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Excessively tight handcuffs are among the types
of excessive force reported by ER doctors
Almost all emergency room physicians surveyed in a recently published paper say they've managed cases resulting from police brutality against the public. The emergency room incidents involve everything from beatings with fists and feet to excessively tight handcuffs to bludgeoning with nightsticks and flashlights.The paper raises the possibility that official figures understate the prevalence of violent behavior by law enforcement officers, since, despite their familiarity with such cases, most of the surveyed physicians say they do not report the incidents.
An astonishing 97.8% of 315 emergency room doctors who responded to the survey reported in "Excessive use of force by police: a survey of academic emergency physicians" (PDF), published in the January 2009 Emergency Medicine Journal, reported managing cases "that they suspected or that the patient stated had involved excessive use of force by law enforcement officers." Almost two-thirds of the docs said they saw two or more cases that they suspected involved excessive use of force per year among their patients.
The most common injuries resulting from the excessive use of force by police officers against suspects involved blunt trauma of the sort you get from a punch or a beating. "Fists and feet were cited as the instrument used by 95.2% (95% CI 92.0% to 97.3%) of respondents, handcuffs that were too tight by 73.1% (95% CI 67.6% to 78.1%), night sticks by 48.6% (95% CI 42.7% to 54.5%) and flashlights by 26.9%..."
But many of the incidents that make up the physicians' experiences never make it into the official record. That's because the majority of the doctors surveyed don't report the use of excessive force, and they work at institutions that have no policy instructing doctors what to do when they come across cases of police officers abusing members of the public.
Of the respondents, 71.2% (95% CI 65.6% to 76.4%) reported that, in cases where they suspected excessive use of force by law enforcement officers, they did not report the incidents. A large majority (96.5% (95% CI 93.8% to 98.2%)) of respondents reported that the ED in which they worked either did not have a policy or they did not know of a policy to guide the management of cases suspected of involving use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.
This lack of reliable reporting is part of a long-standing hurdle to efforts to track uses of excessive violence by law enforcement officers. A 1996 U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justic Statistics paper (PDF) discussed the difficulty encountered in compiling data on the use of excessive force by police. People looking for reliable information on the use of excessive force, it said, "are likely frustrated by their inability to obtain complete and reliable information on incidents of police use of force. Even the number of major incidents of use of excessive force is unknown, and our knowledge of the overall incidence of use of force is gained only by occasional, expensive studies that provide 'snapshots' of incidents and patterns during fixed periods."
Emergency rooms weren't even mentioned in that paper as a source of data, and the results of the current survey indicate that whatever information is being gleaned about police violence from emergency room physicians at the moment certainly understates the size of the problem.
The authors of the paper call for national guidelines instructing emergency room physicians on what to do when they encounter incidents involving police use of excessive force, including reporting such attacks and ways to advocate for the patients who were on the receiving end of the abuse.
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Comments
Legal justification for police use of force is entirely contextual and idiosyncratic. In other words looking at injuries from an ER patient tells a physician absolutely nothing about whether force was justified or excessive since the injuries do not, in themselves, tell the story of what happened during the encounter. This report has a sum total of zero benefit to anyone examining the issue of police use of force. To suggest that ER personnel should report suspected use of force in the same manner as domestic violence or child abuse is to follow a flawed comparison. Family violence victims have an inherent right not to be assaulted and abused. Persons who fail to comply with the law by submitting to an arrest have a right only to be forced to comply by "reasonable" means - a term that requires a subjective interpretation of a myriad of facts, circumstances, and contextual cues to define in any given scenario. It is the police officer who has the right to be free from assault and injury, just as it is the right of any citizen to be free from attack in the course of their daily occupation. The small difference is that, in acting on behalf of all of us, the police officer is empowered to lawfully employ force to overcome resistance. The outcome of that force is not what measures the justification of its use.
i disagree with JShults that one cannot determine from a survey of injuries that excessive force was used. any evidence that a suspect sustained injuries beyond those which would have incapacitated him is indicative of excessive force and should be reported.
police are endowed with potentially dangerous amounts of power, and should therefore bear the burden of a higher degree of scrutiny and accountability.
I'd expect ER Docs to be FAR more aware of the human extremes - and what it takes to restrain a human in all types of those situations. I did work a number of years in the hospital laboratory field and I've seen quite a bit. But here - well let's just compare skill sets:
Cop: HS Grad + Police Academy
Doc: 4 years College + 4 years Medical School + 1 year Internship + 4-5 years Residency.
Hmm 1 year post HS for a Cop and at least 13 years post HS for the Doctor. I'm with the docs on this one.
George:
many (read most) police departments require at least 60 hours (2 years) of college, and a very substantial portion require a Bachelor's degree... it still isn't a medical degree, but when is the last time that doctor had to stop somebody strung out on PCP?
having been an er doctor for 15 plus years i want to commend the police on their amazing restraint and kindness that i have seen in the face of patient mental illness and drug addicted intoxicated behavior. a huge thank you goes out from me for their amazing ability to act professionally under hugely challenging situations.
ER doctor's aren't going to report it because they DON'T KNOW the circumstances surrounding the incident and injuries, and would be foolish and ignorant to do so. Jon B, I agree...how much force is excessive to apprehend someone on PCP? No doctor would be able to make that determination. Regardless of their education level or expertise.
"the questions asked respondents to make a subjective judgement,
most often without objective evidence; as such, this
study reflects EPs’ perceptions of events rather than what
actually happened...The last paragraph of the "study". And from that, you say, police use too much force. That's hardly a study, asking a bunch of doctors for their subjective opinion of past incidents they can remember.
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