WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Police in Service Training Podcast.
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This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street level police officers and command staff alike.
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The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement community create better programs, understand challenging policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behavior.
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I'm your host, Scott Phillips.
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Despite what we might see in media reports, force is rarely used in a police citizen encounter.
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Still, the use of force should always be a concern for police agencies.
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When the first police officers came on the scene, roughly during the time of the Civil War in the United States, officers had batons.
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They started carrying firearms when it became clear that officers faced armed offenders.
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Up until the 1980s, the only non-lethal weapon for an officer was the baton.
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But despite that, during the past 30 years or so, police agencies have allowed their officers to deploy with different types of non-lethal tools.
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Even then, it is possible that these tools carry some risk of injury to a citizen.
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In the spirit of reducing harm when an officer uses force, we have to ask a simple question.
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Which tools cause the least harm?
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This is the theme that seems to be growing in policing.
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How do we make the police more efficient and effective?
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And this also applies not only to reducing crime, but to the use of force.
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It may never be perfect, and I'm not expecting that it will, but how do police improve their behavior, their activity, their efficiency, their effectiveness when it comes to reducing harm?
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Today we're going to discuss the research into less lethal force tools.
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To be clear, we are not tackling which tools are more effective, but we're trying to look at which cause the least harm to citizens.
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To help us understand this better, we are joined by Dr.
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Kevin Peterson, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Kevin received his PhD in criminology, law, and society from George Mason University in 2023.
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Prior to that, he served as a victim advocate for the Roanoke County, Virginia Commonwealth Attorney's Office.
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He is going to tell us about his research titled Less Lethal Weapons and Citizen Injury in Police Use of Force Encounters, a multi-agency analysis.
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Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Kevin.
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Thanks for having me.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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So I want to I want to get into your background and experience first.
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You've studied body warm cameras, police patrol effectiveness, and uh even evidence uh strength in court.
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What drew you to this particular topic?
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Um Yeah, so you know, I've kind of, as you said, uh worked a lot on body cameras, um, police patrol, and then kind of evidence in court, and these kind of tie together generally the areas of police and court.
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So my research interests really kind of span those areas.
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Um, this kind of came from, you know, you alluded to my background.
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And I, for a few years before I got into academia, uh, I worked in a prosecutor's office as a legal advocate.
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And what I did in that role was generally kind of meet with victims and witnesses, get them ready for court, kind of prepare them for trial, that sort of thing.
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You know, and an interesting component of that is that in almost every criminal case, um, a key witness is a police officer.
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So a lot of times on a day-to-day basis, what we're actually doing is meeting with police officers to prepare them for trial.
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You know, what is the defense going to ask them, so on and so forth.
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A lot of those issues center around a police citizen encounter.
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In this case, maybe the defendant, or maybe it's a key witness, right?
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And it might be procedural issues, it might be things about evidence collection, whatever it might be.
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So I've kind of had this interest in the police-citizen interactions.
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Um researching them is not always easy, right?
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As I think many of us know.
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Like getting data on um use of force incidents, the outcomes of these encounters is difficult.
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So, luckily, this kind of began when I was a postdoc at George Mason University.
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And I was working with Chris Coper, who I think even police practitioners have probably heard of the Coper Curve and heard of Chris Coper.
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He kind of lives in lore, right?
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So, very successful, very uh, very great policing researcher.
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And he connected me with people at the National Opinion Research Center as well.
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And that kind of led to this opportunity to kind of get this data and use this data uh at a larger level, maybe, than it has been done in many efforts in the past to look at uh civilian injury uh stemming from police use and force encounters.
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So it's kind of all those roads kind of led to that opportunity, and that's kind of what led me here.
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Yeah, that tends to be a common theme with people.
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They start bumping into others, making connections, and suddenly they're in a position to do some research in something that's totally different from what they're used to.
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Right.
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And uh like myself, I've been fortunate and uh took advantage of those opportunities.
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So back to this topic, why is this, and I kind of hinted at it, why is this important and relevant to the police agencies that hopefully are listening?
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Yeah, I mean, you alluded to the fact that, you know, I think it in this space, we understand that use of force is is rare.
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Um, but when it does happen and it leads to an injury, that has very real implications.
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So, both in social and political discourse, you know, um, what to do about policing, police reform, police funding, police defunding, all of these issues, um, and how that ties into police community relations.
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And we've seen this a lot, obviously, in recent years, um, since George Floyd, but going back to Ferguson and then all the way back, you know, decades before, there's all of these kind of examples of the very real implications that come from police use of force, particularly when it leads to injury.
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So at a broad level, I think you know, that is something that we can all kind of get on board with.
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Now, when um use of force does occur, even though it's you know a rare event, and estimates vary across prior studies, but we generally find that there's a non-negligible risk of injury.
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So some form of injury does tend to happen.
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Again, this varies, but anywhere from 40 to maybe 50% of these encounters, right?
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So um this is this is not something that that once it's occurring, it's very rare that someone comes away with an injury.
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Now, the scope of these injuries can vary and it kind of depends on how you chop it up.
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But overall, right, when we have a use of force incident, injury is kind of a real concern.
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And you can quantify this in different ways.
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I mean, in our paper, we talk about uh estimates suggesting that over 70,000 people are injured a year from use of force encounters.
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Um, this can lead to millions of dollars in medical expenses.
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So, all of these things are different ways to kind of at a larger, more global level, think about why this matters.
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And I think out of recognition of that, you know, we have this idea of less lethal weapons.
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And recent estimates would suggest most agencies have less lethal weapons, um, upwards of like 90%.
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Commonly, we think of these as like conducted energy devices or taser chemical agents or pepper spray impact weapons, which you talked about a little bit, think of like batons, maybe a flashlight, any other kind of blunt force instrument.
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And then in our study, we also are thinking about the use of police canines and in um these encounters.
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Um, and I think the reason that this is really important, we have these tools to, because this issue is important, but we don't have any universal understanding of which of these tools poses the greatest or the let the least risk to civilians in these counters in terms of injury, right?
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And that's something that I think we want to know about if we're gonna construct use of force policy in a way that's kind of consistent with civilian injury.
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You know, I really enjoy having these conversations uh because I have the flashbacks to, and I try I try to avoid too too much emphasis on my time 40 years ago in policing.
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But even then we didn't have anything but the guns and batons.
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But they were still trying to train us in the use of a of a baton in a manner that minimized uh the the damage.
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So instead of this is what the guy said, instead of hitting somebody in the head and knocking them out and also cracking their skull, they were starting to learn more about uh pain compliance techniques, uh, or the baton hitting somebody in the side of a knee, which is devastatingly painful.
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But because you're hitting a clump of nerves, I I suspect, I can't remember what it was.
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But there's no permanent damage.
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I mean, unless you're probably not gonna break the knee with a baton yet, but they break the baton first, at least the wooden ones.
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But the point here is that uh 40 some odd years ago they were trying to minimize the the the harm that was coming from the use of force.
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And so it's interesting to see now with these new tools that that's is a continuous uh a continuous effort on the part of the police.
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Now I'm gonna sort of throw just a slight curveball in here because I want to get into the the reading and then then your study.
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Uh less less than lethal force tools, whatever the term is, non-lethal, less than lethal.
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Where do these fit into the continuum?
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Because I know that if there's a police officer listening out there, they're aware of the continuum and they're probably wondering where does this where does where does this go?
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Where does a taser fit between you know an A, B, C, D, E, is there an A, B, C, C one, C two, C three, something like that.
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Yeah, uh, and I think that that is really the critical question um, you know, for why this kind of research is necessary.
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So there, you know, there isn't any universal standard, and this you will see variations of this by agency.
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Okay.
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Um, you know, to think about the term less lethal versus non-lethal.
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Um, obviously that that in a broad sense lets you know that it's it's before we get to deadly force, right?
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Before we get to lethal force.
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Um, it's, you know, most people I think would push towards the term less lethal now because they can result in death.
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Uh, it has happened, it's not uh inconceivable.
