Critical Issues Analysis Paper
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1
The Profundity of Police Use of Deadly Force
Kaila Scarlett
Criminal Justice, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
CJ 4043 OL: Law Enforcement
Matthew M. Lunn, Ph.D.
December 12, 2021
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The Profundity of Police Use of Deadly Force
According to Novak et al. (2019), “The term deadly force is defined as that force used
with the intent to cause great bodily injury or death. Such deadly force is almost always limited
to those situations when police use firearms in encounters with suspects” (p.333). The practice of
deadly force is only supposed to be used in situations where the officers cannot gain control of
the suspect. Novak et al. (2019) states, “the purpose is to incapacitate a suspect presents an
immediate and potentially deadly threat to another person” (p.313).
Therefore, in most situations
where the use of deadly force was utilized, there is a reason as to why an officer felt the need to
apply this type of force.
The use of deadly force today is often terrifying, no matter if it is just being mentioned or
if there is evidence of it being used. When deadly force comes to the mind, it is often thought of
as someone being killed at the hands of an officer. Although, there are three different categories
that deadly force has which include, Category one: Death: police use a deadly weapon which
results in a person dying, Category two: Injury: police use a deadly weapon which results in the
person being wounded, and Category three: Noninjury: police use a deadly weapon which results
in the person having no injuries (Novak et al.,2019, p.333). These three categories help define
the outcomes of using deadly force, also, these categories are used for data if the extend of the
force needs to be determined. The use of deadly force is always going to be in question when
examining what happened in a situation. As Terrill (2016) mentions, “
what is clear is that there
has been growing public concern with respect to police use of deadly force…” (paras. 1). Public
concern is a high priority because of public safety, everyone wants to live somewhere they can
be safe. To get the word of public safety out, you need to medias help. Throughout all the events
of deadly force the media has been present. Jennings et al. (2019) states, “
Police use-of-force in
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general, and police use of deadly force in particular, has been at the forefront of national media
attention in recent years (paras.1).
This topic has become the center of attention throughout the
eyes of the media and the public. When taking a deeper look at deadly force there is going to be
perceptions about what the media portrays verses what happened and there is going to be
different perceptions within the public.
Perceptions of Deadly Force
When it comes to understanding the use of deadly force the public does not always see
eye to eye with law enforcement. Although in some circumstances the public does understand
law enforcements use of deadly force. Research by Perkins and Bourgeois (2006) supports, “A
prototypical one would be an attempted apprehension of a felony suspect, as during an armed
robbery. Citizens seem to accept these lethal encounters as part of a police officer's duty” (paras.
2). When the public is trying to make light of why law enforcement used deadly force it comes
down to who they were going after, and they were pursuing the suspect. Unfortunately, in the
situations that result in the death of an unarmed suspect, the public only sees that law
enforcement used deadly force and the suspect died. What the public doesn’t realize is that there
are certain protocols that must be followed, along with law enforcement own perspectives of the
situation. Perkins and Bourgeois (2006) state that, “Specifically, these situations involve an
officer's perception of an immediate threat to his or her safety (or the safety of bystanders)
leading him or her to shoot a suspect who is unarmed” (paras. 2). The public does not understand
that when in a situation law enforcement is not looking out for just the safety of their own but
also anyone who is in the surrounding area.
Alongside the perceptions of the public there are also the perceptions of criminal justice
agencies, politicians, and the staff of a department. Often there isn’t the realization of how much
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of an opinion other criminal justice agencies or politicians have towards the administration side
of law enforcement. Belur’s (2009) study found the following:
Officers either did not perceive it as such or did not want to admit that they were
receiving direct political directives regarding encounters. However, in interviews with
senior members of the ruling government…. admitted in the conversation following the
interview that they had given directives to senior management officers…. would monitor
police action against such persons on a regular basis. (p. 9)
This states that members of ruling government can somewhat dictate in how law enforcement
does their job. Another factor that comes into play is other agencies, depending on how they
help, their help can be seen as supporting the proceeding of law enforcement. Belur (2009)
explains, “Other officers felt that other relevant agencies approved of police action and thus
cooperated or supported in whatever way they could” (p.7). Other agencies approval of police
action might be seen as a way for law enforcement to get away with any wrongdoing. Regardless
of what people might think, the ideas of law enforcement wrongdoing could be police following
protocol. Although until the evidence points to a verdict everyone should keep their opinions to
themselves, unless they have something that will help the case.
Overall, the perceptions of deadly force can acquire many perspectives through the
public, politicians, other agencies and even within a law enforcement department. Even though
perceptions can have a lot to do with one’s personal beliefs, perceptions can become a part of
what you believe because of where you heard the information or how you inquired information.
It is important that you make sure that you are getting the correct information before you assume
something because you know what they say, when you assume you make a donkey out of you
and me. Perceptions can come from anywhere and anyone, as you can see from the last citation
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used, the officers that were question had multiple perceptions about politicians, other agencies,
and their coworkers.
Insights of Media
Social media and news outlets are highly used in our society, people use them to get
information, to post, to keep up with family and friends, for work or school, etc. Although when
people are trying to get the news for the day, they often come across new stories and events that
have been happening. When people hear about these stories and events, they most likely hear
about them from multiple news sources or social media pages. Another thing that people like to
do when they hear about something new is talk to other people about it, with stories and events
being spread around like this it can often lead to information being left out. When looking into
different news sources they might not all have the same information. The media wants to get
people’s attention so they will do what they need to do to get people interested. Henderson et al.
