Reasonable Force Use by Police - Case Study Example

Reasonable Force Use by Police Outline Introduction This section will introduce the topic of the use of force by police officers state its relevance as to when it started and how it has progress to date. It will also state its thesis of discussing the pros and cons of the use of force by police officers. Pros of Using Force by the Police This section will discuss the benefits of using force by the police force. Some of the pros include officers finding themselves in stressful and life threatening situations, saving members of the public or even saving the suspect from injuring him/herself. Cons of Using Force by the Police This section will discuss the disadvantages of using force by the police force. Some of the cons include breaching of people’s right to freedom, officers misusing this power, corruption and needless killing among others. Conclusion This section will conclude which the side that outweighs the other and recommend what should be done about the use of force. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but the people found out that it is best that officers try to use their power in a proper way that protects the public. Works Cited This section will present the sources used in coming up with the paper. In total it will contain 12 sources Reasonable Force Use by Police Introduction The "professional era" of policing started in the 60s after the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act came into law, in 1968. The law passed that federal resources and funds would be offered to local agencies to improve their equipment and training (Tyler 84). This concurred with the peak of the civil rights movement, and many cases of civil unrest, which took in the U.S. from Washington to Watts. Before 1970, a conventional policy on the application of force by law officers in order to arrest a suspect was simply nonexistent. In general, a police officer simply had four choices when it came to using force. He had his hands, voice, night stick and revolver. Before the arrival of Mace, there was no issued, less deadly option other than dull force trauma delivered by hitting with a timber baton (Smith and Philillips 480). The Baltimore City Police Department was regarded one of the first law enforcement bodies in America at that time, and the direction they got concerning the application of force was only to "do what can to do" survive an assault or make an arrest (Tuch and Weitzer 305). By 1974, however, a use of force policy had been raised that gave precise direction on the use of force to bring people into accordance with law officer commands (Tuch and Weitzer 305). Even then, scholars stressed the capability to come up with "thorough" reports as the finest defense against any claims of excessive force (Albert and Smith 481). In conjunction with the advancement of use of force law in the mid-70s, two extra tools had been incorporated to the law officers road kit. These two extra items would assist in creating better law officer safety and aid in curtailing the urge to use force. The initial item was a chemical irritant called Mace. This permitted a police officer to stand off and spray an irritant that would aid in immobilizing an attacker when lethal force was not required. The next item was the radio, which became the most significant thing a police officer can have in his road gear. With his or her radio, the police officer can request for more medical help or law officers. Prior to the handheld police radio, agencies that used two-way radios lost communications once the police officer left his car. Today, there is now a commonly accepted use of force scale in the U.S. policing. The details of law might differ between agencies; nevertheless, most would concur that there are 7 steps in the use of force (Fordham and Saver 455). These steps might usually be concurred upon as 1) unarmed hands-on or self-defense, 2) verbal persuasion, 3) electro-muscular inhibitor or chemical irritant, 4) police dog, 5) baton, 6) presentation of deadly force and 7) deadly force. With each of these uses of force, there are set criteria, which have to be met prior to escalating to the next steps, and thus lies the intention of the use of force scale (Wallen 344). This paper will debate whether police officers should use or not force when dealing with their suspects. It will discuss the pros and cons of using force and recommend whether they should or should not continue using force. Pros of Using Force by the Police Once in a while, patrol officers find themselves in situations that require them to use more than just moderate force to arrest a suspect. Police officers are granted a considerable amount of caution because of the nature of their work. Law officers experience a lot of threatening cases that force them to react fast, but appropriately, with the use of force on their suspects. Because they are granted the power to breach a citizen’s right of freedom, they have to utilize their power at hand to choose when to apply force or even worse lethal force in order to bring a given situation to a stop. According to Noorani (8), allowing officers to use force to deal with their suspects helps them to manage situations where negotiations, discussions and persuasions have be used and failed. Critics have argued that the application of force is inevitable, at times, but this does not mean that they must not take precautions when handing their suspects. The option to apply force is guided by the use of a continuum (Skolnick, Jerome and Fyfe 40). Thus, it cannot just be seen as a normal issue; essentially a police officer does not either completely avoid physical contact or kill a