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So, you know, non-lethal is maybe not 100% accurate, even if you know death is very uncommon.
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That's kind of the transition, right, to the less lethal term.
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But so generally they're gonna sit in between like, you know, soft hand control and deadly force, right?
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As a general grouping.
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But I think what's interesting is then what happens within that, right?
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So where you have less lethal weapons, how do you rank them in terms of severity?
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And so there are different ways, again, to look at this.
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I think a common way, and a way that we kind of thought about it in our study, and and this is informed by the way that prior research has looked at it, is to think about a chemical agent or a pepper spray as kind of being the least severe.
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A step up might be the use of a taser conducted energy device.
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Then we get up to true impact weapons, right?
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Like batons and the buttom flashlight or something like that.
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Uh, and then, you know, you know whether canines are included in that is a little bit more fluid, but generally we might have canines after that.
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Um, but it's not uncommon to see multiple at the same level, where you maybe you have an option.
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So maybe one level of force, it's chemical agent or conducted energy device, right?
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Chemical agent or taser, there's kind of a force option there.
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Um, you know, I live in in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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My most recent understanding of the continuum here is you'd have sort of soft hand control um techniques, you'd have chemical agent, and then the next less lethal weapon would be either a CED being a taser or an impact weapon.
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So that's kind of an uh an example of a choice, right?
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Where there's no clear ordering.
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And so I think that alone is really what justifies the importance of this question, is there is variation, and at times you have multiple at the same level.
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And so um, you know, how do we really know or how to order those?
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And shouldn't we have guidance on maybe making that more um static and consistent across police agencies if there is real difference in how um they're affecting injury on civilians?
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It's funny, you mentioned uh a flashlight a moment ago, and I did some ride-alongs with some police, and they're using uh instead of the mag lights, which were like probably 12, 14 inches again in my day, uh they they were just using these very small, you know, four-inch flashlights that are exceptionally exceptionally powerful.
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And I thought to myself, as you said that, using flashlights, does anybody even use a mag light mag light anymore?
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I just I just don't know.
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But uh that's just a rhetorical comment.
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I well, yeah, I mean, I'll say I know in our data, right, if you go to the incident level, you do see it occasionally, like butt of a flashlight or shotgun butt or something.
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It's uncommon, but you know, all of these kind of get lumped into this idea of an impact weapon.
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Okay.
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Now, as I was reading your article, I was reminded of something that may many of us might might overlook.
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The impact weapon baton, uh, or or even a fist, can actually cause more injury than pepper spray or taser.
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Can you take a minute to discuss this and why it impacts the research?
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Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's kind of this.
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So obviously we have impact weapons uh as a less lethal tool.
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Um, but I think when you think of like, you know, you mentioned you were using kind of batons a long time ago.
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Uh the evolution, I think, of less lethal weapons is really what's led us more to um, you know, pepper spray and the tasers and that kind of thing.
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And I think the theory is that these tools are can work from a distance.
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So, you know, a police officer doesn't necessarily need to get their hands on um a civilian or a suspect to kind of terminate that encounter.
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And perhaps they'll terminate the encounter more quickly.
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And so if we're thinking of this from like risk of civilian injury, just from a hypothetical standpoint, like think about why, why would they reduce risk?
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So, you know, pepper spray or a taser might one, limit the degree of physical struggle.
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So the degree of grappling, the degree of restraint that has to be imposed on someone.
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And maybe that limits the risk of, say, blunt trauma from strikes, from a takedown, any kind of incidental thing that might happen when there's actual sort of like physical resistance that's occurring between an officer and a civilian.
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And then I think limiting the duration of that physical struggle speaks to that as well, right?
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So if you have less extended restraint, um, maybe you reduce risk of things like asphyxiation and all of these other things that can occur from actual true physical restraint over a long duration of time.
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And I think that's kind of the theory of why, let's say, a pepper spray or taser would be more effective at limiting or preventing injury than a traditional impact weapon, right?
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Um that being said, you know, even though there's not a universal use of force continuum, you generally will see impact weapons higher on use of force continuums.
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So what that means is that these weapons are probably being used in situations where suspects are more resistant.
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And that in and of itself is something that can lead to injury, right?
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So a more resistant suspect is probably more likely to get injured.
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So that's one of the difficult things, actually, in researching this question is that you have these tools used at different levels of resistance, but that level of resistance itself could lead to injury.
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And so, how do you kind of account for the differences uh in these incidents when you're trying to evaluate which less lethal weapon is more or less uh effective at reducing injury?
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Right.
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And and we're gonna get into this in just a second with with uh prior research, the problems with it.
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But again, the way you're suggesting something here is like the you should with with pepper spray or a taser, you're you're shortening up the um the the the tussle time for lack of a better and when you shorten up that time, then you you you reduce the potential for any kind of other injuries, even if they're minor scratches and bumps you know from tussling on the ground.
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But uh what you're also talking about is the complexity, right?
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It would seem that this kind of research would be really easy to do.
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You rank order these different things and see which one you know has more injury, more harm, or something like that.
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But uh just in this conversation, we're seeing how complicated this can be.
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But but this does lead to the next uh the use of force and policing question is um this has been studied for years.
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What's the problem that uh your research is trying to tackle here?
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Yeah, and and you know prior studies have limitations.
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Every study does, as we know.
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I mean, uh the study that we're talking about today has limitations, but I I think kind of leading directly in from that complexity of different tools being used at different levels of resistance and different types of encounters.
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Prior studies have often not had a lot of data to try to account for those differences in the encounters that might independently lead to a risk of injury, right?
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So things like um civilian resistance, even things like officer suspect characteristics, other incident characteristics, like what led to the encounter, all of these things could duly inform what type of less lethal weapon you're using, an officer is choosing to use, and the independent risk of injury to that civilian.
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Uh, and so conducting, and this is where you know you kind of have to do these things statistically, and you know, you can get into conversations with academics, obviously, about how well you've done that and whether it's a convincing argument, so on and so forth.
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But I think having the data on the other elements of these encounters that allows you to try to account for it or kind of hold it even across these encounters.
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And you're you're trying to isolate the effect of the paper, the pepper spray versus the taser versus the impact weapon and the canine, right?
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So I think that's one key thing, right?
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Um, you know, prior research, through no fault of any researchers uh you know their own, this is just the nature of doing research, often small samples of agencies.
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So you might have studies conducted in one agency, uh, maybe two or three, maybe a handful.
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And, you know, as we talked about, you have this agency level variation in the way that use of force policy looks and when certain less lethal weapons should be used.
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So do we necessarily know that what we see in agency A is going to hold across 17, 18 large agencies?
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Would that all vary in the way that their use of force continuum and policy looks?
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So having a larger sample of agencies, I think, is always good.
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Um, I would also say that most research is kind of focused on this yes-no question of injury.
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Um, that is, was someone injured or not?
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And, you know, I think, you know, if I'm a police officer, I I want more information.
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I'm saying, well, what is that injury?
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Or at least can we be sure it's not just a scratch?
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And this is something that's a little bit more objective.
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And so, you know, one way to do that is is this idea of hospitalization, which we look at in the study and can talk more about.
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But uh the general idea is not just was someone injured, but what was maybe the degree of that injury?
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Um, and that gives us a little bit more context.
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Yes.
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And I'm sorry, go ahead.
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Keep going.
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Well, the last thing I'll say is that uh one thing prior research has done is generally kind of suggested that impact weapons appear to be more dangerous for civilians than these newer um tools like uh tasers, CEDs, and uh chemical agents.
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But you don't see much work that directly compares the risk between conducted energy devices and chemical agents, which I think that is really critical because again, these maybe are the two modern, less lethal weapons, the more modern ones.
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And so I think an interesting question, and probably the ones that vary the most on these continuum in terms of like where they might be put.
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Right.
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So I think that's a really interesting question for policy and practice is what about that comparison between the taser and the pepper spray for civilian injury?
00:19:54.240 --> 00:19:59.680
So I think all of those things are ways that we attempted at least to build on prior work.
