According to this study of emergency room physicians, 99.8% believe that police use excessive force in effecting arrests.
OBJECTIVE: To determine the clinical experience, management and training of emergency physicians in the suspected use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.
METHODS: Surveys were mailed to a random sample of academic emergency physicians in the USA.
RESULTS: Of 393 emergency physicians surveyed, 315 (80.2%) responded. Of the respondents, 99.8% (95% CI 98.2% to 100.0%) believed excessive use of force actually occurs and 97.8% (95% CI 95.5% to 99.1%) replied that they had managed patients with suspected excessive use of force. These incidents were not reported by 71.2% (95% CI 65.6% to 76.4%) of respondents, 96.5% (95% CI 93.8% to 98.2%) had no departmental policies and 93.7% (95% CI 90.4% to 96.1%) had not received training in the management of these cases.
CONCLUSIONS: Suspected excessive use of force is encountered by academic emergency physicians in the USA. There is only limited training or policies for the management of these cases.
A random sampling of criminal defense lawyers would have given similar numbers, but no one would believe us.
What’s surprising about this is that docs are not particularly big supporters of criminal defendants, particularly compared to cops. This comes across loud and clear in the comments at this ER doc blog. Clearer still is this blog from a paramedic, Rogue Medic, who isn’t buying into this at all.
I have to deal with some of the same abuse that the police deal with on a regular basis, just much less frequently than they do. The police do a great job of not overreacting to the conditions of the job. That does not excuse excessive force, but it does mitigate excessive force to some extent.
We all have bad days, even the police.
The cuffs too tight? They are supposed to be tight. Otherwise they do not do what they are supposed to do, which is keep the suspect from being able to escape, or hurt others (such as the ED doctor). It is rare that I do not hear, from someone in custody, that the cuffs are too tight.
I know, the empathy is overwhelming. But this is expected, particularly given the close working relationship between paramedics and cops. What curious about this guy, however, is that he has apparently enjoyed a little police love in the past.
I have been on the receiving end of handcuffs and I have been hit while in custody. After I was hit, the rest of the police in the room were just trying to restrain me. They were not trying to hurt me. I do not know what they did about the bad cop. I don’t know if they reported this, but they were not participating.
Amazing how the mind works, compartmentalizing the good guys and bad guys to avoid needless cognitive dissonance.
While the ER docs apparently know that the police tend to use excessive force, don’t expect them to be particularly worried about it. While almost all responded that it was happening, few every reported it. But then, it’s not like it was happening to them, and, as our friendly paramedic reminds, it’s only the bad apples.
H/T Walter Olson
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I live in a city where the police give a monthly report on all use-of-force incidents to the city council. The report is posted on the both the city council and police web pages. It would be interesting to see if the ER staff responses to the survey differed from the 99% you reported.
By the way I agree that police use of force is too frequent (in particular by the younger inexperienced officers) and I think there are at least two reasons 1) they hire the wrong people and 2) they don’t train them properly.
Some cop from Denver, (yeah, the same Denver who’s police union printed out t-shirts celebrating that they “got up early to ‘beat’ the protesters), commented on the survey when I posted it and started citing Graham v Connor and how ER physicians shouldn’t be allowed to say this because juries aren’t allowed to judge what cops should have done during an arrest after the fact…
Of course, that’s the cop mentality, they really do seem to think it’s illegal just to question what they do. The point of the survey, I reminded him, was to show that ER doctors should be a part of the accountability process and should have a set of guidelines that mandates they report injuries sustained in an arrest and the manner of those injuries in order to determine if a use of force report is accurate and doesn’t indicate a possible case of excessive force. It’s not recommending that ER doctors get disciplinary powers, sheesh.
The survey isn’t a legal case against cops, it’s not even going to lead to any loudermill hearings, it’s just a survey… even if it does reflect a fact most of us already know, that the use of excessive force is pretty widespread and commonplace.
I do believe that action should be taken against officers who use excessive force, but I do not see the ED physicians as the ones to be able to determine what was excessive. The physicians were not there. Unless this is happening in the ED in front of the physician.
I do not see my post as an example of cognitive dissonance. I did not suggest that excessive force does not occur. I do not see any reason to believe that the number of officers engaging in excessive force is other than a tiny fraction of the police. I suggested less than 1% for a reason. I believe it to be accurate estimate.
I treat people who have tried to hit me, but I do not see any reason to treat them differently from other patients, once they are restrained. When trying to restrain them, I try to avoid injuring them, even though they may be trying to injure me. Is that cognitive dissonance?
If a lawyer defends someone, whom the lawyer knows to be guilty, is that cognitive dissonance? You can use as repulsive a crime as you can imagine for this. The lawyers role is to protect the rights of the accused, regardless of the accusation.
I treat people, in part, according to how they treat me. I try to avoid the bad ones, whether they are police, people in custody, someone I work with, . . . . Almost as if I were capable of independent thought. 🙂
It’s a shame that the study wasted all that time and effort on ER docs when all they needed to do was ask you.
Ugh, 99-percent of physicians are spineless when it comes to police abusing their patients and half the nurses are married to cops.
Hospitals hire off duty cops to eliminate nuisances of any kind. Don’t agree with the treatment plan in the ER? Our hired cop will deposit you outside.