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Deadly Perceptions:!
An Historical Overview of Real vs. Per-
ceived Police Use of Deadly Force and
Its Impact on Public Opinion!
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Emily Moseley !
LSJ 480: Policing Modern Society!
3/9/2016!
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From viral videos to major news stories, the issue of police use of force is being thrown

at us constantly; and despite lowered levels of police force, tension and mistrust of the police

remains high. Even more impactful, perhaps, than actual use of force, is the perceived use of

force, which, as I shall demonstrate, holds much greater sway over public opinion than the actual

levels of force used by police today. In the following paragraphs I shall attempt to discuss from

an historical perspective the development of police use of deadly force, focusing specifically on

the decrease of instances of deadly force from the 1990s to today, and investigate the question of

why tension remains so high between police and the communities they serve.

The historical development of the police as we now know them took some time, and they

were not always limited to law enforcement as we now see them. In his article History of Ur-

ban Police, Monkonnen writes that:

[a]long with arresting offenders, the police took in tramps, enforced sanitation

laws, inspected boilers, took annual census, and performed myriad other small

tasks.

(554)

The police used to be much more involved in what we might today deem the realm of social

workers, and indeed seemed to be involved more in the general social order than merely uphold-

ing the law. These mandates, however, did not last forever, and after the 1890s, police really did

focus more and more on crime control (Monkkonen, 556): law enforcement, therefore, be-

came the polices focus, though their underlying task remained the same. As Bittner wrote in his

article, The Functions of the Police in Modern Society, the police were historically assumed to
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concentrate on the control of individual and collective tendencies toward transgression and dis-

order (98), not merely enforce the law of the land. In carrying out this task, Bittner also notes

that there is an expectation that [police] may and will use force (122), up to and including

deadly force, if necessary, in order to maintain social order.

The use of force in policing is not only expected, as Bittner wrote, but also a necessary

part of their job. Indeed, in order for police to effectively participate in social control and fight

crime, as we so often call them to do, there must be something of the dragon in the dragon-

slayer (Bittner, 95): they must be allowed to use the force which we as citizens are too afraid or

too unwilling to use, in order to fight those on the illegal side of the lines society has drawn. As

agents of the state, too, police therefore have a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical

force (Weber, 78). Bittner seems to agree with this sentiment, writing that the role of the police

is best understood as a mechanism for the distribution of non-negotiably coercive force (131).

One must agree, then, that the police use of force is a necessary function of their existence.

Police use of deadly force, while troublesome to most of us who hear of it, is still a (sad-

ly) necessary part of the police role in maintaining social order and enforcing the law. The use of

deadly force is one of the most hot-button issues surrounding police tactics today. Robert Lamb

Jr., Regional Director for Community Relations Service, is quoted in A Community Concern:

Police Use of Deadly Force, as saying:

There is no single issue that serves to precipitate a breakdown between

law enforcement officials and minority groups-and has the potential for

serious disorder-as police use of deadly and excessive force.

(Brenner)
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He here expresses a sentiment that many people seem to share, namely, that police use of deadly

force is a tragedy that will have a huge ripple effect on the community which it has impacted.

Regarding societys feelings at large, perhaps an example can be taken from our own classroom,

when we all seemed to be in agreement with professor Wender when he said that he is glad we

live in a society that is troubled by the use of force (lecture).

While such sentiments are admirable, and should of course be included in the conversa-

tion surrounding police use of force, deadly force continues to sometimes be necessary, as even

its critics are wont to agree. Even those most starkly opposed to its use admit to its necessity, as

Hubert Williams does in A Community Concern, when he writes (regarding the goals and

hopeful legal resolutions of NOBLE1):

That the firearm policies of police departments and other law

enforcement agencies be based upon the principle that no officer's

weapon be discharged except in the defense of life.

(Williams, 5)

While this group clearly wishes to see more regulation surrounding the police use of firearms,

they also admit that in the defense of life, whether that of the officers or that of someone else,

the discharge of a firearm would be allowed. This wish for further regulation was, to some ex-

tent, granted in the 1985 case of Tennessee v. Garner, in which the Supreme Court held that offi-

cers may only use deadly force on a fleeing felon if the suspect is suspected to pose serious bodi-

ly harm to either other officers or members of the public (Tennessee v. Garner).

