http://youtu.be/gXJ6QRcLaYk
According to a 2014 Pew Research Study on 7% of people think police forces do an excellent job of using the right amount of force for each situation, and 30% of people surveyed say police do a poor job.
Due to the increased interest the public has in use of force by law enforcement officials, the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s department is hoping to educate the community on the law and policies surrounding use of force. They developed a law enforcement use of force class for the community after seeing that many were unaware what was proper procedure for using force.
“There is tons of misconception out there,” Major Brent Barlow said. “Unfortunately a lot of people get their information from unreliable sources, primarily Hollywood. So as a practioner, we feel it’s our jobs to at least try and educate people about the job that we do day in and day out.”
That was Major Brent Barlow, one of the officers who led the class. The majority of the 6-hour class was spent going over procedures and case law that were used to create their use of force policy.
The current use of force standard was created by the 1989 Supreme Court Case, Graham vs. Connor, which measures the government’s interest for using force by three factors: the severity of the crime, the degree to which a suspect is resisting arrest, and immediate threat posed to officers and the public at large.
It also recognizes that law enforcement officials have to make split-second decisions, and need to be judged by what that officer was thinking in the moment.
Major Brent Barlow says that on average only about 1 in every 200 calls results in some use of force by an officer.
“It’s a rarity,” Barlow said. “Does it happen? Absolutely, but when you look at the numbers we had close to 89,000 citizen contacts last year, very, very, very small percentage of those result in some force application by police. And as we saw in materials today that’s generally going to be driven by the person that we’re dealing with, their actions, we’re not in the business of just using force. It’s going to be used when we are confronted with a threat that necessitates that use of force.”
If an officer is threatened with great bodily harm, or a suspect pulls a deadly weapon on an officer that officer could be permitted to use lethal force. As shown in demonstrations during the class, it takes about 1.3 seconds for a criminal to attack an officer, and it could take up to 4 times as long to react to the threat.
Even when students knew they were going to be attacked during the demonstration, they still could have been injured by the time they were able to respond. In the field, officers aren’t given a warning.
Barlow says life or death matters can escalate quickly, and it’s important to know all of the details of a use of force case before deciding if it was justified.
“It’s very easy I think or people to rush to judgment,” Barlow said. “You know without knowing all of the facts, and I think often times that happens across this country with social media, the media and what not. And so my idea is that people really try to get a firm understanding, get all the facts, if they are going to make a decision or come to judgment of someone else.”
Barlow says anytime an officer has to use force in the sheriff’s department it is reviewed by multiple people, and helps them modify training and policies.
“The officer is going to come back, generally he is going to fill a police report,” Barlow said. “The police report is going to outline generally what he did in terms of a force application. We also have a use of force report form that they have to fill out that is then reviewed by their supervisor. Then we go through twice a year audits over those.”
Barlow says he recognizes that there are excessive force cases across the country; he says just like any other population there are going to be some bad officers.
“Without question there are issues of police brutality, a criminal act, excessive force cases across this country and it happens all the time,” Barlow said. “Some of it’s intentional, some of it’s accidental, but by and large the vast majority of police force applications are legal and are within the limits of what the law says you can and can’t do.”
Barlow says one of preventing this is through training, and says officers in the sheriff’s department go through use of force training about once a year.
“Good training, frequent training, reoccurring training,” Barlow said. “Contemporary training that really focuses on best practices. And then from having an agency that is focused on monitoring situations that potentially fall outside the bounds of what’s reasonable or what’s lawful and then addressing those issues as they come about.”
Barlow says they plan to offer another community class on police use of force sometime in the fall.