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:01.759
Okay, so tell us about your study.
00:20:01.839 --> 00:20:05.759
What was the basic research question and how did you go about collecting data?
00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:19.359
Yeah, so quite simply, um, you know, we're trying to determine which less lethal weapons are most effective at preventing civilian injury or also most effective at maybe reducing the severity of civilian injury.
00:20:19.599 --> 00:20:29.039
So we essentially have a sample of just over 2,300 use of force incidents where a less lethal weapon was used, uh being the highest level of force use.
00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:37.200
So these are not incidents that involved a firearm or ended in um, you know, what we traditionally think of as lethal force.
00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:44.960
So these all these are incidents that occurred between 2015 and 2019, and they're taken from 17 large police agencies.
00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:50.799
And by large, I mean these are all agencies with a hundred or more sworn law enforcement officers.
00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:50.960
Okay.
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:56.799
And these are all agencies that are at least in like the 80th percentile of officer-involved shootings.
00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:08.319
So, meaning these are agencies that are frequently in these situations and use of force encounters relative to maybe to other agencies, and agencies that are frequently in lethal force situations.
00:21:08.559 --> 00:21:14.480
So that's important to understand in terms of like shaping the kinds of agencies that we're talking about, right?
00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:17.519
These are large metropolitan agencies for the most part.
00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:26.880
Um, so we coded the highest level of force used in each encounter, along with having information on characteristics of the officer, the civilian, the incident, right?
00:21:27.359 --> 00:21:34.799
Um question here that I kind of want to just, you know, not to get too much in the weeds is you know, what happens if two less lethal weapons are used?
00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.160
So maybe a chemical agent's used and a CED is used.
00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:50.400
So we kind of took the highest level of force, again, going by what commonly we would think of as most people would pick chemical agents and then CEDs and then impact weapons and then canines being most severe.
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:55.039
Um, but in reality, these are mostly situations where only one less lethal weapon was used.
00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:58.559
So only like 3% of these incidents involved multiple weapons.
00:21:58.640 --> 00:21:59.759
So that doesn't really affect.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:00.880
To what we're doing here.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:12.160
So we're essentially starting trying to assess the probability that each less lethal weapon results in no injury, injury with no hospitalization, and then injury resulting in hospitalization or death.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:23.200
And we're doing so while trying to account for the differences in these characters, in these uh encounters across like suspect resistance, um, officer and civilian characteristics and things like that.
00:22:23.519 --> 00:22:29.599
Now, with with hospitalization, I want to be clear on something because uh because I saw this in the article, I wanted to ask you about it.
00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:37.680
My assumption is that maybe maybe I'm getting into the findings already, but I I want to be let's just clarify this right now, and you can repeat this later on if you want.
00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:48.640
My assumption would be that if uh uh let's just say there's a guy standing there, not even wearing a t-shirt, it's the summertime in uh in in North Carolina.
00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:52.160
He's he's obstinate, he's not cooperating, and he gets tased.
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:56.160
Boom, there's no no no mystery, hits him in the chest in the torso somewhere.
00:22:56.319 --> 00:22:59.920
Okay, so he falls over, he's arrested.
00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.759
Does he get hospitalized for that to remove the taser barbs?
00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:06.240
So that's a great question.
00:23:06.400 --> 00:23:07.759
Um it depends.
00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:12.079
It's a so this is it's a really important point of clarification.
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:13.680
It depends on the agency.
00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:21.119
So each agency is gonna have maybe have different policies for what is gonna require a hospital transport or hospital visit.
00:23:21.359 --> 00:23:25.759
This data is sort of collected at the agency level and then kind of brought together.
00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:36.400
So we can't really say whether hospitalization in every case means an admission to a hospital, whether it means you went to the ER because you had a concussion or to get some stitches or something like that.
00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:41.920
All we can say is that this required a transport to the hospital in some capacity.
00:23:42.079 --> 00:23:46.160
What happens after that is not something that we have information on.
00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:52.240
So that is that is a caveat to saying hospital, we know that someone was taken to the hospital.
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:57.359
We reasonably confident that means there's something more severe on average.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.759
Can we say anything more about what that means?
00:23:59.920 --> 00:24:01.119
Unfortunately, not.
00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:01.920
Okay.
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:06.240
So so what did you find based upon your research, your data?
00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:11.519
Yeah, so uh a few things from just like a descriptive standpoint that I think are important.
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:18.559
So we find civilian injury in about 50% of encounters, which is pretty consistent with that earlier figure that I that I kind of gave you.
00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:21.599
Um, hospitalization only in about 16%, though.
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:29.680
So, right, this gives us some divergence between just this yes-no injury and something a little bit hopefully more objective in terms of hospitalization.
00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:31.839
So, hospitalization much more rare.
00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:35.680
CEDs, so tasers were overwhelmingly used.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:39.039
72% of all encounters used a CED.
00:24:39.119 --> 00:24:41.039
Every other less lethal weapon is about 10%.
00:24:41.359 --> 00:24:46.079
So that paints a picture of kind of like what our officers are using more often than not.
00:24:46.559 --> 00:25:03.039
Um, so when we compare the risk of injury for less lethal weapons, essentially what we find is that police canines uh significantly increase both injury with no hospitalization risk and injury with hospitalization risk relative to every other type of less lethal weapon that we have here.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:11.200
Chemical agents significantly reduce the risk of injury with hospitalization compared to every other less lethal weapon, right?
00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:16.319
We don't see any significant differences between impact weapons and conducted energy devices.
00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:22.799
Um, it tends to look like CEDs were a little bit safer, but we don't really have a lot of confidence in that conclusion.
00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:33.920
So in total, the results tend to suggest in terms of serious injury, chemical agents are the safest option, and police canines are the least safe option.
00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:36.559
And it's a pretty large difference.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:46.720
If we estimate the risk of injury for police canines, it's like 45% of encounters with no hospitalization and 37 uh with hospitalization.
00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.480
And the risk of hospitalization for chemical agents, we estimated about 4%.
00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:57.680
So it's a pretty big uh sort of graduated uh risk of injury as you're kind of going up this ladder.
00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:01.119
Yeah, I'm gonna jump in because I wanted to say dogs bite.
00:26:01.359 --> 00:26:10.559
They just exactly dogs bite, and and but the thing is is chemical agents, I've never been I've never been exposed to them, but they hurt.
00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:13.440
And pain is not the same as injury.
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:14.720
So keep going.
00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:15.119
Yeah.
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:16.079
Yeah.
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:21.599
Um, and so you know, in the middle of that is is kind of impact weapons and CEDs.
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:32.079
So again, I said we estimate about 4% risk of hospitalization for chemical agents, jumps up to about 13% for um conducted energy devices and about 16% for impact weapons.
00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:42.559
So again, tends to suggest that impact weapons are a little bit more dangerous for civilians and CEDs, but that difference is is just close enough that we don't have a lot of confidence that it's truly different.
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:49.839
But what is clear is kind of the ends of the spectrum from police canines being the most severe to chemical agents being um the least.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:52.400
So again, great information.
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:59.440
Can you give us two or three implications for the police, for their the personnel, police leaders uh policy, something like that?
00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:13.359
Yeah, I I think the the the implication that should jump out or that does jump out is is in how this could guide use of force continuums, given that we do have kind of no universal um definition of these things and variation across agencies, right?
00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:17.920
So again, some agencies might rank tasers or CEDs and chemical agents as comparable.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.359
So you have an option.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:23.759
Some might even place CEDs below chemical agents, maybe less common.
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:38.160
But in terms of civilian injury, um, our results tend to suggest that chemical agents should be considered a lower level of force and potentially be used more than um CEDs and other less lethal weapons.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:51.359
Now, certainly there might be certain situations where you want to kind of mold that, but as a general rule of thumb, that tends to be from a civilian injury perspective, uh, what looks like it would reduce injury the most.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:57.519
And this is particularly important, I think, because again, our our descriptive results suggested that CEDs are overwhelmingly used.
