NCJ Number
225249
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 33 Issue: 4 Dated: December 2008 Pages: 480-501
Date Published
December 2008
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article examines the prevalence and severity of police use of force in Rhode Island.
Abstract
Findings show some important patterns: although arrest situations that involved a high-risk of police responses that were more forceful, or used more bodily force, chemical agents, impact weapon, or deadly force to complete the arrest were infrequent, when police used physical force against suspects, they usually employed bodily force tactics, such as grabbing, holding, or restraining; sometimes police chose to use a combination of forceful responses to handle resistance by suspects at arrest, such as presence, bodily force, and restraints more often than they used other force combinations; police reactions of force were sometimes less severe than were suspects’ actions of resistance at arrests. Implications of results for use-of-force training and reporting are discussed. The study revealed that police used behaviors at all levels of the force continuum. In 2,735 of the surveyed arrests (82.88 percent), the highest level of force used by police against suspects was restraints (level 3). Police presence (level 1) was the highest level of force that police needed to complete 187 arrests. These arrests involved suspects turning themselves in at police headquarters, where handcuffing was not a standard procedure for making arrests among most police departments. Maximum force (level 8) by the police against suspects was a rare event. Data were collected from 3,300 adult arrests by 16 Rhode Island police agencies, which served 4 different community populations. Figures, tables, appendix, references