Page 7 - Thinking Critically: Police and the Use of Force

seem more willing to hold officers accountable. “Prosecutors
have become more confident that they actually have a shot at
getting a conviction,” says Richard Frase, a law professor at the
University of Minnesota. “The state did a pretty effective job of
making its case.” 1

Lack of Data

High-profile cases, such as the killings of George Floyd and
Daunte Wright, have sparked widespread debate on police use of
force, when it is justified, and how it can be regulated. In the wake

of Black Lives Matter protests, critics of the police have pointed
to unacceptable levels of police violence. Nearly one thousand
civilians are killed by law enforcement officers in the United States
each year. There are large disparities in the use of force against
African Americans and other minorities. A 2019 study published
by the National Academy of Sciences found that one in every one
thousand Black males will be killed by police. The study estimat-
ed that Black males are 2.5 times more likely than White males to
be killed by police.
One problem researchers face in gauging police use of
force is a lack of reliable data. In 2019 the Federal Bureau of
Investigation launched the National Use-of-Force Data Collec-
tion program, asking police departments around the country to
provide detailed information about their officers’ use of force.
However, the response from police departments has been dis-
appointing. Only 27 percent of departments offered data dur-
ing the first two years. This represented about 40 percent of
all police officers nationally. So far, attempts to make grants of
federal funds to police departments dependent on their provid-
ing use-of-force data have mostly failed. Local police depart-
ments remain reluctant to share these statistics. “Transparency
and police data are what lead to accountability,” says Nancy
La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Jus-
tice’s Task Force on Policing. “When you don’t know what use

7