Police Use of Force

Police Use of Force Imagine a town, a city, an entire country without police officers. A world without police officers may become a world full of chaos, we cannot always trust humans to do the right thing all the time. Being a police officer in America can be a very stressful, difficult, and very dangerous profession. Police officers are meant to be the responsibility for protecting and serving their communities, by helping people in difficult, and dangerous times of needs and to fight crime. The primary duties of being a police officer is to protect and serve the people and their property. Some common duties of police may include controlling traffic, patrolling neighborhoods, responding to emergency calls, writing up citations for violators who break the law, they deliver warrants, making arrests, and they also submit incident reports after investigating crimes by observing and reporting to various situations that occur and require emergency. With all these duties they are required to fulfill on duty comes responsibility and safety every moment on the job. Police officers face danger each day while in the line of duty, every officer may face many different dangerous and stressful situations. Some of these dangers may include gun violence, and by faced with this in certain instances an officer may need to act quickly on their instincts and by doing this, officers are then faced with people questioning whether officers legal use of excessive force and deadly force. The question law enforcement officers are faced with each day is the use of force against people. Law enforcement use of force has been regulated in the states by common law for many years. There are at least 41 states that have laws related to law enforcement use of deadly force. The use of deadly force by officers for most states require that a violent felony must be committed or a threat to an officer or another human life needs to exist for a law enforcement officer to legally use deadly force against another individual. An example of this statute is in the state of Arizona, “law justifies an officers’ use of deadly physical force if the officer reasonably believes that the force was necessary to effect an arrest or to prevent an escape from custody of an arrested person whom law enforcement officer reasonably believes has committed or attempted to commit a felony and is presently armed or dangerous; or defend himself or herself or a third person from what the law enforcement officer reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force.” (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020 p.1/para. #4-5). Law enforcement officers also may be faced with situations where it is unpredictable and a decision needs to be made in a split second, this quick decision made by the officer may be to take down a person with his or her own hands physically or even using the use of deadly force. When dealing with these unpredictable quick decisions, police officers usually have little to no time to assess it and determining the proper response. (U.S. Department of Justice). The question American people always ask or put pressure on law enforcement officers is whether the use of force used is too much, enough, or too little. According to the FBI’s National Use-of-Force Data Collection (2020) “approximately 27 percent of police departments in the country supplied use-of-force data to the FBI in 2020, marking the second year in a row that a majority of agencies failed to provide information to the bureau. 5,030 out of 18,514 federal state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in the nation provided use-of-force data to the FBI in 2020, which covers 42 percent of sworn officers in the nation.” (p.1/para #1-2). This promotes the conversation regarding law enforcement use of force in the United States. “State police powers have long been recognized to include the authority to make laws for public health and safety. Lawmaking in the United States is done at the state level and relies on that kind of authority.” (State Police Powers and the Constitution, 2020) The powers that are placed among law enforcement officers are the fundamental ability of a government to enact laws for the public good. The division of police power in the United States is described and portrayed in the US Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which states “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” (U.S. Const amend. X). This amendment states that the federal government does not hold a general police power but only acts where the Constitution establishes a power, so therefor it is the state’s responsibility who holds the general police power.