Unpacking Sequential Actions Within Use of Force Incidents

Abstract

Use of force incidents involving police officers and civilians are complex, multi-faceted, and interactional. Officer force and civilian resistance are frequently measured at their maximum level or in relation to one another. While this approach is informative, it does not fully reflect the complexity of these encounters that contain a series of sequential actions taken by both parties. These processes are difficult to capture using traditional data collection efforts as they require time consuming independent coding of each action. Using data from two municipal police agencies, this study outlines a methodology for unpacking these complex interactions and examines sequentially based incident characteristics and their relation to the highest levels of force and resistance. Results reveal the importance of total actions and the starting point of force and resistance, which has specific implications for our understanding of how these interactional encounters change over time and police use of force more broadly.