POLICE USE OF FORCE POLICIES LACK BASIC PROTECTIONS AGAINST Police violence

These policies often fail to include common-sense limits on police use of force, including: 

1. Failing to make life preservation the primary principle shaping police decisions about using force

2. Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force

3. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians

4. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor

5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance.

6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force.

7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian.

8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians

POLICE DEPARTMENT POLICIES DEFINING WHEN AND how POLICE USE FORCE

Additional findings from the reviewing police use of force policies include:

• Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Antonio police are not required to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at civilians.
• Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, and San Francisco police departments are the only departments in our analysis that prohibit officers from hog-tying civilians, a cruel form of restraint where a person's wrists are shackled to their ankles behind their back.
• 12 of the 17 departments reviewed permit officers in some cases to shoot at moving vehicles when the vehicle is the only threat; a dangerous, ineffective practice that the Policing Executive Research Forum and International Association of Police Chiefs have recommended be prohibited.

Examples of PROBLEMATIC Police Use of Force RULES

POLICE OFTEN KEEP USE OF FORCE INFORMATION HIDDEN FROM PUBLIC VIEW

1. Baltimore, Houston, St. Louis, and New York police departments do not make their use of force policies available online

2. Many police departments redact significant portions of their use of force policies before making them public

3. Only three of the seventeen police departments in our analysis require police to report every time they used force, including incidents where police point a firearm at civilians.

4. Minneapolis, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Seattle police departments do not post police shootings data online. Other police departments, including Philadelphia and Houston, routinely refuse to release the names of people their officers kill.

Examples of Redacted Use of Force Policies

Houston Police Department

El Paso Police Department