Tactical Considerations1

Officers do not use force in a vacuum. It has long been recognized that a use of force is not the result of a single decision, but rather of “a contingent sequence of decisions and resulting behaviors—each increasing or decreasing the probability of an eventual use of … force.” How officers approach a situation, then, can affect whether and how they use force. Tactics are the techniques and procedures that officers use to protect themselves and community members. This chapter provides a framework for assessing police tactics, then offers an in-depth discussion of core tactical concepts. It explains why time is the single most important tactical consideration, details the effects of stress on human decision making, and illustrates how officers use tactical choices to “create time” and how they can use that time to minimize their need to use force. The chapter concludes by exploring the role of police tactics in three very different situations: arrests, crisis interventions, and active-shooter situations.

Force Options

Properly evaluating a use of force requires a working knowledge of the various force options. This chapter identifies two particularly relevant characteristics of any given option: how it works and its likely effects. With that framework in mind, readers are provided with a description of the tools, techniques, and weaponry that officers employ in use-of-force situations. From handcuffs to “flashbang” concussion grenades, from takedowns to chokeholds, from batons to electronic control weapons, and from firearms to experimental weaponry, just to name a few, this chapter provides detailed information about the nature of each force option, how it is generally taught and used in the policing context, and its attendant risks.

The State Law Standard

Nearly all police agencies and the vast majority of officers derive their authority from state law, making state law a relevant and important standard to consider in the evaluation of police uses of force. State statutes and judicial decisions set out specific rules for police uses of force, but there is significant variety across the fifty states with regard to when officers can use force and the amount of force they can use. An officer in Delaware, for example, could be arrested for using the kind of force that an officer in Florida would be legally entitled to use. This chapter analyzes the many different state-law justifications for both less-lethal and lethal force, providing useful categorizations of state law and extensive citations to both statutory and common law authority.

The Administrative Standard

The vast majority of the 18,000 police agencies in the United States have policies, procedures, and training that govern officers’ uses of force. While there are notable consistencies and broad, though not universal, agreement on certain shared principles, there are significant variations in the details of how agencies draft and operationalize their administrative policies. This chapter explores how police agencies define “force” and “reportable force” for purposes of internal policy, and offers a detailed review of the conceptual models that are widely used as visual representations of administrative regulation: the forty-year-old but highly influential incremental models, force matrix and force continuum, as well as the more recent, but less widely adopted, situational tactical options and situational behavioral models. The chapter concludes by describing a dozen common components of administrative use-of-force policies.

Introduction

The use of force is inherent in and inseparable from modern policing, but police violence has proven to be a challenging and divisive social issue. Officers could not fulfil their public duties without the authority to use force, but community trust and confidence in the police is undermined by the perception that they are doing so unnecessarily, too frequently, or in problematically disparate ways. This book poses and responds to a question that is central to police accountability, but has largely evaded academic scrutiny: how does society evaluate the propriety of an officer’s use of force? It offers four different answers to that question, exploring in depth the rules set by constitutional law, state laws, agency policies, and community expectations. It goes on to provide critical information about police tactics and force options to allow for the accurate application of those analytical frameworks.

The Community Expectations Standard

The use of force by police, when perceived negatively by community members, can undermine public trust over time, even serving as a flashpoint that ignites long-simmering hostility. The acute and chronic effects of community distrust make it essential to appreciate how community members evaluate use-of-force incidents. Distinguishing between substantive and procedural justice, this chapter identifies the aspects of police violence that community members most care about. It also explores the range of public perspectives on police uses of force, using real-world examples to illustrate the way public statements condemning and supporting officers’ use-of-force decisions often fall into identifiable categories. Understanding these categories allows for a greater appreciation of what community members look for and what they criticize when officers use force. That understanding can also inform efforts to better educate the public about police uses of force.

The Constitutional Law Standard

Police officers, like all government officials, are subject to the limitations imposed by the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court has ruled that police uses of force are subject to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures; the constitutional question is whether the use of force was “objectively reasonable” under the circumstances. This chapter details Supreme Court decisions—including Graham v. Connor, Tennessee v. Garner, and Scott v. Harris—and explains how readers can reliably use constitutional principles to accurately assess any given use of force. The authors lead readers through the careful balancing that constitutional analysis requires, exploring the deference given to the hypothetical “reasonable officer,” the governmental interests that justify the use of force, and the determination of whether the type and amount of force used in any given situation was proportional to the justification.

Conclusion

Once the analytical frameworks that can be used to evaluate police uses of force are firmly understood, it is appropriate to question the propriety of those frameworks as they currently exist. In light of the wide variation that can exist between state laws and agency policies, policy makers, police leaders, and academics should take an active approach to assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each evaluative standard. The authors conclude by identifying three common flaws and suggesting corresponding corrections. First, the tendency to evaluate a use of force by looking only at the moment in which force was used artificially limits scope of review, omitting from consideration the varied and important ways in which events that precede the use of force can affect the ultimate outcome. Second, the traditional approach of focusing on a subject’s resistance overlooks the fact that such actions are merely a proxy for what actually matters in use-of-force situations: the nature and extent of a threat to a defined governmental interest. Third, while this book is concerned with evaluating individual uses of force, it acknowledges the need for more informed analysis of police violence in the aggregate, which require data that are not currently available.