Abstract
Law enforcement officers in the USA have one of the highest lethal force rates in the world. A shortcoming of previous research on the use of force is that officer-subject encounters are observed as static events, and not a complex escalation of behaviours. Behaviour sequence analysis can identify common pathways that show chains of behaviours occurring at a level greater than what was expected by chance. The current study used 40 body-worn camera videos of officer-subject interactions leading to either lethal or non-lethal outcomes. The current results show that officers are more likely to use lethal force in response to physical threats from subjects, and likewise, use non-lethal force in response to verbal threats. The outcomes of this research extend to law enforcement and public safety, to understand and potentially reduce use of force incidents, particularly lethal force. It also serves to highlight the dynamic and challenging nature of these interactions to aid in establishing a greater rapport between officers and the communities they serve.
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Notes
Note, the letter codes for behaviours are relatively arbitrary, “A”, “U” etc. are codes used to make future coding easier and any letter could suffice, as long as each behaviour has a unique code.
Available from corresponding author, on request
Available from corresponding author, on request—they are omitted from publication owing to their size.
The standardized residual is the metric of choice for BSA. It is the measure of difference between the observed and expected frequencies, calculated by the chi-square analysis. The SR gives an indication of which transitions are occurring above the level of chance. A cut-off of SR > 3 is used to make the diagrams clearer to read; full analyses of all transitions are available from the corresponding author on request.
Full diagrams and state transition matrices are available from the corresponding author, on request.
It would be feasibly possible to analyse individual behaviours separately; but, this would make the analyses overly complex and fundamentally change the research question (into what is the effect of multiple officers—an important, but separate issue from the framework the current research is setting).
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Longridge, R., Chapman, B., Bennell, C. et al. Behaviour Sequence Analysis of Police Body-Worn Camera Footage. J Police Crim Psych 38, 255–262 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09393-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09393-z