Most use-of-force policies utilized by U.S. police agencies make fundamental ordinal assumptions about officers’ force responses to subject resistance. These policies consist of varying levels of force and resistance along an ordinally ranked continuum of severity. We empirically tested the ordinal assumptions that are ubiquitous to police use-of-force continua within the United States using 1 year’s use-of-force data from a municipal police department. Applying a quantitative technique known as categorical regression with optimal scaling, we found the assumptions of ordinality within the studied department’s use-of-force continuum (which is similar to many police use-of-force continua within the United States) are not met. Specifying physical force as a “lower” force option than less-lethal tools is associated with increased officer injury and decreased subject injury. Our findings call into question use-of-force continua featuring ordinal rankings for varying categories of less-lethal force.
Police departments typically organize their use-of-force policies as a ladder where officers are expected to escalate from “lower” physical force (like strikes or takedowns) to “higher” technological tools (like tasers), but new research analyzing a year of police force incidents found this ranking doesn’t match reality. When physical force was treated as a lesser option than electronic weapons, officers got injured more often while suspects got injured less, suggesting the traditional force hierarchy may be backwards. These findings challenge how police departments train officers and structure their policies about when and how to use different types of force.
(AI-generated summary, v1, January 2026)
Citations: 9 (as of January 2026)