The second measure, physical force plus threats, was similar to physical force but added the use of threats and displays of weapons. To address the potential limitations of these two dichotomous measures, two other measures were developed. The continuum-of-force measure captured the levels of force commonly used in official policies by the participating law enforcement agencies. Unlike the previous two measures, the continuum-of-force measures were purposefully responsive to the specific use of force policy and training in each department. To construct the fourth measure, maximum force, 503 experienced officers in five of the six jurisdictions ranked a variety of hypothetical types of force by officers and by suspects on a scale from 1 (least forceful) to 100 (most forceful). Officers were asked to rank these items based, not on department policy, but on their own personal experience. These rankings of police and suspect use of force, which appear in Part 3, were averaged for each jurisdiction and used in Part 1 to weight the behaviors that occurred in the sampled arrests.