Police Force: The Use Of Force Continuum

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In recent years there have been many police encounters with civilians that have ended with the use of deadly force and has caused quite the uproar, protest, and many people disliking the police. There is no clear definition of the use of deadly force, however, its described as the amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling suspect. Officers receive training from their organizations, but there are no set of instructions that provide guidance for when and how much officers should use force. Because there are no two scenarios that are the same, nor two officers that are the same, officers are trained to use situational awareness and use their best judgement when using force to gain control over the situation. Law …show more content…
The use of force continuum has many levels in which officers are taught to respond to the level of force necessary for the current situation, and knowing that in any moment they can transfer from one level to another level (The Use-of-Force Continuum). The use of force continuum can go as follows: Officer presence where no force is used. Considered the best and safest ways to resolve a situation. Nearly having police presence can work to deter people from committing crime or can help diffuse a situation. Verbalization would follow and still no force is used (The Use-of-Force Continuum). This would be where officers are calm in asking nonlethal commands like; asking to see your identification and registration and may at times increase their volume and shorten commands to control the situation like; stop, or don’t move. Next would be empty hand control, where officers use bodily force to gain control of a situation. This is considered soft technique where officers use grabs, holds and joint locks to restrain …show more content…
H., Hickman, M. J., Malega, R. W., & Maxwell, C. D., 2018). Although, one of the main problems with the data from this research is most of it is built on a single or small number of jurisdiction. The data sources that are employed to measure the use of force vary widely, studies use individual police reports, surveys of law enforcement agencies, systematic observations of police contacts, interviews with residents or suspects, surveys of the general population and complications of media accounts (Garner et al., 2014). Also, to measure the amount of force used is very limited based on the vague definition or the inconsistencies from department to department (Garner et al., 2014). Overall, the use of deadly force incidents are moderately rare compared to the amount of police to citizen
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