(2021) found that:
Both race and delinquency framing influenced the readers’ stereotype endorsement and
feelings toward Black Americans. However, judgment of the police officer’s behavior
solely depended on the victim’s race. These findings demonstrate the importance of
imagery accompanying news reporting on social issues in activating and intensifying
White-centered intergroup biases. (paras. 1)
The media in this instance leveraged the use of race to grab the attention of people because
within today’s society race has become a sensitive topic. Another way the media can alter our
perceptions is by promoting part of a story. The media could promote only certain parts of a story
by picking out the best details. Henderson et al. (2021) explains, “For instance, content analyses
of news in various media markets in the U.S. found that Blacks were overrepresented as crime
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perpetrators compared to both their White counterparts and real-world statistics of arrests”
(paras. 12).
In this instance the media has “overrepresented” once race to get a reaction out of
another race, this leads to an ongoing argument between everyone. The media can play a very
dirty role in our society just so they can get the attention they what from people.
As seen in the previous paragraph the media can direct attention at any detail in a story to
almost change the truth. Another aspect that can be seen as a failure by the media is covering the
whole story. At times this might not entirely be the media’s fault because during ongoing
investigations law enforcement might not have the full story or might not want to tell the whole
story yet. However, it is the medias job to get the full story on events the happen, so when they
fail to do so it can make a situation worse for the people involved including the media. The topic
of race was briefly talked about in the previous paragraph, but race is huge topic throughout our
country with everything that has been happening. Schroedel and Chin’s (2017) research found
the following:
The August 9, 2014, police shooting of Michael Brown reinvigorated the Black Lives
Matter movement and triggered widespread media scrutiny of police use of lethal force
against African Americans. Yet, there is another group, Native Americans, whose
members have experienced very high levels of fatal encounters with the police, but whose
deaths arguably have not generated media attention. (paras.1)
No matter the race of a someone, they deserve to be honored and given condolences in their
absence. Overall, the media it not doing their job with presenting not only what happened but
who the use of deadly force is happening too. How are we as a community and society going to
continue to trust what the media has to say if we aren’t getting the whole truth and nothing but
the truth from them. If we say it in court, why shouldn’t they say it in front of millions of people
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watching.
Schroedel and Chin (2017) explain, “
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult
to compile data on police-related Native American fatalities. Some are endemic to the process of
compiling data about lethal police encounters regardless of the victim’s race or ethnicity” (paras.
9). This states that there was a difficulty with finding data, although from a different perspective;
the data should not have been hard to find if law enforcement recorded it and if law enforcement
recorded it then most likely the media would have seen the story as well. Although this might
seem like a hypothetical chase but law enforcement normally keeps data and case reports form
intendents that happen so they have a record and as far as the media they should have the story
especially if it had to do with police use of deadly force.
The Challenges and Advancing the Research
The police use of deadly force can be a hard study topic because of the data and reports.
The issue starts with what is not being reported and what is not being asked, which comes back
to data being hard to find. Nix (2020) portrays, “In other words, they were interested in
documenting variation in police-involved fatality rates across MSAs, not attempting to explain
said variation. That requires more data” (paras. 3). The more questions you ask, the more data
you ae going to need. This is necessarily a bad thing with not having all the data, it just means
that there were more questions that have been asked, which can lead to finding more data, which
could lead to having the most relevant data.
According to Koper’s (2016) research:
Protests and public concern over recent deadly force incidents around the country have
prompted public officials, community activists, researchers, and the President's Task
Force on 21st Century Policing to issue renewed calls for better—and compulsory—
police reporting of deadly force incidents. (paras.1)
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Throughout all the different perceptions and complaints towards the media and the overall
concern with the use of deadly force, people are going to see a change for the better. Hopefully
with these new calls that are being made there won’t need to be a reason for public outcry
anymore. The obvious goal is not to question every decision that law enforcement makes,
although when there have been so many close calls and questions raised towards not only law
enforcement but also the media with the use of deadly force, it is a sign that something needed to
change for the good of our society. Koper (2016) states, “
The policy essays that follow focus
largely on Klinger et
al.’s (
2016
) call for a national reporting system on police use of deadly
force” (paras. 7). As it was briefly touched upon earlier, reporting data so it can be recorded is
beneficial for multiple parties including law enforcement and the media. By having a system in
place that focuses on the use of deadly force there shouldn’t be much room for error, also
alongside new calls being made, this should be a much better way to make sure that there aren’t
any questions being raised. The only thing that needs to be done is making sure that reports are
being made so data can be imputed into the system.
Conclusion
The use of deadly force is not considered to be a negative tool for law enforcement,
although when the public and the media get their hands on the fact that an officer used deadly
force against a suspect, they want to believe the worst possible outcome. When in fact officers
use deadly force only when necessary to detain a suspect. The public is going to cry out no
matter what because they don’t have a full understanding of what is going on or any of the
protocols. As for the media, they are just going to hear deadly force and then they will start
picking at whatever they can get their hands on to put a story together. To solve the problem
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behind law enforcement, the public and the media, there needs to be order. The help of a data
system, understanding protocols, and a true story is going to resolve a lot of issues.
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References
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Henderson, L., Tukachinsky Forster, R. (R., Kalili, L., & Guillory, S. (2021). Visual framing
effects of news coverage of police use of deadly force on intergroup relationships.
Howard
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Jennings, W. G., Hollis, M. E., & Fernandez, A. J. (2019). Deadly force and deadly outcome:
Examining the officer, suspect, and situational characteristics of officer-involved shootings.
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United States: A response to schwartz & jahn.
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