Advanced Topics in Police Ethics

ADVANCED TOPICS IN POLICE ETHICS
"I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinkin', 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Now, to tell you the truth, I've forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as this is the .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" (Dirty Harry)

This lecture focuses on the topic of police use of force. Nothing defines the central role of police in society better than its monopoly over the unquestionable use of force. Aggressiveness, toughness, relentlessness, and (one might say) a cult of violence all tend to permeate the adrenaline-soaked police culture. Deadly force is of particular interest in our discussion. Deadly force can be defined as such force readily capable of, or likely to cause, death or serious bodily harm (Alpert & Fridel 1992). Some states, but not all, have statutory definitions of deadly force, and a common feature to all definitions is that deadly force refers to a means, not an outcome. In other words, no one has to die for deadly force to be "deadly" force. All that is required is that there is a chance of someone dying. Likewise, all that is required to kill, or engage in armed combat with someone, is the chance that you'll survive.

About 2 million out of 14 million arrests every year involve police use of force, and reflect the number of suspects who have chosen to come along with police "the hard way." Weaponless (or strong hold) tactics are the most common kind of force, and this occurs most frequently when alcohol, drugs, or mental illness is involved on behalf of the suspect. A small percentage of officers appear to be over-represented among the more extreme incidents of force involving impact or use of a weapon. The following continuum of force comes from Skolnick & Fyfe (1993), and rather clearly shows the various levels of force, or what these authors call the "ladder" of force:

*A Continuum of Police Use of Force*
Mere presence	The officer doesn't have to say a word; the uniform or other police markings force the subject to comply
Verbalization	The officer uses persuasive or polite language; e.g. emphatically saying "Sir" or "please"
Command voice	A kind of verbal judo in which the tone and inflection of voice carries some kind of command authority in it
Firm grip	The elbow or shoulder is held to remind the subject to remain still or move in a certain direction
Come-along hold	A painful grip on a finger, wrist, or arm is used; similar to an Aikido or martial arts maneuver
Impact-Nonlethal	The use of kicks or punches; but also includes the use of baton, spray, or Taser
Impact-Lethal	The use of any impact-nonlethal methods that run the risk of death; but also includes certain martial arts maneuvers like sleeper holds
Deadly force	Any use of a weapon; but also includes the use of a vehicle

Technology is a big issue. Somewhere between the come-along and impact-nonlethal levels, experts have proposed adding a new level, called less-than-lethal force. The basic ideas behind the less-than-lethal force movement are to: (1) minimize the risk of death, even for collateral bystanders; and (2) be appropriate for various special occasions such as vehicle stoppage, riot control, and hostage rescue. Some devices aid with personal survival. Other devices can work through walls. The "less" in less-than-lethal is based on calculating the kinetic energy of a device. Recent years have seen an enormous amount of interest in this topic. The Justice Department has produced a special Less-Than-Lethal Technologies page that is worth a visit. Devices range from simple sand-bag shotguns to sophisticated psychological instruments developed at places like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, such as thermal guns (which heat the body to a temperature of 107 degrees), electromagnetic guns (which produce nausea or epileptic-like seizures), and magnetophosphene guns (which produce the same effect as a blow to the head, producing the seeing of "stars"). A concise, if dated (1994), article on these technologies can be found at a Zarc International webpage. The Courts have been reluctant to express their approval for much beyond advanced development with chemical weapons, such as pepper spray.

"Excessive" force, or anything "excessive," is a liability issue for police, and the study of it should involve much more than simply understanding the reasonableness standard in Constitutional law. International law, for instance, has a much better grasp on this than Consitutional law. At the level of impact and beyond, one has to be very careful in determining if those levels are justified, and if not, it makes sense to refer to excessive force as what some individual officers do and excessive use of force as what is practiced on a department-wide basis. In an average year, 600 suspects are shot and killed by police, while another 1,200 are shot and wounded, and 1,800 are shot at and missed. Black property offenders are twice as likely as any other group to be shot at by police, and another interesting statistic is the growing percentage of cases (over 10%) that involve suicide by cop, where a note is usually found saying "Sorry to get you involved. I just needed to die."

