Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

The difficulties in measuring excessive and illegal force with complaintand lawsuit records have led academics and practitioners to redirecttheir attention to all use-of-force incidents. The focus then becomes oneof minimizing all instances of police use of force, without undue concernas to whether force was excessive. From this perspective, other records,such as use-of-force reports, arrest records, injury reports, and medicalrecords, become relevant to measuring the incidence of the problem.54Of course, these indicators also have their shortcomings. Arrest records,medical records, and the like will surely reveal uses of violence that havenot resulted in lawsuits or formal complaints. But they will still underestimatethe overall incidence of force, since not every case will be accuratelyrecorded. For example, attempts to assess the prevalence of force based onarrest reports leave out those cases where force was used but no arrest wasmade. ,5 Uke the victims (though for very different reasons) , the perpetratorsof police violence are also likely to under-report its occurrence. And they arelikely to understate the level of force used and the seriousness of resultantinjuries when they do report it.56 Individual medical records, meanwhile, arenot generally available for examination, except when presented as evidence ina complaint hearing or civil trial. And even if emergency rooms were to maintainstatistics on police-related injuries, many victims of violence, especiallythe uninsured, do not seek treatment except for the most serious of injuries.Other indicators, such as media reports and direct observation, are similarly:flawed. The media, of course, can only report on events if they know about them.Furthermore, they are unlikely to report on routine uses of force because-likethe fabled "Dog Bites Man" story-it is so commonplace. 57 Direct observation islimited by the obvious fact that no one can observe everything, everywhere, allthe time. And observation can lead a subject (either the officer or the suspect)to change his behavior while he is being observed. In humanitarian terms, suchdeterrence is all for the good, but it doesn't do much for the systematic study ofpolice activity or the measurement of police violence.1ne sad fact is that nobody knows very much about the police use offorce, much less about the use of excessive force. Its prevalence, frequency,and distribution remain, for the most part, unmeasured; and there is onlylimited information available concerning its perpetrators, victims, forms,and causes. Nevertheless, some information is available through the sourcesmentioned above. And, imperfect though they are, the statistics theyproduce may point to a reliable baseline, an estimated minimum to whichwe can refer with a fair amount of certainty. With that aim in mind, and withnot a little trepidation, we should turn our attention to the data that are available,and consider what they indicate.A LOOK AT THE NUMBERSAccording to a 1996 Justice Department survey, 20 percent of the Americanpublic had direct contact with the police during the previous year. Most ofthese contacts took the form of traffic stops, and most were unremarkable.Only 1 in 500 residents was subject to the use of force or the threat of force.Three years later, the Justice Department repeated the study, this time with13