Perhaps no other issue has a greater impact on the trust and confidence a community has in its police force than the use of force by police officers. The Internet, social media, and the viral nature of smartphone videos have made uncomfortable—and sometimes downright awful—images of police officers using force commonplace. This can lead people to believe that the incidence of police using force is much higher than it actually is and that the depicted officers should be criminally charged. When the use of force is judged to be “reasonable” and “justified”, these images, coupled with a lack of common understanding about the laws relating to the use of force and the procedures for investigating it, can cause viewers to conclude that the system is corrupt.



The Police Foundation has produced this Use-of-Force Infographic as a means of educating the public about when the police are allowed to use force and how those incidents are investigated. We found our task of making such a complicated issue easily understood through the use of an infographic to be a daunting one for a variety of reasons. America’s policing “system” is not actually a system. It is a collection of 50 different state laws bound together by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that try to clarify when the police can use force. To complicate matters further, each of the more than 17,000 independent policing organizations in this country has its own policies and procedures relative to investigating the use of force by its officers. And finally, our cultural, regional and political differences, and the differing mental models the police and the public have about the justified use of force, create emotionally charged debate.



Accordingly, this infographic is intended to provide the reader with a broad, high-level understanding of when the police use of force is legally viewed as reasonable and justified and how these incidents are generally investigated. There will undoubtedly be local differences, but this graphic follows the industry “best practices” wherever possible.



Police officers are unlike any other public employees in at least one significant way. They are the only class of governmental agents that, without prior judicial review, are permitted to use force – up to and including deadly force – against members of the communities they are sworn to protect. As such, it is vitally important that we: 1) create a common, plain language understanding of when the police can use force and what happens when they do; 2) develop investigative and accountability processes that are as transparent and responsive to community expectations as possible, and; 3) take the steps necessary to scientifically understand this phenomenon and take every possible action to minimize it. We hope this infographic helps advance these imperatives, and we welcome input about its future iterations.