Police Use of Force
Police use of force is one way that the police use in intimidating the suspect or an offender but at some point, the excess force used can cause more problems to the officer. There are numerous cases in the Supreme Court over the use of excessive force on offenders especially due to the police reforms which are enacted to make the police force stronger and perform better in the field. Challenges that face an officer after use of excessive force are mostly associated with making sure that a repeat of the same does not happen. In a certain case, the Supreme Court ruled out that an officer will have to stay in the office behind the desk and also have the weapon or gun confiscated (Klinger et al., 2016). Police officers who are mostly involved in carrying out field work will find being left behind and do paperwork more challenging. Another ruling by the Supreme Court can involve subjecting the officer into total torture such as having the officer investigated all his life and this could see the officer eventually resigning from the police force.
I do agree with the decision by the Supreme Court since it is a good way of ensuring that the police force does not take advantage of their power to harass a common citizen. If the police force is not well tamed, there could be a loss of police confidence and in many cases rivalry between the police and the public.
An officer is not allowed to use force unless the suspect is physically dangerous to the officer or others in certain occasions. For example, if a suspect is fleeing and has a gun, then the police are allowed to use the deadly force to ensure that the suspect does not cause more harm to others (Straub, 2014).
References
Klinger, D., Rosenfeld, R., Isom, D., & Deckard, M. (2016). Race, Crime, and the Micro‐Ecology of Deadly Force. Criminology & Public Policy, 15(1), 193-222.
Miller, T. R., Lawrence, B. A., Carlson, N. N., Hendrie, D., Randall, S., Rockett, I. R., & Spicer, R. S. (2017). Perils of police action: a cautionary tale from US data sets. Injury prevention, 23(1), 27-32.
Straub, J. (2014). Unmanned aerial systems: Consideration of the use of force for law enforcement applications. Technology in Society, 39, 100-109.
