Document Type
Article
Publication
The University of Chicago Legal Forum
Year
2016
Citation Information
Daria Roithmayr, The Dynamics of Excessive Force, 2016 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 407 (2016), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/1876.
Abstract
Existing scholarship suggests that police use of excessive force will be greatest in departments with "bad apple" officers or bad top-down incentive structures. This paper proposes an alternative theoretical account to argue that patterns of excessive force dynamically emerge from local interactions among individuals that aggregate to form more global patterns of escalation, contagion, and decay. I focus on two dynamic interactions in particular. First, I argue that excessive force spreads and escalates by way of a self-reinforcing arms race between civilians and officers that intensifies the use of excessive force over time. As officers use excessive force, civilians in a community become less deferential and more resistant; in turn, as civilians become less deferential and more resistant, officers use more excessive force. Race shapes this process-black civilians are more likely to be perceived as non-deferential, and the arms race becomes more likely in black communities. Second, I argue that excessive force contagiously spreads among officers in the same network, as officers learn from each other how and when to use excessive force against defiant civilians. When officers observe others in their network using excessive force, they become more likely to use excessive force in later encounters. This theoretical account suggests that any department could be vulnerable to a surge in the use of excessive force, given the right initial conditions.
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