Eating Their Own: Police Responses to Excessive Use of Force

• In Event: Police Use of Force

Abstract

Much recent attention has been paid in the popular media and academic press to the use and misuse of force by police officers. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how police respond to excessive use of force by one of their own, both in the heat of the moment and in the aftermath of such events. When do officers intervene in one another’s deployment of excessive or unlawful force, and when don’t they? Do police consider it a professional and/or personal duty to intervene in such cases? How do policy and training relate to this area of professional and ethical obligation? This paper considers competing perspectives on police intervention in fellow officers’ use of force as, alternatively, a matter of official duty, heroism, and what is more derisively described as “eating their own.” Our research investigates whether gaps exist across officers’ normative, professional and personal duties and their on-the-ground behavior by analyzing training documents and procedures, as well as case studies on excessive uses of force involving officer intervention and non-intervention. We draw on social psychological theories of intervention and group dynamics, as well as philosophies of justice, as potential explanations and to consider research and policy implications.

Authors

• Peter Augustine Hanink, University of California, Irvine

• Geoff Ward, University of California, Irvine

• Anjuli Catherine Verma, University of California, Irvine