"Brutality" is a wedge issue in political discussions about use of force. Criminal justice experts are divided over whether racial differences exist with respect to police use of force. Some groups like Amnesty International think that such a pattern exists as part of systematic police brutality. Police brutality is a term used a couple of different ways in criminal justice. The most common way it is referred to in most textbooks is as a kind of excessive force involving the level of impact and beyond where such levels are not needed. Using this definitional approach, brutality is the same as excessive force. Other ways to reference the phrase include defining police brutality as involving the unnecessary and unjustified use of force be it either physical or verbal (Dudley 1991). This definitional approach has never found any credence with the Courts. With regard to racist police brutality, respected researchers like Adams (1996) and Tonry (1995) as well as the U.S. government have never unveiled such a pattern. Excessive use of force and deadly force need to be studied without reference to whether systematic bias are parts of it. Far too often, students jump into the study of issues like racial and gender discrimination without first understanding the basic characteristics and issues of police use of force generally.

"There's no way to evaluate whether it was justified or not, you would have had to been there." This statement is an expression of the split-second syndrome, as that term constitutes a common belief among police officers (Fyfe 1981; 1988). However, it's also a term used to describe some subjective characteristics in each of the stages that researchers have found useful in analyzing deadly force encounters. Those stages are subjective and fleeting, and consist of the following which can be liberally characterized as so:

Too often, researchers don't look at anything but the final frame stage, but as we can see from the above, there are a number of other important stages (if "stages" is the correct term to use for these fleeting milliseconds). While it is indeed true that no two deadly force situations are exactly alike, they do share a number of commonalities, particularly in what subjective factors individual officers bring to the situation themselves. For example, there's the personal fears that an officer brings to the situation (in the anticipation stage), there's the remembrance of policy factor in the entry stage (whether training "kicks in"), there's some sort of attempt at hostage negotiation (with one's self as the hostage) during the exchange stage, and there's an audience factor to consider with the final frame stage (whether stray bullets are hitting anybody). So you see how complex a deadly force situation is.

Elliston (1985) makes an interesting comparison between deadly force and capital punishment utilizing six (6) characteristics of both, as follows:

Deadly Force	Capital Punishment
1. Self defense	1. Justice principles
2. To prevent commission of a crime	2. Social defense (incapacitation & deterrence)
3. To arrest a fleeing felon	3. Fallibility or irrevocability
4. To recapture an escapee after arrest	4. Sanctity of human life
5. To recapture an escapee after imprisonment	5. Due process
6. To stop a riot	6. Contemporary moral standards

Elliston's (1985) purpose seems to involve drawing links or connections between circumstances and settled principles, and in many ways, illustrates the problem in finding any ethical principles to guide deadly force policy. Circumstances justifying deadly force are always situational and temporary in nature. The settled principles of capital punishment all reflect relatively permanent and fixed ideas. For example, shooting a fleeing felon is "connected" to fallibility or irrevocability in the sense that ruling out mistake or error must be involved. Granted, I don't fully understand the connection between due process and escaped prisoners, unless you're supposed to think in some way where they are given a "fighting chance" to get away. There is an unusual American jurisprudence on this, as there is with much of "fleeing felon" doctrine under U.S. constitutional law. The Dutch model is clearer, where police can shoot a running suspect as long as they try to do it in the leg. Something like that is practically non-existent in American law.

The attempt to discover fixed principles that can guide action in fluid situations has been a quest in police science for some time, and in many ways, is also a philosophical ethics concern. It has long been a military concern, and there are some who say police firearms training is little more than police gunfighting. One of the essential points in that lecture is that firearms training has moved (and should move) from basic target practice and shoot-don't-shoot scenarios to tactical training and judgment training. Police departments also attempt to supplement their training with indoctrination on policies and procedures governing the use of deadly force. Since this is a high-liability area for police administrators, it's not surprising that such efforts take place. However, there are other, perhaps more important, factors that can help shed light on control of deadly force.

While training and indoctrination are good things in themselves, a better idea might be to approach the problem by addressing the types and levels of STRESS among individual police officers. It seems important that this be done at the individual level to get at any possible fearful "visualizations" that characterize the anticipation phase of the split-second syndrome. For example, psychoanalysis or dream interpretation might be used, or whatever inquires into horrific "images" that may privately haunt individual officers. Police have fears, and sometimes those fears can be crippling in their psychological impact. Something akin to the implications of Toch's (1992; 2002) research is needed. Let's expand on that line of research.

One of the things we know which affects police officers is their exposure to media and television portrayals of shooting incidents. The media play a fantastic role in this regard, and we know that the "TV Cop" stage of a police career (see below)

is exactly the career stage when one is most likely to be involved in "shootings" in police work. Police "shooters" are generally young and relatively inexperienced. The media provides a number of images which can all be counterproductive to, shall we say, healthy anticipation of a shooting. Not only does the media, primarily the press, seem to focus on the bizarre, macabre, unusually violent, and overdramatized, but TV shows and movies generally rely upon one of the following:

Violence takes place, according to Toch (1992) for one of five reasons, but there are other functions of aggression well-known in the field of psychology. Let's list these.