1 National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (Brenner, vi)

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Over the years, significant efforts have been made to reduce the amount of violence, par-

ticularly deadly force, used by the police. Many departments have attempted to change their pro-

tocol in an effort to respond to community issues without the use of force. In a 2012 Police Fo-

rum, for example, Seattle Sergeant Kevin Grossman remarked that:

Anecdotally, our department was noticing more behavior that looked like excited

delirium, and an increased use of Tasers in interactions with those individuals. So

our department worked with the University of Washington Medical Center and the

Seattle Fire Department to develop a protocol for addressing those events. We fo-

cus on recognizing the symptoms and then treating it more as a medical problem

than a law enforcement problem.

(7)

This demonstrates a marked attempt to lower the number of incidents involving force, and in-

stead using other skills in order to de-escalate the conflict and gain control of the situation. Addi-

tionally, in articles such as one put forth by the American Psychological Association, psycholo-

gists and other social scientists are teaming up to try to ease the tension between police and the

communities they serve (Collier). Some of their first ideas included training police officers in

basic skills that they as psychologists have, such as how to listen, to understand others, to inter-

act more meaningfully and to communicate more effectively (Collier), in order to build better

trust in the community. Attempts at reform have been made for years, notably in 1979 in a com-

pilation of articles put forth by the Department of Justice. One regulation they suggested was that

police departments and other law enforcement agencies formulate firearm policies which are

clear, uncomplicated, and easy to enforce (Hinds, 9). While improvements have been made in
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this area (case law from Tennessee v. Garner and other landmark cases have established more

clearly the regulations of use of deadly force), complete regulation remains, currently, unattain-

able, as police maintain their relative freedom of discretion.

While the use of deadly force (and force in general) by police is necessary and legal, it

has, despite current public opinion to the contrary (as can be seen in the media and general public

feeling about the subject), become less frequent compared to previous years, and is much lower

than is perhaps implied by news coverage and media in general. For example, in a recent and rel-

atively short turnaround, in 2009 some departments in Las Vegas began including in their proto-

cols that officers, when deciding how much force to use in a given situation, should put the

highest premium on the sanctity of human life (Kindy, A Year of Reckoning). Following

this change in regulations, just four years after the new rules were implemented, the number of

officer-involved shootings was cut by nearly half (Kindy, A Year of Reckoning). In addition, as

demonstrated in an article put forth by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, arrests in

2002 involved the use of a handgun a mere .1% of the time (Maxwell and Garner, 5). This was a

slight decrease from 1991, when .11% of arrests involved a handgun (though only .09% involved

a fatal shooting) (part of the table is recreated here):

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Reported incidents of police use of force per
1,000 sworn officers during 1991 in city
departments

Type of force Rate per 1,000 sworn officers

Civilians shot and killed 0.9

Civilians shot and wounded but not killed 0.2

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(McEwen, 34)

The use of deadly force relative to total number of arrests has gone down even further in

previous years. According to the most recent FBI statistics, 8,730,665 people were arrested in

2014 (I have recreated one part of the table, limiting the amount of data shown):

Total
Arrests

American Native
Black or
Indian or Hawaiian or
Total White African Asian
Alaska Other Pacific
American
Native Islander

Total 8,730,665 6,056,687 2,427,683 135,599 100,067 10,629

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(2014 Crime in the United States, Table 43A)

As for the number of fatal shootings in 2015, the Washington Post conducted a study and found

that 1,171 people were killed by police that year (181 people shot dead). If one calculates the

number of fatal shootings compared to the number of overall arrests, the percentage is very

small: compared to the .1% for 2002, shootings accounted for just .0001% of total arrests in

2015. (Given that the FBI is a year behind in their reporting of crime statistics, I have extrapolat-

ed the data from 2014 into 2015, presuming there is no huge discrepancy that will take place be-

tween the two years.)

The issue of deadly force is made even more prominent due to the fact that, especially

today, the issue of race is brought up as being a huge factor in police uses of deadly force (as in-

stances of deadly force are portrayed in mainstream news and other media coverage). In a list

from the Wall Street Journal, entitled Timeline of Police on Record, eight viral videos show-

casing instances of police brutality are listed, beginning with the case of Eric Garner in 2014
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(Calvert and Bauerlein). Of the eight videos, all but one involve black victims (Calvert and

Bauerlein). The authors of the article also note that [t]he explosion of citizen video has fueled a

national debate about race and policing (Calvert and Bauerlein), confirming that there has, in

fact, been a major uptake in the discussion surrounding race and use of force as the advent of so-

cial media and viral videos has become a central part of the sharing of news.

