¶ … Albert and Smith delve into the controversial and complex topic of the use of excessive force in policing. The authors note two important points about the complex topic. First, use of excessive police force is poorly researched and understood. The term "excessive force" is not well defined within law enforcement, and a cohesive explanation of situations that use excessive force is lacking in the training of police officers. Further compounding this lack of definition is a lack of comprehensive statistics on the use of force in the policing environment. As such, police officers have been given enormous powers and responsibility in a hazardous and highly-scrutinized environment, but lack a real understanding of the degree of force that they are allowed to use in carrying out their duties. This lack of understanding of the use of force has resulted in the inability of the police force to provide comprehensive statistical information about the use of excessive force. However, public opinion about excessive force is not so tightly constrained by a lack of a solid definition of excessive force. In a Gallup Poll in 1991, 9% of non-whites and 5% of all respondents noted that they had been mistreated or abused by police. Further, 20% of respondents said that they knew someone else that had been abused or physically mistreated by police. This public perception of excessive force among police action is supported by studies that suggest that the use of police force is excessive in about one third of force incidents, and other observational studies that show officers use excessive force in about 1.05% to 5% of citizen contacts. Second, this results in a difficult situation where police officers are judged by both citizens and independent research as using excessive force, and yet the same officers have no real guidelines as to the definition or extent of excessive force. Police are unrealistically forced to adhere to a vague and largely undefined notion of "reasonableness" in their policing activities. As long as a definition of excessive force remains unreachable, police officers will continue to struggle with this dilemma (Albert & Smith, 1994).

References

Alpert, Geoffrey P. & Smith, William C. (1994). How reasonable is the reasonable man?: Police and excessive force. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 85 (2), 481-501.