00:27:57.599 --> 00:28:01.920
So police officers are using tasers a lot more than they're using chemical agents.
00:28:02.079 --> 00:28:10.720
So this could be an opportunity to transition that use a little bit in a way that would be meaningful for reducing civilian injury.
00:28:10.799 --> 00:28:12.720
So to me, that's kind of the biggest takeaway.
00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:13.759
Sure, sounds like it.
00:28:13.839 --> 00:28:14.160
Yeah.
00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:22.640
Um, and then I think, you know, obviously our results suggest that refraining from using police canines unless absolutely necessary is going to be best practice.
00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:25.680
I mean, the the risk of injury is just much, much higher there.
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:33.359
Some situations are gonna call for them, searching and tracking encounters, uh, immediate threats to safety and such uh uh things like that.
00:28:33.599 --> 00:28:40.480
But outside of those situations, uh, I think you know, police should be very careful about uh releasing a canine on someone.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:44.000
I'm sure most are, but this just kind of reaffirms that, right?
00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:46.480
And then I think, you know, there's this cost-benefit thing.
00:28:46.559 --> 00:28:53.359
Like, I think most large agencies probably already have both of these at this at their disposal in terms of chemical agents and CEDs.
00:28:53.519 --> 00:29:08.079
But if you don't and you're looking to make investment decisions for maybe one over the other, our results might suggest you prefer chemical agents, not only because they appear to reduce the risk of hospitalization and more serious injury, but I think by most estimates, they're cheaper, right?
00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:11.759
That it's less costly to implement than uh a full taser program.
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:17.920
It's easier to put you know, pepper spray on your officer than to get tasers and refill the cartridges and every time they're used.
00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:20.000
And you know, that is more costly, right?
00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:21.759
So I think I think there's that.
00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:27.759
And then the only other thing is I'd say there's there's two complementary concerns that we can't address here.
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:30.160
One of which we sort of can, one we can't.
00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:31.599
One is officer safety.
00:29:31.759 --> 00:29:36.799
So, you know, does this reduce risk of civilian injury come at the cost of officer safety?
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:45.839
We were actually able to look at officer safety and found no difference in terms of the risk of injury for officers if they had used a chemical agent or a CED.
00:29:46.079 --> 00:29:51.039
They were much less likely to be injured if they used a police canine, which I don't think is super shocking, right?
00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:56.079
I mean, if canine is very effective at kind of seduing the suspect, officer never really has to get in there.
00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:58.160
Um, but that is something to consider, right?
00:29:58.240 --> 00:30:00.400
It's not just civilian injury, it's officer injury.
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:02.720
And we can't look here at apprehension effectiveness.
00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:07.839
And that's obviously a question that you alluded to that that's important is what's actually going to terminate the encounter.
00:30:08.079 --> 00:30:16.160
And, you know, we've all heard of tasers failing to stick to people, or uh some people just being unaffected by pepper spray or relatively unaffected by chemical agents.
00:30:16.240 --> 00:30:19.519
And so that's something that police agencies have to balance.
00:30:19.759 --> 00:30:34.640
But I think with those things balanced, again, the the key takeaway is maybe thinking about chemical agents before you think about tasers or CEDs and definitely reserving the use of canines for those situations that it really they really have to be used.
00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:50.960
Now, on page, not that anybody's gonna you know jump to this page number, but on page 394 of your article, you wrote that chemical agents and um ECW CEDs have distinctly different mechanisms of effect and potential pathways to injury.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:30:55.279
Can you explain the difference between the chemical agents and the uh electrical devices?
00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:00.160
Yeah, so I mean like medically the idea is that a chemical agent is gonna cause pain, right?
00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:01.759
And irritation in your eyes and skin.
00:31:01.839 --> 00:31:04.559
And in terms of how this can lead to injury, right?
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:14.480
Uh one is just kind of inflammation, tissue damage if you're rubbing your eyes and you have pepper spray in your eyes, but these are minor things that generally are gonna kind of resolve themselves.
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:21.440
I think the interesting thing about CEDs is that you have this electrical current that basically produces involuntary muscle contraction.
00:31:21.599 --> 00:31:25.200
So you lose control of your body if this works how it's supposed to work.
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:27.519
And yeah, you could have like puncture wounds.
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:30.240
We're not really our study doesn't count those as an injury.
00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:32.079
That was kind of an explicit instruction.
00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:35.279
You could have minor burn wounds from the electrical current.
00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:36.880
That's that's kind of minor stuff.
00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:41.839
But I think the more interesting thing is what could happen secondary to being shocked.
00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:45.359
And that's you lose control of your body and you have a fall injury, right?
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:51.039
You hit your head, sure, something like that from the weight of your body, um, kind of bending over, depending on where you are.
00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:53.039
Maybe you're on you know an elevated surface.
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:56.160
There's there's this unknown of what happens once you fall.
00:31:56.400 --> 00:32:13.279
And I think that while we think major injuries for both of these are probably generally related to pre-existing issues like cardiovascular or respiratory, it's that fall damage from a CED that I think is the unique concern that might explain for some of these findings.
00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:13.920
Okay.
00:32:14.079 --> 00:32:14.400
All right.
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:15.279
Thank you for that.
00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:16.319
That's that's great.
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:18.480
I really appreciate the clarification on that.
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:20.319
Kevin, this has been great.
00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:21.599
I really appreciate your time.
00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:23.599
Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me.
00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:25.119
Uh, it was it was a pleasure.
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:28.319
Uh, I'll be keeping up with your podcast from here on out.
00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:30.400
So um, yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:31.119
Well, thanks very much.
00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:31.680
You have a great day.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:32.000
Yeah.
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:32.640
All right, you too.
00:32:32.720 --> 00:32:32.880
Thank you.
00:32:33.039 --> 00:32:33.279
Take care.
00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:15.919
Welcome to the Police in Service Training Podcast.
00:00:16.079 --> 00:00:22.000
This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street level police officers and command staff alike.
00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:31.600
The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement community create better programs, understand challenging policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behavior.
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I'm your host, Scott Phillips.
00:00:34.719 --> 00:00:41.439
Despite what we might see in media reports, force is rarely used in a police citizen encounter.
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Still, the use of force should always be a concern for police agencies.
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When the first police officers came on the scene, roughly during the time of the Civil War in the United States, officers had batons.
00:00:54.079 --> 00:00:58.880
They started carrying firearms when it became clear that officers faced armed offenders.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:04.799
Up until the 1980s, the only non-lethal weapon for an officer was the baton.
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But despite that, during the past 30 years or so, police agencies have allowed their officers to deploy with different types of non-lethal tools.
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Even then, it is possible that these tools carry some risk of injury to a citizen.
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In the spirit of reducing harm when an officer uses force, we have to ask a simple question.
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Which tools cause the least harm?
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This is the theme that seems to be growing in policing.
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How do we make the police more efficient and effective?
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And this also applies not only to reducing crime, but to the use of force.
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It may never be perfect, and I'm not expecting that it will, but how do police improve their behavior, their activity, their efficiency, their effectiveness when it comes to reducing harm?
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Today we're going to discuss the research into less lethal force tools.
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To be clear, we are not tackling which tools are more effective, but we're trying to look at which cause the least harm to citizens.
00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.759
To help us understand this better, we are joined by Dr.
00:02:09.919 --> 00:02:17.680
Kevin Peterson, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:24.560
Kevin received his PhD in criminology, law, and society from George Mason University in 2023.
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Prior to that, he served as a victim advocate for the Roanoke County, Virginia Commonwealth Attorney's Office.
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He is going to tell us about his research titled Less Lethal Weapons and Citizen Injury in Police Use of Force Encounters, a multi-agency analysis.
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Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Kevin.
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Thanks for having me.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:49.680
So I want to I want to get into your background and experience first.
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You've studied body warm cameras, police patrol effectiveness, and uh even evidence uh strength in court.
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What drew you to this particular topic?
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Um Yeah, so you know, I've kind of, as you said, uh worked a lot on body cameras, um, police patrol, and then kind of evidence in court, and these kind of tie together generally the areas of police and court.
