Law enforcement officers are legally justified to utilize force in many
situations to bring suspects to justice, protect others, and for
personal defense. However, police training on the use of force has no
single consistent method in the United States to demonstrate the best
response to subject resistance levels, even though many states and
individual agencies have adopted very creative use-of-force matrices and
continuums. For researchers, additional problems abound in the
compilation and interpretation of the data available on police use of
force. Criminal justice research has persistently demonstrated that a
small percentage of police encounters with the public involve use of
force. While extreme uses of force often garners media attention, lesser
levels of force are used regularly by police without public notice.
Research in the areas of use of force, and subsequent suspect injuries,
has focused on the level of force used by the police officer and the
suspect, excessive force, and officer misconduct.