Police Accounts of Normal Force (From Police and Society: Touchstone Readings, Second Edition, P 306-324, 1999, Victor E. Kappeler, ed. -- See NCJ-183265)

• NCJ Number: 183269
• Author(s): Jennifer Hunt
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 19 pages
• Sale Source: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examines how police themselves classify and evaluate acts of force as either legal, normal, or excessive.

Abstract

"Legal" force is that coercion necessary to subdue, control, and restrain a suspect in order to take him/her into custody. Although force not accountable in "legal" terms is technically labeled "excessive" by courts and the public, the police perceive many forms of illegal force as "normal." "Normal" force involves coercive acts that specific police officers on specific occasions formulate as necessary, appropriate, reasonable, or understandable. Although not always legitimated or admired, "normal" force is depicted as a necessary or natural response of normal police to particular situational exigencies. In contrast, "excessive" force or brutality exceeds even working police concepts of "normal force." This study involved approximately 18 months of participant observation in a major urban police department referred to as the Metro City P.D. The author attended the police academy with male and female recruits and later rode with individual officers in one-person cars on evening and night shifts in high-crime districts. The female officers described in this research were among the first 100 women assigned to the ranks of uniformed patrol as a result of a discrimination suit filed by the Justice Department and a policewoman plaintiff. The study findings show that "normal" force is the product of the police officers' accounting practices for describing what happened in ways that prefigure or anticipate the conclusion that it was in some sense justified or excusable and hence "normal." This article considers the ways in which officers learn to provide such accounts for "normal" force. Although officers recognize that they and other officers will exceed strictly legal uses of force under the "heat" of the moment ("normal" force), they recognize that emotional reactions that might lead to extreme force should be controlled and limited by coworkers if at all possible. These restrictions on the use of "normal" force are important in the socialization of newcomers. 16 notes and 17 references