Despite this growing sense of the increase (or, at least, maintenance) of deadly force used

against minorities, and particularly blacks, the numbers of these instances have actually gone

down over the years. According to the article Detriments of Deadly Force: A Structural Analysis

of Police Violence, in 1998, a whopping 53% of the victims of police shootings were black (Ja-

cobs, 843). Their overwhelming presence in this category of victims was nearly five times their

percent of the population at the time, which, as can be seen in the following chart, was only 12%

of the total population:

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(Voter Registration and Turnout by Age, Gender and Race : 1998)

In 2015, however, the percentages are much closer to being an accurate representation of actual

racial makeup (although there is still a disparity in the black population and their arrest rates

compared to the rest of the US population). In 2015, when 1,171 people were shot by police,

25% of them (as opposed to the previous 53%) were black (again, part of the table has been

recreated for ease of use and limiting the data:

Race People Killed by Police in 2015

White 575

Black 297

Hispanic 190

Other 44

Unknown 65

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(181 people shot dead)

This decrease in percent would be an improvement (however slight) in and of itself, but there has

also been an increase in the black population since 1998. In 2015, the racial make-up of the US

looked much different:

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(Aranda)

While the percentage of black victims of police shootings compared to their percentage of the

total population clearly still do not match up completely, the numbers do show improvements in

moving towards a more proportionate distribution of deaths in police shootings relative to their

percentage of the overall population.

Furthermore, while the hottest social justice issue of the day appears to be the police

shooting of unarmed black men, the apparent crisis-level number of instances are actually com-

paratively small; not, of course, to diminish any of the deaths that occurred, for any loss of life is

a tragedy. I mean only to make the point that we are not quite experiencing the epidemic of

which I have heard my peers complain. According to the Washington Posts study, unarmed

black men actually only account for 4% of the fatal shootings that happened in 2015 (Kindy, A

Year of Reckoning): this is still 4% too high, but it demonstrates that the actual number of in-

stances is far less than appears to be presented in mainstream media. Additionally, in an article

from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, it is noted that police shootings of blacks (as of

2011) have fallen approximately 70% in the last 40-50 years:

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(Males)

Despite the evidence pointing towards lower levels of police violence against (in particu-

lar) blacks in the US, tension remains high. The most direct cause of this tension comes from a

grave mistrust of the police: levels of mistrust have increased in the past few years, despite the

decreasing amount of violence. In a Gallup poll, mistrust of the police has reached its lowest

point since 1993:

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(Jones)

The Gallup poll also indicated that [t]he combined 18% who have very little or no confidence in

the police is the highest Gallup has measured to date (Jones), which coincides with the high

rates of tension between police an society today. Our own in-class survey reflected these num-
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bers. When asked whether people were made uncomfortable by police presence, a vast majority

of our class raised their hands in affirmation.

There are various reasons behind the remaining levels of tension. As noted in the Wash-

ington Post article, the expansion of social media platforms has contributed hugely to the mis-

trust of police officers, as bystanders are now able to present and share video footage of the inci-

dents:

The widespread availability of video of police shootings from bystanders

smartphones as well as from police body and dashboard cameras has been a

primary factor in the rising number of indictments of officers.

(Jones)

Furthermore, one can see, from the Gallup poll, that trust in the police dropped significantly be-

tween 2013-2015 (Gallup), which matches almost precisely with the beginning of the widely-

used timeline of viral videos detailing police brutality against black men, with the first video on

the list taking place in 2014 (Calvert and Bauerlein). Thus, the more widespread use of social

media has played a huge part in the public view of police. While public opinion is swayed large-

ly by the advent of these videos, the police are also partially at fault in the issue of trust, since, as

Bittner notes, police do very little to discourage unfavorable public attitudes (95), and thus do

little to encourage more favorable opinions of themselves by the public.