suspect. The scale of force is the measurement of distinct forms of force employed by law officers (Skolnick et al. 40). At times, officers can use least force to over handling of someone too roughly. Maximum force can be portrayed merely as the use of deadly force. Due to this, it is significant to rate the application of force on a continuum because of its confusing nature. Through widespread analysis, critics have confirmed that this continuum of force reflects on the official policies of the American justice system and tackles the problems of the misunderstanding that there was either force or no force (Etienne et al. 95). A lot of people consider that there is no problem to the use of force if that is what gets officers to do their job effectively. This is because the continuum of force measurement takes in all of the significant variations of actions, which police officers can take when coping with society (Etienne et al. 95). On one side of the continuum, there are oral commands, and at the other end, lethal force. In between, are behaviors, which involve use of tasers, restraints, confrontational commands, as well as display of weapons. In most cases, officers are simply reacting to the condition wherein they find themselves. This already puts them at a disadvantage.  The falsehood that police officers can simply to draw their guns or buttons and defend themselves in only a second is hard to overcome. Many also imagine that only one or two shots are needed when lethal force is acceptable and used. Police academies regularly train their recruits to keep on shooting till there is no longer any danger. The public does not comprehend that it takes exactly placed shots to instantaneously or quickly put a suspect out of action. In the few seconds it takes for the human body to respond to permanent and temporary wound cavitations, the suspect might still be in a position of harming not only the officer, but also the general public. Only a few police reports have confirmed that in some scenarios, even if multiple shots were fired, only a few of them strike their aimed targets (Arend and Robert 67). During life and death gunfight, a police officer will know if he or she is making effective shots on the threat because in most cases, the threat ends up falling or giving up and they cannot advance in the fight. In other cases, it is essential for police officers to depend on partial information when making a lethal force decision. At times, the significance of circumstances is gauged in a split second wherein an officer chooses to employ lethal force (Frank, Charles and Liederbach 558). One such case took place, in 2001, when police officers pursued a fugitive, initially by vehicle, then on foot.  While in the foot pursuit, the fugitive turned and confronted the police officers shouting, "I have a gun." As the chase went on, a K-9 was released and fought the fugitive to the ground. As the law men approached the scene, the fugitive reached for his waistband, once more claiming to have a firearm, at the same time a pursuing police officer started firing at the fugitive. As other law officers arrived at the scene, they were under the feeling that a fellow officer was under attack, thus drawing their guns and also started firing (Frank et al. 558). This was a case of where the police officer’s life was under threat making it a matter of life and death for him to remove his firearm and attack the suspect in order to control the situation. If it was not for the K-9 dog, you would have never known the outcome of the pursuit, which maybe the fugitive would have injured the police officers after him. After the case was taken to court by the fugitive’s family claiming that the police offer used excess for against the victim, the court did not uphold this and claimed that the officer acted according to the matter, which was life threatening and needed to come to a stop. When it comes to using dogs for policing purposes, these dogs also know how to bring a suspect down without causing so much instead of going through extensive discussions and the suspect is proving to be life threatening to the police officer or public (Arend and Robert 68). A police officers role is to ensure that the control the situation with minimal casualties as possible, thus when a suspect is threatening the life of the police officer or the public, the police officer, working in line with his duty, is prompted to utilize any kind of force that will bring the suspect down and ensure the safety of the public (Arend and Robert 68). This is because it will not make any sense for an officer to seat back and try and negotiate with a suspect who you can clearly see is willing to hurt others or run away from the arms of the law in order to achieve freedom. Cons of Using Force by the Police As the application of force in granted situation, law officers start to assume more individual blame for the actions they assume. Lawmakers normally develop the use of force scale rooted in a severe step-by-step procedure. They normally lack the situational awareness, which the law officer on duty sees vital. Studies have revealed that certain needless deaths have been linked to tasers (Compton et al. 523). Compton et al. (523) found out that, in two Arizona cases, doctors concluded that tasers were either the victim’s cause of death or at least they were a key factor in the suspect’s death. Even if the police was justified to use the taser as a way of capturing the suspect, the death was not supposed to occur making this a key disadvantage of using force when trying to deal with suspects. In two other scenarios, tasers could not be argued as the cause of fatality. The police officers attempted to tackle