Police Training And Excessive Force

How rough is too rough? Rodney King is an unfamiliar name for those growing up today, but the ongoing conversation concerning police brutality is one they know all-too well. This collection deep-dives into police training procedure, what constitutes excessive force, and what happens when the community disagrees with the police and the justice system. Relevant topics covered in this balanced anthology include the 1992 L.A. riots and the 2014 outcry in Ferguson, MO, as well as the choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY.

This Brief describes a reality based approach to use-of-force training in law enforcement, an area of growing importance. It explains what scenario-based training is, how it works to improve police-community relations, and provides a guide for how the training can be implemented. This brief will be of value to researchers working to understand the negative impact of use of force on police-community relations, and interested in alternative approaches that integrate academic research with tactical experience. The traditional use-of-force training paradigm is based on relatively brief training sessions with high student-to-instructor ratios. In scenario-based training, officers listen to social science-based lectures, develop a set of scenarios to be tested in a training environment, and conclude with a debriefing session that brings together the theoretical with the practical, including the consequences of the shooting from the tactical, emotional, psychological, social, and economic angles. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology, criminal justice, sociology, psychology and related fields, policy-makers, particularly with interest in police legitimacy and police-community relations, as well as practitioners in police organization and training.

Provides a critical understanding and evaluation of police tactics and the use of force Police violence has historically played an important role in shaping public attitudes toward the government. Community trust and confidence in policing have been undermined by the perception that officers are using force unnecessarily, too frequently, or in problematic ways. The use of force, or harm suffered by a community as a result of such force, can also serve as a flashpoint, a spark that ignites long-simmering community hostility. In Evaluating Police Uses of Force, legal scholar Seth W. Stoughton, former deputy chief of police Jeffrey J. Noble, and distinguished criminologist Geoffrey P. Alpert explore a critical but largely overlooked facet of the difficult and controversial issues of police violence and accountability: how does society evaluate use-of-force incidents? By leading readers through answers to this question from four different perspectives—constitutional law, state law, administrative regulation, and community expectations—and by providing critical information about police tactics and force options that are implicated within those frameworks, Evaluating Police Uses of Force helps situate readers within broader conversations about governmental accountability, the role that police play in modern society, and how officers should go about fulfilling their duties.

If you constantly wake up tired and stressed and you feel like life is very hard, this guide will change your mindset and apply it to modern life. This is about knowing what you want and going for it. It’s about being tough and it’s about not...

Discusses the role of police psychologists in preventing and identifying individual police officers at risk for use of excessive, nonlethal force and the factors that contribute to police use of excessive force in performing their duties. Includes results of a survey conducted with 65 police psychologists in which they were asked what types of professional services they provided to police departments and how these services were used to control use of force.

This groundbreaking history of how American police forces have been militarized is now revised and updated. Newly added material brings the story through 2020, including analysis of the Ferguson protests, the Obama and Trump administrations, and the George Floyd protests. The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But over the last two centuries, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as enemies. In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative that spans from America’s earliest days through today shows how a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.

Although the prevalence of police-citizen conflict has diminished in recent decades, police use of excessive force remains a concern of police departments nationwide. This timely book focuses on what is known and what still needs to be learned to understand, prevent, and remediate police abuse of force. The topics covered include: a theory of police abuse of force; the causes of police brutality; measures of its prevalence; the violence-prone police officer; public opinion about police abuse of force; the issue of race; officer selection, training, and attitudes; police unions and police culture; administrative review; procedural justice and the review of citizen complaints; the role of lawsuits; and a survey of police brutality abroad. In the final chapter Geller and Toch suggest new directions for research and practical innovations in law enforcement, from which both police and citizens can benefit. The contributors to this volume are scholars of criminology, criminal justice, social psychology, law, and public administration; former police managers; a police union leader; civilian oversight agency administrators and analysts; civil liberties advocates; police litigation expert witnesses; and media commentators. The combination of theoretical and practical perspectives makes this book ideal for students and scholars of democratic policing and for those in police departments, government, and the media charged with addressing and understanding the problem of improper exercise of force.