00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.639
So my research interests really kind of span those areas.
00:03:16.879 --> 00:03:20.800
Um, this kind of came from, you know, you alluded to my background.
00:03:20.879 --> 00:03:27.439
And I, for a few years before I got into academia, uh, I worked in a prosecutor's office as a legal advocate.
00:03:27.599 --> 00:03:34.960
And what I did in that role was generally kind of meet with victims and witnesses, get them ready for court, kind of prepare them for trial, that sort of thing.
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You know, and an interesting component of that is that in almost every criminal case, um, a key witness is a police officer.
00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:48.319
So a lot of times on a day-to-day basis, what we're actually doing is meeting with police officers to prepare them for trial.
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You know, what is the defense going to ask them, so on and so forth.
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A lot of those issues center around a police citizen encounter.
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In this case, maybe the defendant, or maybe it's a key witness, right?
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And it might be procedural issues, it might be things about evidence collection, whatever it might be.
00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:08.560
So I've kind of had this interest in the police-citizen interactions.
00:04:08.879 --> 00:04:11.840
Um researching them is not always easy, right?
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As I think many of us know.
00:04:13.199 --> 00:04:19.199
Like getting data on um use of force incidents, the outcomes of these encounters is difficult.
00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:23.519
So, luckily, this kind of began when I was a postdoc at George Mason University.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:29.439
And I was working with Chris Coper, who I think even police practitioners have probably heard of the Coper Curve and heard of Chris Coper.
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He kind of lives in lore, right?
00:04:31.519 --> 00:04:35.040
So, very successful, very uh, very great policing researcher.
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And he connected me with people at the National Opinion Research Center as well.
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And that kind of led to this opportunity to kind of get this data and use this data uh at a larger level, maybe, than it has been done in many efforts in the past to look at uh civilian injury uh stemming from police use and force encounters.
00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:57.439
So it's kind of all those roads kind of led to that opportunity, and that's kind of what led me here.
00:04:57.680 --> 00:04:59.600
Yeah, that tends to be a common theme with people.
00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:06.240
They start bumping into others, making connections, and suddenly they're in a position to do some research in something that's totally different from what they're used to.
00:05:06.399 --> 00:05:06.560
Right.
00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:11.040
And uh like myself, I've been fortunate and uh took advantage of those opportunities.
00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:18.560
So back to this topic, why is this, and I kind of hinted at it, why is this important and relevant to the police agencies that hopefully are listening?
00:05:18.959 --> 00:05:25.680
Yeah, I mean, you alluded to the fact that, you know, I think it in this space, we understand that use of force is is rare.
00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:30.800
Um, but when it does happen and it leads to an injury, that has very real implications.
00:05:30.959 --> 00:05:43.199
So, both in social and political discourse, you know, um, what to do about policing, police reform, police funding, police defunding, all of these issues, um, and how that ties into police community relations.
00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:59.759
And we've seen this a lot, obviously, in recent years, um, since George Floyd, but going back to Ferguson and then all the way back, you know, decades before, there's all of these kind of examples of the very real implications that come from police use of force, particularly when it leads to injury.
00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:05.360
So at a broad level, I think you know, that is something that we can all kind of get on board with.
00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:16.959
Now, when um use of force does occur, even though it's you know a rare event, and estimates vary across prior studies, but we generally find that there's a non-negligible risk of injury.
00:06:17.199 --> 00:06:20.160
So some form of injury does tend to happen.
00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:25.600
Again, this varies, but anywhere from 40 to maybe 50% of these encounters, right?
00:06:25.759 --> 00:06:32.720
So um this is this is not something that that once it's occurring, it's very rare that someone comes away with an injury.
00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:36.639
Now, the scope of these injuries can vary and it kind of depends on how you chop it up.
00:06:36.800 --> 00:06:43.839
But overall, right, when we have a use of force incident, injury is kind of a real concern.
00:06:44.079 --> 00:06:45.839
And you can quantify this in different ways.
00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:53.839
I mean, in our paper, we talk about uh estimates suggesting that over 70,000 people are injured a year from use of force encounters.
00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:56.879
Um, this can lead to millions of dollars in medical expenses.
00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:02.240
So, all of these things are different ways to kind of at a larger, more global level, think about why this matters.
00:07:02.399 --> 00:07:07.600
And I think out of recognition of that, you know, we have this idea of less lethal weapons.
00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:14.319
And recent estimates would suggest most agencies have less lethal weapons, um, upwards of like 90%.
00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:28.399
Commonly, we think of these as like conducted energy devices or taser chemical agents or pepper spray impact weapons, which you talked about a little bit, think of like batons, maybe a flashlight, any other kind of blunt force instrument.
00:07:28.560 --> 00:07:33.759
And then in our study, we also are thinking about the use of police canines and in um these encounters.
00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:49.600
Um, and I think the reason that this is really important, we have these tools to, because this issue is important, but we don't have any universal understanding of which of these tools poses the greatest or the let the least risk to civilians in these counters in terms of injury, right?
00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:58.480
And that's something that I think we want to know about if we're gonna construct use of force policy in a way that's kind of consistent with civilian injury.
00:07:58.959 --> 00:08:09.279
You know, I really enjoy having these conversations uh because I have the flashbacks to, and I try I try to avoid too too much emphasis on my time 40 years ago in policing.
00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:12.959
But even then we didn't have anything but the guns and batons.
00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:19.839
But they were still trying to train us in the use of a of a baton in a manner that minimized uh the the damage.
00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:33.759
So instead of this is what the guy said, instead of hitting somebody in the head and knocking them out and also cracking their skull, they were starting to learn more about uh pain compliance techniques, uh, or the baton hitting somebody in the side of a knee, which is devastatingly painful.
00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:38.320
But because you're hitting a clump of nerves, I I suspect, I can't remember what it was.
00:08:38.879 --> 00:08:40.000
But there's no permanent damage.
00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:45.360
I mean, unless you're probably not gonna break the knee with a baton yet, but they break the baton first, at least the wooden ones.
00:08:45.519 --> 00:08:51.919
But the point here is that uh 40 some odd years ago they were trying to minimize the the the harm that was coming from the use of force.
00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:59.279
And so it's interesting to see now with these new tools that that's is a continuous uh a continuous effort on the part of the police.
00:08:59.919 --> 00:09:06.399
Now I'm gonna sort of throw just a slight curveball in here because I want to get into the the reading and then then your study.
00:09:06.879 --> 00:09:12.399
Uh less less than lethal force tools, whatever the term is, non-lethal, less than lethal.
00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:15.039
Where do these fit into the continuum?
00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:22.000
Because I know that if there's a police officer listening out there, they're aware of the continuum and they're probably wondering where does this where does where does this go?
00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:30.879
Where does a taser fit between you know an A, B, C, D, E, is there an A, B, C, C one, C two, C three, something like that.
00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:38.240
Yeah, uh, and I think that that is really the critical question um, you know, for why this kind of research is necessary.
00:09:38.399 --> 00:09:44.000
So there, you know, there isn't any universal standard, and this you will see variations of this by agency.
00:09:44.159 --> 00:09:44.480
Okay.
00:09:44.639 --> 00:09:49.120
Um, you know, to think about the term less lethal versus non-lethal.
00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:54.960
Um, obviously that that in a broad sense lets you know that it's it's before we get to deadly force, right?
00:09:55.039 --> 00:09:56.559
Before we get to lethal force.
00:09:56.720 --> 00:10:03.519
Um, it's, you know, most people I think would push towards the term less lethal now because they can result in death.
00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:07.120
Uh, it has happened, it's not uh inconceivable.
00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:12.639
So, you know, non-lethal is maybe not 100% accurate, even if you know death is very uncommon.
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:15.600
That's kind of the transition, right, to the less lethal term.
00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:21.440
But so generally they're gonna sit in between like, you know, soft hand control and deadly force, right?
00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:23.360
As a general grouping.
