Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally (2022) / Chapter Skim
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2 Practices Designed to Regulate and Control Use of Force
2 Practices Designed to Regulate and Control Use of Force
Pages 15-40
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From page 15... ...
To aid in accumulating a reliable body of knowledge, the committee considers different efforts and research findings from studies of policies and practices aimed at minimizing use of excessive force by police. The different strategies described in the commissioned papers and workshop can be divided into six categories: laws and standards, external oversight bodies, police training, internal accountability and control mechanisms, technologies, and administrative incentives (outlined in Cano, 2021)
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From page 16... ...
International Standards and Guidelines Several declarations and principles support international human rights standards that can also be used by states to develop use-of-force policies. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture all provide guidance and benchmarks for how police and other law enforcement authorities should treat citizens.
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From page 17... ...
. Relatedly, the UN International Human Rights Standards for Law Enforcement on the use of force include the following: • Everyone has the right to life, security of the person, and freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and punishment; • Non-violent means are to be attempted first; • Force is to be used only when strictly necessary; • Force is to be used only for lawful law enforcement purposes; • No exceptions or excuses shall be allowed for unlawful use of force; • Use of force is to be always proportional to lawful objectives; • Restraint is to be exercised in the use of force; • Damage and injury are to be minimized; • A range of means for differentiated use of force is to be made available; • All officers are to be trained in the use of the various means for differentiated use of force; and • All officers are to be trained in use of non-violent means.
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From page 18... ...
• Lethal force must only be used in response to an equal threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or other people. Accountability • Law enforcement must issue a full report to an independent, external oversight body for each instance of the use of lethal force, regardless of the outcome.
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From page 19... ...
the State of Rio de Janeiro had to introduce policies and goals to reduce deaths in police encounters (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2017)
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From page 20... ...
In South A frica, the Marikana Panel Report, produced by an official commission after review of deaths in a police encounter in Marikana in 2012, recommended that the state consider the Model Bill for Use of Force by Police and other law enforcement agencies in South Africa, which had been proposed by civil society organizations, as a suitable starting point for new legislation (Panel of Experts on Policing and Crowd Management, 2018, p.
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From page 21... ...
Box 2-3 provides an example of how international standards can be translated to local context with some success. Moving beyond a focus on necessity, some countries and municipalities around the world offer specific guidance on when the use of force can be justified by on-duty officers, including situations where the deployment of w eapons, notably firearms, could be limited, such as in the following examples: • Mexico: Law on the use of force by law enforcement in the Federal District, 2008 Art.
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From page 22... ...
For example, the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum (APCOF) has used international standards to develop regional standard operating procedures and guidelines on police use of force for the East African Police Commissioners Co Operation Organization (EAPCCO)
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From page 23... ...
As expected, the count of custodial deaths not remanded to police by the court is larger than the count of custodial deaths remanded to police custody following legal action. Because police violence is more prevalent in cases where individuals are taken into initial police custody than when they are remanded to police by an Indian court, this study uses a count of unremanded police custodial deaths as the main measure of police violence (Hu and Conrad, 2020)
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argue that the creation of the IPID, while more powerful than its predecessor and with obligations to investigate serious allegations of criminal offenses, provided the South African Police Service with an apparent justification for not being internally accountable for its use of force (i.e., for relaxing its own internal controls, given that there would be an external body charged with oversight)
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IPOA is also mandated with monitoring the Internal Affairs Unit investigations and can take them over if it believes the IAU is being delayed or unreasonable. In other words, it has the additional mandate of overseeing internal controls.
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From page 26... ...
Future research could be beneficial for developing a better understanding of the role of external oversight bodies and whether they can support internal efforts to train police officers and provide reliable accountability mechanisms. POLICE TRAINING AND EVALUATIONS In the second report (NASEM, 2022)
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From page 27... ...
. Procedural justice training promotes respectful encounters between community members and police officers with the goals of enhancing police legitimacy and perceptions of fairness, and building community trust in the police.
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From page 28... ...
Training which thoroughly explains to officers the boundaries of their agency's use of force policy, and how far the organization can legally go to defend them, can 5 Forms of de-escalation training have varied across agencies and jurisdictions. One specific definition of police de-escalation exists within the 2017 National Consensus Policy and Discussion Paper on Use of Force (a collaborative effort among 11 law enforcement leadership and labor organizations in the United States)
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From page 29... ...
Most police training programs are not evaluated in ways that allow for rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of the training in controlling police use of force. This is frequently because of insti tutional restrictions within the police department that prevent researchers from linking police training to recorded police actions in the community.
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From page 30... ...
On the other hand, a training program intended to encourage officers to intervene when they observe out-of-policy behavior by their colleagues might be expected to affect use of force at a higher level of cross-sectional aggregation -- uses of force by individual officers that cannot be linked to an officer's peer group (e.g., the beat assignment) might actually be less informative than use of force data where the cross-sectional link is aggregated to the district level.
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From page 31... ...
It is important to note that replicating confounded non-experimental studies is not guaranteed to produce unbiased causal effects, unless there is good reason to believe that the confounding issue is, itself, randomly distributed across studies -- and this is rarely the case. BARRIERS TO INTERNAL CONTROL MECHANISMS Many police agencies have internal affairs units or other internal control mechanisms that monitor officer behavior and formally handle accusa tions that arise against officer use of force.
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From page 32... ...
. Emerging international standard and practice is to allow whistleblowers to directly report the wrongdoing to competent external authorities, such as independent oversight bodies, anti-corruption commissions, ombudsman institutions (Transparency International, 2018)
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From page 33... ...
While leading by example and good mentorship are two important components of supervision, providing organizational accountability mechanisms that can support supervision is also key. For example, supervisors need to be empowered to be able to effectively identify, monitor, correct, discipline, track, and report problematic behavior.
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From page 34... ...
Supervisors may also need training on how body-worn cameras and auto matic vehicle locators function with regard to their accountability effects. Again, everyday accountability mechanisms such as performance metrics, inspections, and audits are part of this accountability infrastructure that supervisors need training upon.
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From page 35... ...
, the committee identified several emerging technologies capable of capturing information on police and monitoring officers on the job, including automatic vehicle locators, body-worn cameras, information technologies, and systems for early identification of officers at risk of serious misconduct or suicide. This discussion focuses primarily on body-worn cameras given the larger base of research on the utilization of this technology compared to others and appreciation that findings regarding reductions in use of force may apply to other technologies designed to monitor police behaviors.
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Tellingly, surveys of police officers indicate that they do not believe that BWCs will substantially change their behavior (Headley et al., 2017; Pelfrey and Keener, 2016)
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From page 37... ...
These mediating factors depend on the will of the agency to implement several accountability mechanisms that could affect these factors. Mechanisms such as effective training in the use of these technologies from the outset, external monitoring bodies, and administrative policies and interventions to disincentivize the use of force are all possible tools that may be coupled with the implementation of technology to create a more effective plan for meeting the goal of reducing police use of force.
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From page 38... ...
. This commission was tasked with reviewing incident reports from police officers involved in shootouts to identify risk factors and with proposing preventive measures to reduce deaths in police encounters.
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From page 39... ...
As required by an evidence-based approach to policing, the committee emphasizes that the promising approaches outlined above, when implemented, must be evaluated with attention to systematically measuring field outcomes across time (short, medium, and long term) , and when possible -- across space.
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