Niteshift

More than one person has made the allegation in this forum that cops are prone to excessive force and implied (or said outright) that excessive force is common.

This is simply not true.

What proof do I offer?

The Dept. of Justice analyzed all arrests made in 1999 and found the following:

Police used or threatened to use force a total of 442,000 times, for all situations. (Considering there are approx. 740,000 LEO's in the US, that's less than 1 per person in total)

87% of the persons were male, 13% female.

59% were white, 23% black.

The age group most commonly encountering police uses of force is 20-29 year olds. It ddeclines steadily with age after that.

In 25% of the 442,000 cases, force was never actually used, just threatened.

In 72% of the cases, the use of force was grabbing or pushing.

Altogether, police used no force in 99.04% of the encounters.

In 99.22% of the encounters, the police didn't even touch the offender for a use of force.

In 99.85% of the encounters, police did not unholster their weapons.

Out of the uses of force that led to any injury, 20% of those injured were white, 8% were black and 11% were hispanic.


Force or threat of force is used in .06% of the arrest encounters in the US. How common is that really?

__________________
A burning desire for social justice is never a substitute for knowing what you're talking about. -Thomas Sowell

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is muzzle flash.