00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:27.039
But I think what's interesting is then what happens within that, right?
00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:32.480
So where you have less lethal weapons, how do you rank them in terms of severity?
00:10:32.639 --> 00:10:35.440
And so there are different ways, again, to look at this.
00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:49.039
I think a common way, and a way that we kind of thought about it in our study, and and this is informed by the way that prior research has looked at it, is to think about a chemical agent or a pepper spray as kind of being the least severe.
00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:52.720
A step up might be the use of a taser conducted energy device.
00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:55.679
Then we get up to true impact weapons, right?
00:10:55.759 --> 00:10:59.360
Like batons and the buttom flashlight or something like that.
00:10:59.519 --> 00:11:07.600
Uh, and then, you know, you know whether canines are included in that is a little bit more fluid, but generally we might have canines after that.
00:11:07.759 --> 00:11:14.080
Um, but it's not uncommon to see multiple at the same level, where you maybe you have an option.
00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:18.159
So maybe one level of force, it's chemical agent or conducted energy device, right?
00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:21.279
Chemical agent or taser, there's kind of a force option there.
00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:24.000
Um, you know, I live in in Charlotte, North Carolina.
00:11:24.159 --> 00:11:39.440
My most recent understanding of the continuum here is you'd have sort of soft hand control um techniques, you'd have chemical agent, and then the next less lethal weapon would be either a CED being a taser or an impact weapon.
00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:42.639
So that's kind of an uh an example of a choice, right?
00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:44.480
Where there's no clear ordering.
00:11:44.799 --> 00:11:52.559
And so I think that alone is really what justifies the importance of this question, is there is variation, and at times you have multiple at the same level.
00:11:52.639 --> 00:11:58.879
And so um, you know, how do we really know or how to order those?
00:11:58.960 --> 00:12:10.159
And shouldn't we have guidance on maybe making that more um static and consistent across police agencies if there is real difference in how um they're affecting injury on civilians?
00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:29.039
It's funny, you mentioned uh a flashlight a moment ago, and I did some ride-alongs with some police, and they're using uh instead of the mag lights, which were like probably 12, 14 inches again in my day, uh they they were just using these very small, you know, four-inch flashlights that are exceptionally exceptionally powerful.
00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:35.039
And I thought to myself, as you said that, using flashlights, does anybody even use a mag light mag light anymore?
00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:36.639
I just I just don't know.
00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:38.480
But uh that's just a rhetorical comment.
00:12:38.559 --> 00:12:46.639
I well, yeah, I mean, I'll say I know in our data, right, if you go to the incident level, you do see it occasionally, like butt of a flashlight or shotgun butt or something.
00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:51.440
It's uncommon, but you know, all of these kind of get lumped into this idea of an impact weapon.
00:12:51.759 --> 00:12:52.080
Okay.
00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:59.279
Now, as I was reading your article, I was reminded of something that may many of us might might overlook.
00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:07.039
The impact weapon baton, uh, or or even a fist, can actually cause more injury than pepper spray or taser.
00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:10.799
Can you take a minute to discuss this and why it impacts the research?
00:13:11.279 --> 00:13:13.840
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's kind of this.
00:13:14.240 --> 00:13:19.200
So obviously we have impact weapons uh as a less lethal tool.
00:13:19.519 --> 00:13:24.639
Um, but I think when you think of like, you know, you mentioned you were using kind of batons a long time ago.
00:13:24.799 --> 00:13:32.720
Uh the evolution, I think, of less lethal weapons is really what's led us more to um, you know, pepper spray and the tasers and that kind of thing.
00:13:32.879 --> 00:13:38.159
And I think the theory is that these tools are can work from a distance.
00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:45.919
So, you know, a police officer doesn't necessarily need to get their hands on um a civilian or a suspect to kind of terminate that encounter.
00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:48.960
And perhaps they'll terminate the encounter more quickly.
00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:58.000
And so if we're thinking of this from like risk of civilian injury, just from a hypothetical standpoint, like think about why, why would they reduce risk?
00:13:58.240 --> 00:14:03.120
So, you know, pepper spray or a taser might one, limit the degree of physical struggle.
00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:08.559
So the degree of grappling, the degree of restraint that has to be imposed on someone.
00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:21.519
And maybe that limits the risk of, say, blunt trauma from strikes, from a takedown, any kind of incidental thing that might happen when there's actual sort of like physical resistance that's occurring between an officer and a civilian.
00:14:21.679 --> 00:14:25.759
And then I think limiting the duration of that physical struggle speaks to that as well, right?
00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:37.840
So if you have less extended restraint, um, maybe you reduce risk of things like asphyxiation and all of these other things that can occur from actual true physical restraint over a long duration of time.
00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:49.120
And I think that's kind of the theory of why, let's say, a pepper spray or taser would be more effective at limiting or preventing injury than a traditional impact weapon, right?
00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:58.960
Um that being said, you know, even though there's not a universal use of force continuum, you generally will see impact weapons higher on use of force continuums.
00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:05.840
So what that means is that these weapons are probably being used in situations where suspects are more resistant.
00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:10.159
And that in and of itself is something that can lead to injury, right?
00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:13.440
So a more resistant suspect is probably more likely to get injured.
00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:25.360
So that's one of the difficult things, actually, in researching this question is that you have these tools used at different levels of resistance, but that level of resistance itself could lead to injury.
00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:35.840
And so, how do you kind of account for the differences uh in these incidents when you're trying to evaluate which less lethal weapon is more or less uh effective at reducing injury?
00:15:36.159 --> 00:15:36.399
Right.
00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:41.600
And and we're gonna get into this in just a second with with uh prior research, the problems with it.
00:15:41.759 --> 00:16:01.519
But again, the way you're suggesting something here is like the you should with with pepper spray or a taser, you're you're shortening up the um the the the tussle time for lack of a better and when you shorten up that time, then you you you reduce the potential for any kind of other injuries, even if they're minor scratches and bumps you know from tussling on the ground.
00:16:02.399 --> 00:16:06.080
But uh what you're also talking about is the complexity, right?
00:16:06.879 --> 00:16:10.080
It would seem that this kind of research would be really easy to do.
00:16:10.240 --> 00:16:15.120
You rank order these different things and see which one you know has more injury, more harm, or something like that.
00:16:15.679 --> 00:16:18.799
But uh just in this conversation, we're seeing how complicated this can be.
00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:25.600
But but this does lead to the next uh the use of force and policing question is um this has been studied for years.
00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:30.159
What's the problem that uh your research is trying to tackle here?
00:16:30.879 --> 00:16:34.559
Yeah, and and you know prior studies have limitations.
00:16:34.639 --> 00:16:35.759
Every study does, as we know.
00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:49.440
I mean, uh the study that we're talking about today has limitations, but I I think kind of leading directly in from that complexity of different tools being used at different levels of resistance and different types of encounters.
00:16:49.759 --> 00:17:01.759
Prior studies have often not had a lot of data to try to account for those differences in the encounters that might independently lead to a risk of injury, right?
00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:22.400
So things like um civilian resistance, even things like officer suspect characteristics, other incident characteristics, like what led to the encounter, all of these things could duly inform what type of less lethal weapon you're using, an officer is choosing to use, and the independent risk of injury to that civilian.
00:17:22.559 --> 00:17:35.119
Uh, and so conducting, and this is where you know you kind of have to do these things statistically, and you know, you can get into conversations with academics, obviously, about how well you've done that and whether it's a convincing argument, so on and so forth.
00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:43.920
But I think having the data on the other elements of these encounters that allows you to try to account for it or kind of hold it even across these encounters.
00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:51.519
And you're you're trying to isolate the effect of the paper, the pepper spray versus the taser versus the impact weapon and the canine, right?
00:17:51.599 --> 00:17:54.000
So I think that's one key thing, right?
00:17:54.319 --> 00:18:03.279
Um, you know, prior research, through no fault of any researchers uh you know their own, this is just the nature of doing research, often small samples of agencies.
00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:09.039
So you might have studies conducted in one agency, uh, maybe two or three, maybe a handful.