this issue through arguing that these were only the view of medical examiners plus that they lacked adequate knowledge to assert that tasers led to these deaths (Compton et al. 524). Groups dealing with human rights like Amnesty International argue against the utilization of tasers (Compton et al. 524). They claim that there is a significant amount of deaths caused by tasers and that police departments should stop applying this method at least till more survey is conducted to guarantee its safety (Compton et al. 524). Even though, tasers are argued to be a safe option to lethal force, it still might be fatal to some individuals. The method concerning the utilization of tasers is not complete proof and has been argued, in some situations to be the main cause of death. As earlier stated, the application of force should be conducted with safety measures plus should not provoke pain that would be regarded brutal to anybody. The application of tasers does not take into consideration these precautions plus their practices cause excess pain and even death to people who might not pose a direct threat to police officers. It is not right to apply this form of force if the suspect does not present a direct danger since it may lead to pain or death. Officers are granted more discretion than they require when opting to use tasers since it is argued to be a type of non-lethal force (Tyler 85). Sadly enough, it is not entirely safe and might still harm people. Provided the lack of appropriate policy guidelines and training in the application of these weapons, law officers should not be allowed such discretion with methods, which are not full proof. The ethical concern at hand is one of whether or not an officer should apply lethal force devoid of the presence of, or implementation of, departmental rules. The decision to apply force should not be considered lightly. Officers have to consider a taser as a lethal force and they have to take the same measures as they would when utilizing their weapons. People complain because some law officers fail to subdue a suspect with all other safe methods as they only resort to force using their firearms, buttons, tasers or K-9s to bring the situation to a stop. Simply by permitting their officers to utilize tasers, the police force is simply saying that tasers are a simpler and faster method of handling situations, instead of first using verbal methods in subduing a person. Some critics have claimed that police officers, at times, use needless lethal force when there is no direct danger to society or the officer themselves (Smith and Philillips 481). For instance, in the case of Officer Lovelace Dan from Chandler, Arizona, he killed Dawn Nelson at a drive through chemist while her 14 month old child was seated in the back. Onlookers claimed that Nelson ran into the police officer’s parked motorbike, but the police officer was not in any kind of danger since he was standing outside the victim’s path (Smith and Philillips 481). Many issues surround the officer’s actions. One explanation for the killing was that Lovelace was under a great amount of stress and pressure and at that time, considered that his life was in danger (Smith and Philillips 481). In yet another case still in Arizona, a 14 year old boy was killed after an officer responded to his parent’s distress call (Tuch and Weitzer 306). The boy’s parents phoned the police after his son took knife and threatened to murder him. The police officer claimed that the child was moving towards him in a threatening way. However, his parent claimed that his son let go of the knife after the officer tased him and did not pose any threat to the officer after that. The parent argued that the officer murdered his son after he was already lying down on the floor (Albert and Smith 483). Some groups argue against the infringing of people’s right claiming that the use of force against a suspect is breaching his right to freedom. This is connected to the rule of law where one is innocent till proven guilty in a court of law. A number of current high-profile cases concerning officers who have killed civilians have acquainted the public with the nuances of self-protection, lethal force, as well as the standard of "sensible fear of imminent death or great bodily harm." This is the threshold for acceptable killing for citizens, and thus far, for example, it has also been the center of the debate into whether cases such as Ferguson, Missouri, the officer acted correctly in firing his firearm in the direction of Mr. Brown instantly murdering him (Wallen 346). Nevertheless, for police officers -- the men and women the public counts on to prevent and stop crime and arrest criminals -- the threshold for utilizing of force, comprising of lethal force, is much wider than for citizens. In the 70s, the U.S. went through a tough time of widespread crime. As part of the clampdown, the nation started adopting "fleeing criminal" statutes – statutes, which permitted the application of force, including lethal force, to stop felons from escaping from the hands of the police. As a society, people basically agreed that they would opt to fire at a suspected criminal instead of let him go (Fordham et al. 459). Not shockingly, police shootings augmented, and tragic events arose in wherein people were murdered as fleeing felons, even if the officers protection was not endangered. In 1984, a young African American male called Edward Garner was running away from an officer who responded to a "stalker inside call." When the suspect tried to climb a fence to avoid capture, the police man shot him in the back of his head causing his instant death. He had only stolen $10 plus a purse (Fordham et al. 