ABSTRACT

Duty to intervene (DTI) policies impose an obligation on peer officers to prevent or terminate unreasonable force occurring in their presence. But policing suffers from an organizational culture that may thwart this stated duty. By examining the facts related to the deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and George Floyd in Minneapolis against existing DTI policies and the reasonableness requirement articulated in Graham v. Connor, we conclude that their deaths should have been prevented by officer intervention. In an empirical analysis of the standard operating procedures of the police departments for the 30 largest U.S. cities, we found that less than half had DTI policies and that the content of the existing policies varied significantly. This variation may have contributed to our finding that departments with DTI policies did not report fewer officer-involved deaths (OIDs) than departments without such policies. However, nearly half of the departments with DTI policies did report fewer multi-officer OIDs than single-officer OIDs. Compared to departments without DTI policies, more OIDs in departments with DTI policies resulted in formal charges. We recommend mandating the adoption of a uniform DTI policy as a mechanism for enhanced police accountability in officer-involved killings. 

摘要

干预义务 (DTI) 政策要求同级官员有义务防止或终止在他们面前发生的不合理武力。但是，警务工作的组织文化可能会阻碍这一既定的职责。通过审查与纽约的埃里克·加纳、巴尔的摩的弗雷迪·格雷和明尼阿波利斯的乔治·弗洛伊德的死亡相关的事实，对照现有的 DTI 政策和Graham v. Connor 中阐明的合理性要求，我们得出结论，他们的死亡本应通过官员的干预来防止。在对美国 30 个最大城市的警察部门标准操作程序进行实证分析时，我们发现只有不到一半拥有 DTI 政策，并且现有政策的内容差异很大。这种差异可能有助于我们发现，与没有此类政策的部门相比，有 DTI 政策的部门报告的涉事人员死亡 (OID) 并没有更少。然而，近一半有 DTI 政策的部门报告的多官员 OID 比单官员 OID 少。与没有 DTI 政策的部门相比，有 DTI 政策的部门中有更多的 OID 导致正式收费。