00:18:09.279 --> 00:18:17.279
And, you know, as we talked about, you have this agency level variation in the way that use of force policy looks and when certain less lethal weapons should be used.
00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:23.920
So do we necessarily know that what we see in agency A is going to hold across 17, 18 large agencies?
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:28.720
Would that all vary in the way that their use of force continuum and policy looks?
00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:32.319
So having a larger sample of agencies, I think, is always good.
00:18:32.559 --> 00:18:39.039
Um, I would also say that most research is kind of focused on this yes-no question of injury.
00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:41.440
Um, that is, was someone injured or not?
00:18:41.599 --> 00:18:45.920
And, you know, I think, you know, if I'm a police officer, I I want more information.
00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:47.680
I'm saying, well, what is that injury?
00:18:47.759 --> 00:18:50.640
Or at least can we be sure it's not just a scratch?
00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:53.039
And this is something that's a little bit more objective.
00:18:53.200 --> 00:19:00.240
And so, you know, one way to do that is is this idea of hospitalization, which we look at in the study and can talk more about.
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:04.720
But uh the general idea is not just was someone injured, but what was maybe the degree of that injury?
00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:06.799
Um, and that gives us a little bit more context.
00:19:07.119 --> 00:19:07.279
Yes.
00:19:07.759 --> 00:19:08.559
And I'm sorry, go ahead.
00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:09.279
Keep going.
00:19:09.519 --> 00:19:24.480
Well, the last thing I'll say is that uh one thing prior research has done is generally kind of suggested that impact weapons appear to be more dangerous for civilians than these newer um tools like uh tasers, CEDs, and uh chemical agents.
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:38.160
But you don't see much work that directly compares the risk between conducted energy devices and chemical agents, which I think that is really critical because again, these maybe are the two modern, less lethal weapons, the more modern ones.
00:19:38.240 --> 00:19:46.319
And so I think an interesting question, and probably the ones that vary the most on these continuum in terms of like where they might be put.
00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:46.559
Right.
00:19:46.720 --> 00:19:54.160
So I think that's a really interesting question for policy and practice is what about that comparison between the taser and the pepper spray for civilian injury?
00:19:54.240 --> 00:19:59.680
So I think all of those things are ways that we attempted at least to build on prior work.
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:01.759
Okay, so tell us about your study.
00:20:01.839 --> 00:20:05.759
What was the basic research question and how did you go about collecting data?
00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:19.359
Yeah, so quite simply, um, you know, we're trying to determine which less lethal weapons are most effective at preventing civilian injury or also most effective at maybe reducing the severity of civilian injury.
00:20:19.599 --> 00:20:29.039
So we essentially have a sample of just over 2,300 use of force incidents where a less lethal weapon was used, uh being the highest level of force use.
00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:37.200
So these are not incidents that involved a firearm or ended in um, you know, what we traditionally think of as lethal force.
00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:44.960
So these all these are incidents that occurred between 2015 and 2019, and they're taken from 17 large police agencies.
00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:50.799
And by large, I mean these are all agencies with a hundred or more sworn law enforcement officers.
00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:50.960
Okay.
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:56.799
And these are all agencies that are at least in like the 80th percentile of officer-involved shootings.
00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:08.319
So, meaning these are agencies that are frequently in these situations and use of force encounters relative to maybe to other agencies, and agencies that are frequently in lethal force situations.
00:21:08.559 --> 00:21:14.480
So that's important to understand in terms of like shaping the kinds of agencies that we're talking about, right?
00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:17.519
These are large metropolitan agencies for the most part.
00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:26.880
Um, so we coded the highest level of force used in each encounter, along with having information on characteristics of the officer, the civilian, the incident, right?
00:21:27.359 --> 00:21:34.799
Um question here that I kind of want to just, you know, not to get too much in the weeds is you know, what happens if two less lethal weapons are used?
00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.160
So maybe a chemical agent's used and a CED is used.
00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:50.400
So we kind of took the highest level of force, again, going by what commonly we would think of as most people would pick chemical agents and then CEDs and then impact weapons and then canines being most severe.
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:55.039
Um, but in reality, these are mostly situations where only one less lethal weapon was used.
00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:58.559
So only like 3% of these incidents involved multiple weapons.
00:21:58.640 --> 00:21:59.759
So that doesn't really affect.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:00.880
To what we're doing here.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:12.160
So we're essentially starting trying to assess the probability that each less lethal weapon results in no injury, injury with no hospitalization, and then injury resulting in hospitalization or death.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:23.200
And we're doing so while trying to account for the differences in these characters, in these uh encounters across like suspect resistance, um, officer and civilian characteristics and things like that.
00:22:23.519 --> 00:22:29.599
Now, with with hospitalization, I want to be clear on something because uh because I saw this in the article, I wanted to ask you about it.
00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:37.680
My assumption is that maybe maybe I'm getting into the findings already, but I I want to be let's just clarify this right now, and you can repeat this later on if you want.
00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:48.640
My assumption would be that if uh uh let's just say there's a guy standing there, not even wearing a t-shirt, it's the summertime in uh in in North Carolina.
00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:52.160
He's he's obstinate, he's not cooperating, and he gets tased.
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:56.160
Boom, there's no no no mystery, hits him in the chest in the torso somewhere.
00:22:56.319 --> 00:22:59.920
Okay, so he falls over, he's arrested.
00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.759
Does he get hospitalized for that to remove the taser barbs?
00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:06.240
So that's a great question.
00:23:06.400 --> 00:23:07.759
Um it depends.
00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:12.079
It's a so this is it's a really important point of clarification.
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:13.680
It depends on the agency.
00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:21.119
So each agency is gonna have maybe have different policies for what is gonna require a hospital transport or hospital visit.
00:23:21.359 --> 00:23:25.759
This data is sort of collected at the agency level and then kind of brought together.
00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:36.400
So we can't really say whether hospitalization in every case means an admission to a hospital, whether it means you went to the ER because you had a concussion or to get some stitches or something like that.
00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:41.920
All we can say is that this required a transport to the hospital in some capacity.
00:23:42.079 --> 00:23:46.160
What happens after that is not something that we have information on.
00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:52.240
So that is that is a caveat to saying hospital, we know that someone was taken to the hospital.
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:57.359
We reasonably confident that means there's something more severe on average.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.759
Can we say anything more about what that means?
00:23:59.920 --> 00:24:01.119
Unfortunately, not.
00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:01.920
Okay.
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:06.240
So so what did you find based upon your research, your data?
00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:11.519
Yeah, so uh a few things from just like a descriptive standpoint that I think are important.
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:18.559
So we find civilian injury in about 50% of encounters, which is pretty consistent with that earlier figure that I that I kind of gave you.
00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:21.599
Um, hospitalization only in about 16%, though.
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:29.680
So, right, this gives us some divergence between just this yes-no injury and something a little bit hopefully more objective in terms of hospitalization.
00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:31.839
So, hospitalization much more rare.
00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:35.680
CEDs, so tasers were overwhelmingly used.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:39.039
72% of all encounters used a CED.
00:24:39.119 --> 00:24:41.039
Every other less lethal weapon is about 10%.
00:24:41.359 --> 00:24:46.079
So that paints a picture of kind of like what our officers are using more often than not.
00:24:46.559 --> 00:25:03.039
Um, so when we compare the risk of injury for less lethal weapons, essentially what we find is that police canines uh significantly increase both injury with no hospitalization risk and injury with hospitalization risk relative to every other type of less lethal weapon that we have here.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:11.200
Chemical agents significantly reduce the risk of injury with hospitalization compared to every other less lethal weapon, right?
00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:16.319
We don't see any significant differences between impact weapons and conducted energy devices.
00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:22.799
Um, it tends to look like CEDs were a little bit safer, but we don't really have a lot of confidence in that conclusion.
00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:33.920
So in total, the results tend to suggest in terms of serious injury, chemical agents are the safest option, and police canines are the least safe option.