In addition to more widespread use of social media, there also appears to be some misun-

derstanding regarding the police use of force. Citizens and bystanders, even with the eye-witness

videos and body-camera clips, receive only a snapshot (Rojek et. al, 302) of the entirety of the

situation, leaving much to the imagination. History with the suspect, a previous encounter earlier
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that day, information shared from another officer: all that information is lost within the bounds of

the short snippet of video. Obviously video footage is a valuable asset: the Washington Post re-

marks that [i]n todays tinderbox of public concern about police brutality, video of shootings

can be damning evidence or a clear defense (Kindy, A Year of Reckoning), and body cameras

as well as bystander videos can provide more accurate descriptions of situations after they have

occurred. However, the Post also notes that in 2015, only 6% of police killings were caught on

body cameras (Kindy, 2015 Police Shootings Investigation). 94% of police shootings, there-

fore, rely heavily on testimony fro the officers involved and potential witnesses of the event (if

bystander video is not available).

However, the stories told by these two groups may be completely contradictory, as Rojek

et. al demonstrate in their article (307), and is therefore difficult to decipher when deciding who

is to blame, or whether force was necessary or excessive. The authors note that:

[w]hether it is a married couple complaining about each other, or a police officer

and a citizen explaining their points of view, all actors will relate their version of

the events in a way that justifies or explains their language and behavior.

(Rojek et. al, 307)

In the article, Rojek et. al, having interviewed both victims of police use of force and the officers

involved in the incidents (though more than five times more officers agreed to be interviewed

than victims [Rojek et. al, 309]), demonstrate two different views of what could potentially be

(though is not outright stated to be) the same incident. The authors first present the officers point

of view regarding the incident. When interviewed, the officer stated:

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[The] individual was identified as a shoplifting suspect from a prior incident. I

was going to conduct a field interview with him, he was walking near a mobile

home park. As he saw me he began to act nervous, putting his hands in his pock-

ets, moving all around, looking around and appearing as though he was trying to

run. I told him just put your hands on your head and he did so at first. I then

told him I wanted to pat him down for my safety and he immediately put his

hands in his pockets and then he threw a bag of marijuana on the ground. I then

told him I was going to arrest him. He stepped away and tried to run, but I jumped

on him and brought him to the ground, told him stop resisting, gave verbal

commands. He was cuffed and put in my car

(Rojek et. al, 311)

To most people, this incident would presumably seem like a reasonable account of the situation,

with the officer responding relatively calmly to the actions of the suspect. The officer certainly

paints his actions in the best light; whether this testimony is entirely true cannot be verified. Lat-

er in the article, Rojek et. al share the account of a victim of police use of force, who was part of

a very similar incident. The authors did not state overtly that this incident was the same as the

previous one involving the officer; however, even if it is not the same incident, is is similar

enough to demonstrate that the actions of the officer had a very different impact on the victim

than perhaps was intended by the officer in question. The authors present the victims interview,

in which he said:

That officer grabbed me by the neck and almost choked the air out of me, just be-

cause I dropped the weed. After I dropped that weed on the ground I had my
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hands up and he grabbed me by the neck. . . . He grabbed me and then threw me

on the ground, he was on top of me choking me. My face was in the dirt. I

couldnt even move, I was about to go unconscious, my wind was getting choked

out. . . . He didnt have to take me to the ground, I had my hands up. That was un-

called for. It wasnt that serious.

(Rojek et. al, 314-315)

If this was the same incident as was described previously by the officer, then it is plain to see

how the actions of the two individuals could be so vastly misrepresented in their accounts of one

another. Even if the two incidents were, in fact, separate, both demonstrate the individuals at-

tempt to frame themselves in the best, most innocent light. The victim claims that the officer re-

sponded too harshly, too quickly, although the background leading up to him dropping the weed

is left out of this part of the testimony, leaving it up to the imagination of the reader. The victim

merely claims that the officer jumped on him for no viable reason. This demonstrates, firstly, the

biased testimonies of those involved in use-of-force incidents, but also the great mistrust that cit-

izens have of the police, in that they feel attacked without just cause.

From the 1990s to today, levels of police use of force have dropped significantly. The

amount of force used proportionately (or, disproportionately) against blacks, too, has dropped

drastically, although improvements in this area could still be made; but the numbers are showing

a promising trend. Despite these facts, tension and mistrust remains high, partially due to the ad-

vent of the viral video, partially due to underlying mistrust in general, and also partially due to a

misunderstanding of police use of force (which, really, boils down to more mistrust). Thus, it ap-

pears the perception of force has pushed public opinion of the police even lower.