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Public Perception

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Civilian-Oversight Crowd Gets A Dose Of Force Science

A conference in Austin, TX, recently offered the first chance for Force Science principles and the studies of the Force Science Research Center to be presented to an international gathering of civilian-oversight practitioners—a group FSRC’s executive director Dr. Bill Lewinski describes as “a vitally important target audience.” The conference was the annual convention of the...
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New Study: When Civilians Would Shoot…And When They Think You Should

Fascinating experiments by 2 California researchers show that young civilians who might someday be on an OIS jury overwhelmingly disagree with veteran officers about when police are justified in shooting armed, threatening perpetrators. Interestingly, tests also reveal that when facing shoot/don’t shoot decisions of their own, civilians tend to be quick on the trigger—and often...
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“Excessive Force” Study Gravely Flawed, Says FSRC

Strong skepticism has been expressed by the Force Science Research Center regarding a recently publicized survey showing that a high percentage of emergency room doctors believe they see evidence of police brutality in the patients they treat. The poll, published in Emergency Medicine Journal, reports that 99.8% of ER physicians responding to a random-sample survey...
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Ongoing Survey Seeks Consensus on What’s “Reasonable” Use of Force

When the U.S. Supreme Court declared in its landmark case Graham v. Connor that force used by law officers must be “objectively reasonable,” Sam Faulkner had a question: What’s “reasonable”? The Court provided “no definitive answer regarding what a reasonable officer is or does,” says Faulkner, an instructor at the Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy...
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How to Combat Myths that Muddle Force Confrontations (Part 2)

Part 2 of a 2-part series [EDITOR’S NOTE: In Transmission No. 68, sent on 3/26/07, we explored dangerous myths about police use of force that movies, TV, and video games have brainwashed civilians and some LEOs into believing. Our report quoted a provocative article by Det. Cmdr. Jeffry Johnson of the Long Beach (CA) PD,...
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How Many Of These Force Myths Do You Believe? How About The People Who Judge You? (Part 1)

Part 1 of a 2-part series Civilians who judge the reasonableness of your use of force, whether they’re members of the media, of a review board, of a prosecutor’s staff, or of a jury, are likely to bring a welter of highly distorted beliefs to the process because they’ve undergone thousands of hours of “training”...
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Are Cops Wild In The Streets? New Study Says No Way!

To hear some of the media and activist police critics tell it, American cops are “out of control,” running rampant in an “epidemic” of unjustified use of force. But in an ongoing study that has been underway now for more than three years, Dr. Darrell Ross, an associate professor in the CJ department at East...
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