Toch's Reasons for Violence and Psychological Functions of Aggression
1. Rep-defending 2. Norm-enforcing 3. Self-image compensating 4. Self-defending 5. Pressure-removing	1. to get attention 2. to manipulate others 3. to control others 4. to experience power 5. to increase intimacy 6. to dominate rivals 7. to breakout from confining roles 8. to protect self 9. for revenge 10. for excitement 11. to disrupt a relationship 12. for impression management 13. to conform to expectations 14. for self-destruction

It's natural to focus on the glory, instead of the horror, in violence. The military has known this for years, and it's one reason why those who have seen combat receive so much respect, but standard indoctrination (consisting of pride, conviction, commitment, and being convinced you stand a chance of surviving) can only go so far. What's needed is effective, honest, and real preparation. Police work, like military work, is no place for unfounded optimism. Being unrealistic about the causes and characteristics of violence can lead to rash action and foolish judgments. It's far safer to honestly recognize that use of force is an individual decision, dependent upon human, individual characteristics, and that those who mean to do good only enter into the use of deadly force reluctantly. How to maintain the morale of RELUCTANT WARRIORS should be the object of our inquiry, not how to draw upon fixed, impersonal principles that constrain action in fluid situations.

PRINTED RESOURCES
Adams, K. (1996) "Measuring the Prevalence of Police Abuse of Force in Police Violence" in W. Geller & H. Toch (eds.) Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Alpert, G. & Fridell, L. (1992). Police Vehicles and Firearms: Instruments of Deadly Force. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
Barker, T. & Carter, D. (Eds.) (1994). Police Deviance. Cincinatti: Anderson.
Black, D. (1980). The Manners and Customs of the Police. NY: Academic Books.
Cohen, H. & Feldberg, M. (1991). Power and Restraint. NY: Praeger.
Delattre, E. (1996). Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing. 3rd Edition. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute.
Dudley, W. (1991). Police Brutality. San Diego: Greenhaven Press.
Elliston, F. (1985). "Deadly Force and Capital Punishment: A Comparative Appraisal," Pp. 153-67 in Heffernan & Stroup (rds.), Police Ethics: Hard Choices in Law Enforcement. NY: John Jay Press.
Friedrich, R. (1980). "Police Use of Force: Individuals, Situations, and Organizations." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 452:82-97.
Fyfe, J. (1981). "Observations on Police Deadly Force" Crime and Delinquency 18: 376-89.
Fyfe, J. (1988). "Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform" Justice Quarterly 5: 165-206.
Geller, W. (1982). "Deadly Force: What We Know." Journal of Police Science and Administration 10(2):151-177.
Hansen, D. (1973). Police Ethics. Springfield: Charles Thomas.
Heffernan, W. & Stroup, T. (Eds.) (1985). Police Ethics: Hard Choices in Law Enforcement. NY: John Jay Press.
Hicks, W. (2004). "Constraints in the Police Use of Force," American Journal of CJ 28(2): 255-70.
Kappeler, V. (1993). Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Klockars, C., Ivkovic, S. & Haberfeld, M. (Eds.) (2003). The Contours of Police Integrity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Liederbach, J. & Taylor, R. (2004). "Police Use of Deadly Force." Pp. 77-92 in Q. Thurman & A. Giacomazzi (eds.) Controversies in Policing. Cincinnati: LexisNexis Anderson.
Pollock, J. (2004). Ethics in Crime and Justice, 4e. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Pollock, J. (2004). "Ethical Issues in Policing." Pp. 119-138 in Q. Thurman & A. Giacomazzi (eds.) Controversies in Policing. Cincinnati: LexisNexis Anderson.
Skolnick, J. & Fyfe, J. (1993). Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. NY: Free Press.
Smith, M. & Alpert, G. (2004). "Pepper Spray," Policing 23(2): 233-45.
Toch, H. (1992). Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence. Washington DC: APA.
Toch, H. (2002). Stress in Policing. Washington DC: APA.
Tonry, M. (1995). Malignant Neglect-Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. NY: Oxford University Press.
Trautman, N. (1997). The Cutting Edge of Police Integrity. FL: Ethics Inst.
Walker, S. (2005). The New World of Police Accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Last updated: Sept. 30, 2006
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T. (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.

1-2 years	Rookie
3-4 years	TV cop
5-10 years	Cynicism
11-15 years	Realism
16-20 years	Retirement