459). Earlier before, the killing of Garner was justified. However, challenges to the decision ultimately took the case up to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that escaping suspects should not be killed for attempting to run away, unless the officer in pursuit reasonably thinks that the fleeing suspect poses a considerable threat of serious physical injury or death to others or the officer (Fordham et al. 460). In such a case, the police man or woman has the right, and perhaps the duty, to use lethal force to stop the suspect. Such cases are what make the public think that they might also be caught up in such situations and die innocently making use of lethal force dangerous. Conclusion The utilization of any kind of force is normally reactionary meaning that the police officer is reacting to a suspect’s action, only for rouge officers. The officer’s objective might change in the process of reacting to the suspect’s behavior. The decision will simply increase from simple persuasion to the use of lethal force. Nevertheless, police officers might instantly use any permitted option so long as it is justified by the law. If a verbal warning is not enough to make a suspect comply with the officer, threatening the officer or the public, in any way, then the officer will see to it that they bring the suspect down using lethal force. The policies that regulate the use of force are somehow vague (Skolnick and Fyfe 95). Therefore, this leaves room from utmost discretion on behalf of the police officer who has to opt when to employ force. In a majority of cases, officers have the judgment to choose when to employ force and the type and aggressiveness of force to use. This is what leads to the public scrutiny of the use of force because some officers tend to take advantage of this power, and when they are confronted, they claim that they act in self-defense or protecting the public from a dangerous person. Officers hold the lives of every citizen who they interact with within their power each and every day. Thus, policing is very hard and needs utter respect, as well as admiration. Nonetheless, officer should know that they can easily injure more individuals than nearly any other job in the nation. Therefore, they need to be trained rightly in order to ensure that they are utilizing their authority in the interest of the community they serve. At times, officers have used unnecessary force to handle their suspects, and even if their job is to assess a situation and know what kind of actions to use, these does not mean that each and every aggressive suspect should be shot at or tased. This is something that police academies need to stress instead of teaching officer how to endlessly shoot till a suspect is dropped whenever they become aggressive. Every non-aggressive tactic should be employed before using force. Bullets cannot certainly be claimed as the cause of harm for suspects, but factors such as tasers and K-9s too can. The use of baton, guns, K-9s and tasers should be restricted to suspects who only present a threat the life and body of the police officer in pursuit or the public. For a police officer to effectively protect the public, they also need to understand that proper relations between them and the public should come first or else the public will lose its entire trust on the police force. With this in mind, the work is left to policymakers and the police department to ensure that their rule against the use of force is strict in that it protects everyone involved from the suspect to the public to the police officer. Works Cited Albert, Geoffrey P and Smith, William C. How Reasonable is the Reasonable Man?: Police and Excessive Force. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 85.2 (1994): 481-501. Print. Arend, Anthony Clark, and Robert J. Beck. International Law and the Use of Force: Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print. Compton, Michael T., et al. "The Police-Based Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Model: II. Effects on Level of Force and Resolution, Referral, and Arrest." Psychiatric Services 65.4 (2014): 523-529. Print. Etienne, Charbonneau et al. “The Self-Reported Use of Social Equity Indicators in Urban Police Departments inthe United States and Canada.” State and Local Government Review 41.2 (2009): 95-107. Print. Fordham, Benjamin O. and Saver, Christopher C. Militarized Interstate Disputes and United States Uses of Force. International Studies Quarterly 45.3 (2001): 455-466. Print. Frank, Klahm IV, Charles, James F, and Liederbach, John. "Understanding Police Use of Force: Rethinking the Link between Conceptualization and Measurement." Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 37.3 (2014): 558-578. Print. Noorani, A G. Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act: Urgency of Review. Economic and Political Weekly 44.34 (2009): 8-11. Print. Skolnick, Jerome H., and James J. Fyfe. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use f Force. New York: Free Press, 1993. Smith, Philip and Philillips, Tim. Police Violence Occasioning Citizen Complaint: An Empirical Analysis of Time-Space Dynamics. The British Journal of Criminology 40.3 (2000): 480-496. Print. Tuch, Steven A and Weitzer, Ronald. Race and Perception of Police Misconduct. Social Problems 51.3 (2004): 305-325. Print. Tyler, Tom R. enhancing Police Legitimacy. Sage Publications, Inc. In association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 593, To better Serve and Protect: Improving Police Practices (May, 2004), pp. 84-99. Wallen, Alec. Reasonable Illegal Force: Justice and Legimacy in a Pluralistic, Liberal Society. Ethics 111.2 (2001): 344-373. Print. Read More