00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:36.559
And it's a pretty large difference.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:46.720
If we estimate the risk of injury for police canines, it's like 45% of encounters with no hospitalization and 37 uh with hospitalization.
00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.480
And the risk of hospitalization for chemical agents, we estimated about 4%.
00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:57.680
So it's a pretty big uh sort of graduated uh risk of injury as you're kind of going up this ladder.
00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:01.119
Yeah, I'm gonna jump in because I wanted to say dogs bite.
00:26:01.359 --> 00:26:10.559
They just exactly dogs bite, and and but the thing is is chemical agents, I've never been I've never been exposed to them, but they hurt.
00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:13.440
And pain is not the same as injury.
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:14.720
So keep going.
00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:15.119
Yeah.
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:16.079
Yeah.
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:21.599
Um, and so you know, in the middle of that is is kind of impact weapons and CEDs.
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:32.079
So again, I said we estimate about 4% risk of hospitalization for chemical agents, jumps up to about 13% for um conducted energy devices and about 16% for impact weapons.
00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:42.559
So again, tends to suggest that impact weapons are a little bit more dangerous for civilians and CEDs, but that difference is is just close enough that we don't have a lot of confidence that it's truly different.
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:49.839
But what is clear is kind of the ends of the spectrum from police canines being the most severe to chemical agents being um the least.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:52.400
So again, great information.
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:59.440
Can you give us two or three implications for the police, for their the personnel, police leaders uh policy, something like that?
00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:13.359
Yeah, I I think the the the implication that should jump out or that does jump out is is in how this could guide use of force continuums, given that we do have kind of no universal um definition of these things and variation across agencies, right?
00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:17.920
So again, some agencies might rank tasers or CEDs and chemical agents as comparable.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.359
So you have an option.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:23.759
Some might even place CEDs below chemical agents, maybe less common.
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:38.160
But in terms of civilian injury, um, our results tend to suggest that chemical agents should be considered a lower level of force and potentially be used more than um CEDs and other less lethal weapons.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:51.359
Now, certainly there might be certain situations where you want to kind of mold that, but as a general rule of thumb, that tends to be from a civilian injury perspective, uh, what looks like it would reduce injury the most.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:57.519
And this is particularly important, I think, because again, our our descriptive results suggested that CEDs are overwhelmingly used.
00:27:57.599 --> 00:28:01.920
So police officers are using tasers a lot more than they're using chemical agents.
00:28:02.079 --> 00:28:10.720
So this could be an opportunity to transition that use a little bit in a way that would be meaningful for reducing civilian injury.
00:28:10.799 --> 00:28:12.720
So to me, that's kind of the biggest takeaway.
00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:13.759
Sure, sounds like it.
00:28:13.839 --> 00:28:14.160
Yeah.
00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:22.640
Um, and then I think, you know, obviously our results suggest that refraining from using police canines unless absolutely necessary is going to be best practice.
00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:25.680
I mean, the the risk of injury is just much, much higher there.
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:33.359
Some situations are gonna call for them, searching and tracking encounters, uh, immediate threats to safety and such uh uh things like that.
00:28:33.599 --> 00:28:40.480
But outside of those situations, uh, I think you know, police should be very careful about uh releasing a canine on someone.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:44.000
I'm sure most are, but this just kind of reaffirms that, right?
00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:46.480
And then I think, you know, there's this cost-benefit thing.
00:28:46.559 --> 00:28:53.359
Like, I think most large agencies probably already have both of these at this at their disposal in terms of chemical agents and CEDs.
00:28:53.519 --> 00:29:08.079
But if you don't and you're looking to make investment decisions for maybe one over the other, our results might suggest you prefer chemical agents, not only because they appear to reduce the risk of hospitalization and more serious injury, but I think by most estimates, they're cheaper, right?
00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:11.759
That it's less costly to implement than uh a full taser program.
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:17.920
It's easier to put you know, pepper spray on your officer than to get tasers and refill the cartridges and every time they're used.
00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:20.000
And you know, that is more costly, right?
00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:21.759
So I think I think there's that.
00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:27.759
And then the only other thing is I'd say there's there's two complementary concerns that we can't address here.
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:30.160
One of which we sort of can, one we can't.
00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:31.599
One is officer safety.
00:29:31.759 --> 00:29:36.799
So, you know, does this reduce risk of civilian injury come at the cost of officer safety?
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:45.839
We were actually able to look at officer safety and found no difference in terms of the risk of injury for officers if they had used a chemical agent or a CED.
00:29:46.079 --> 00:29:51.039
They were much less likely to be injured if they used a police canine, which I don't think is super shocking, right?
00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:56.079
I mean, if canine is very effective at kind of seduing the suspect, officer never really has to get in there.
00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:58.160
Um, but that is something to consider, right?
00:29:58.240 --> 00:30:00.400
It's not just civilian injury, it's officer injury.
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:02.720
And we can't look here at apprehension effectiveness.
00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:07.839
And that's obviously a question that you alluded to that that's important is what's actually going to terminate the encounter.
00:30:08.079 --> 00:30:16.160
And, you know, we've all heard of tasers failing to stick to people, or uh some people just being unaffected by pepper spray or relatively unaffected by chemical agents.
00:30:16.240 --> 00:30:19.519
And so that's something that police agencies have to balance.
00:30:19.759 --> 00:30:34.640
But I think with those things balanced, again, the the key takeaway is maybe thinking about chemical agents before you think about tasers or CEDs and definitely reserving the use of canines for those situations that it really they really have to be used.
00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:50.960
Now, on page, not that anybody's gonna you know jump to this page number, but on page 394 of your article, you wrote that chemical agents and um ECW CEDs have distinctly different mechanisms of effect and potential pathways to injury.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:30:55.279
Can you explain the difference between the chemical agents and the uh electrical devices?
00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:00.160
Yeah, so I mean like medically the idea is that a chemical agent is gonna cause pain, right?
00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:01.759
And irritation in your eyes and skin.
00:31:01.839 --> 00:31:04.559
And in terms of how this can lead to injury, right?
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:14.480
Uh one is just kind of inflammation, tissue damage if you're rubbing your eyes and you have pepper spray in your eyes, but these are minor things that generally are gonna kind of resolve themselves.
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:21.440
I think the interesting thing about CEDs is that you have this electrical current that basically produces involuntary muscle contraction.
00:31:21.599 --> 00:31:25.200
So you lose control of your body if this works how it's supposed to work.
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:27.519
And yeah, you could have like puncture wounds.
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:30.240
We're not really our study doesn't count those as an injury.
00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:32.079
That was kind of an explicit instruction.
00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:35.279
You could have minor burn wounds from the electrical current.
00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:36.880
That's that's kind of minor stuff.
00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:41.839
But I think the more interesting thing is what could happen secondary to being shocked.
00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:45.359
And that's you lose control of your body and you have a fall injury, right?
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:51.039
You hit your head, sure, something like that from the weight of your body, um, kind of bending over, depending on where you are.
00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:53.039
Maybe you're on you know an elevated surface.
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:56.160
There's there's this unknown of what happens once you fall.
00:31:56.400 --> 00:32:13.279
And I think that while we think major injuries for both of these are probably generally related to pre-existing issues like cardiovascular or respiratory, it's that fall damage from a CED that I think is the unique concern that might explain for some of these findings.
00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:13.920
Okay.
00:32:14.079 --> 00:32:14.400
All right.
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:15.279
Thank you for that.
00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:16.319
That's that's great.
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:18.480
I really appreciate the clarification on that.
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:20.319
Kevin, this has been great.
00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:21.599
I really appreciate your time.
00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:23.599
Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me.
00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:25.119
Uh, it was it was a pleasure.
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:28.319
Uh, I'll be keeping up with your podcast from here on out.
00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:30.400
So um, yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:31.119
Well, thanks very much.
00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:31.680
You have a great day.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:32.000
Yeah.
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:32.640
All right, you too.
00:32:32.720 --> 00:32:32.880
Thank you.
00:32:33.039 --> 00:32:33.279
Take care.
