Police Use of Force
Covering: police practices, police stress, police use of force
ABC News: "Taser Nation: Are Cops Using Tasers Too Often?"
Outlining recent incidents where police have used Tasers to subdue nonviolent suspects, ABC explores questions about their safety and abuse. (September, 2007).
Amnesty International: Taser Abuse in the United States
Concerned that Tasers are being used as tools of routine force — rather than as weapons of last resort — Amnesty International is calliing for rigorous, independent, and impartial study of their use and effects.
CBS News. "UN: Tasers Are a Form of Torture"
CBS News Reports (11-2007) on the United Nations finding that Tasers can be a form of torture and are in violation of the UN Convention on Torture.
Citizen Complaints About Police Use of Force
Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics outlining the number of citizen complaints against police as well ast the number of complaints sustained.
Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey
Data from a survey of nearly 90,000 residents on face-to-face contacts with the police including traffic stops, arrests, handcuffing and incidents of police use-of-force. Discusses relevance of the findings to the issue of racial profiling.
Early Warning Systems: Responding to the Problem Police Officer (PDF)
A 2001 Research in Brief article from the National Institute of Justice, outlining early warning systems designed to identify officers who may be having problems on the job and how to provide those officers with appropriate counseling or training.
Law Enforcement Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics presents information, statistics, and publications about: Federal Law Enforcement, State and local Law Enforcement, and Campus Law Enforcement. Included are statistics on numbers of law enforcement agencies and officers, law enforcement officers killed and assaulted, and other data. Topics of publications are community policing, police use of force, traffic stop procedures, etc.
Men, Women, and the Police Use of Excessive Force: A Tale of Two Genders (PDF)
The National Center for Women and Policing (a division of the Feminist Majority Foundation) explores gender differences in police use of force and misconduct, highlighting the importance of hiring more women as a strategy to reduce problems with excessive force.
National Data Collection on Police Use of Force
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics, this discussion paper lists the difficulties inherent in collecting use-of-force data, including definitional problems, reluctance of police agencies to provide reliable data, concerns about the misapplication of reported data, and the degree of detail needed on individual incidents.
P.O.V. Every Mothers Son
PBS documentary that tells the story of three mothers whose dead sons Amadou Diallo, Anthony Baez, and Gary Busch were victims of police brutality in the U.S. A "resources" link leads to more information on community policing and police brutality.
Police Practices
Part of the American Civil Liberties Union's website. Police Practices provides ACLU statements, information about current court cases and legislation, community action manuals, and more on topics including police abuse, racial profiling, surveillance, community relations, and civilian oversight.
Police Use of Excessive Force: A Conciliation Handbook for the Police and the Community
Published by the Community Relations Service (CRS) of the U.S. Department of Justice, this guidebook was developed to give police and community groups' options for addressing any controversy surrounding the police use of excessive or deadly force.
Police Use of Excessive Force Against Black Males: Aberrations of Everyday Occurrences?
Written by Judson L. Jeffries, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, this essay argues that contrary to popular belief, black males face the prospect of police brutality on an everyday basis.
Police Use of Force in America, 2001 (PDF)
The final report of the National Police Use of Force Database Project, by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Revisiting: Who Is Guarding the Guardians?
This five page document is an update, as of 2000, of a study that was published in 1981 by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Progress in the areas of recruitment, selection, and training for police work, internal regulation of police departments, external controls, and legal developments are reported.
Last Update: April 30, 2008
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