Austin TX Jan 14 2013
By Eric Dexheimer and Tony Plohetski
American-Statesman Staff
Austin police report they are using physical force in more of their encounters with the public, an American-Statesman analysis of 3½ years of internal police data shows.
The steady increase in the reported cases in which officers use a weapon or their hands to compel compliance has occurred even as the number of times police come into contact with the public has steadily fallen during the same period. Arrests, too, dropped 15 percent between 2009 and 2011.
The result: Austin police’s reported incidence of force — the likelihood officers used some form of physical coercion during arrests — jumped more than 80 percent between 2009 and 2011, the paper’s analysis found.
In 2011, Austin police reported using force in 1,686 incidents — an average of 4.5 times every day of the year. Many of those cases had more than one officer using force, occasionally on more than one person. A large number occurred downtown.
The Statesman analyzed reports from the first three calendar years following a June 1, 2008, policy change. Prior to that, officers only had to report more serious types of force, but the new policy required Austin police to report all incidents of physical confrontation with the public. Commanders say the climbing numbers represent better reporting by officers responding to the directive, although the policy hasn’t changed since then.
They also argue that a more aggressive public is pushing officers to respond in kind. “The level of resistance against officers on the street has increased,” said Chief Art Acevedo.
If so, that would buck national and regional statistics.
In the past, the city’s police department has come under scrutiny for using disproportionate or excessive force during individual arrests. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated an investigation following citizen complaints.
Last year, however, the federal justice agency concluded that Austin police as a department didn’t use more force than necessary in its encounters with the public and had sufficient safeguards in place to punish officers who do wrong. In recent years, the number of Austin citizens who complain of excessive force has leveled off at about two dozen a year, less than half of what it was in 2007, according to the Police Monitor’s Office, a citizen agency that receives such complaints and provides feedback to the department.
But the federal investigation didn’t address officers’ frequency of force use. Experts say that’s because there is no national standard by which to judge such numbers. Nor is there a common set of guidelines that different departments use to count and compare force incidents, or even what “force” means. Consequently, there is little agreement or even understanding of the point at which a police department might be using force too often in its encounters with the public.
To their credit, experts say, Austin police use a broad definition of force when reporting incidents, including everything from a tackle to a gunshot. Yet even taking that into account, the city’s reported rise in police use of force appears to be moving it in the opposite direction of comparable cities.
In Portland, Ore., police use of force incidents have plunged steeply in recent years. In Sacramento, Calif., the number of such incidents by police has remained steady the past three years. In Charlotte, N.C., Seattle and Fort Worth, incidents of force use by police have either stayed steady or dropped.
Party areas
On a recent Saturday night in December, police officers blanketed the streets in the heart of downtown Austin’s most vibrant party areas — Sixth Street, the Fourth Street warehouse district and a stretch of bars and clubs on West Seventh Street, between Congress Avenue and Lamar Boulevard. The 2-square-mile sector is staffed by 58 officers, who patrol by foot, bicycle, horses and car — the city’s densest concentration of police by far.
The officers do everything from give directions to revelers to look for suspicious behavior and provide a visible presence they hope will deter crime. Over the course of a shift, they regularly respond to 911 calls for weaving drunks, bar fights and muggings — incidents that become more common around 2 a.m. as bars close and intoxicated patrons spill onto the street.
Frequently, officers said they must use force to break up fights. “It’s the nature of the work down here,” said senior police officer Robert Padilla. “People drinking tend to not think before they act. You can’t just sit there and watch them.”
Police in 2011 reported physically engaging citizens in the core entertainment district on more than 700 occasions — nearly twice every day of the year. In all, the EastSixth Street district accounted for about a quarter of all the police department’s use of force incidents in a given year.
Acevedo said that’s hardly a surprise. On weekends downtown, “all you will hear is sirens — drunks fighting, people passed out,” he said. “That huge entertainment district is a driver for us.”
Many of the encounters are chaotic. In a March 2011 incident on EastSixth Street, records show, six officers each filed force reports after mixing it up with six young men. Before the call was over, according to the reports, police had used a stun gun, pepper spray and weaponless hand tactics.
“You have your people who flex up because they want to challenge the police,” said officer Hector Ramirez as he patrolled the area.
Such police-versus-public encounters are increasingly common, according to the Statesman’sanalysis. From 2009 to 2011, the number of police use of force reports generated by officers working in the police district that makes up the heart of downtown’s entertainment area surged 92 percent. In the part of the entertainment district closest to Interstate 35, the number of incidents in which Austin police reported resorting to force jumped 150 percent.
It’s not the only place where police are using force in greater numbers, according to a review of the reports. In the police district centered around South First Street and Slaughter Lane, use of force reports were up 163 percent.
West of Decker Lake, in far East Austin, they climbed 192 percent, and in the Southeast Austin neighborhood centered around Riverside Drive east of Pleasant Valley Road force incidents reported by police nearly tripled over the past three years. Police reported using force in their interactions with citizens in the North Austin neighborhood around Rundberg Lane and Lamar Boulevard more in the first five months of 2012 than in all of 2009.
Administrators said areas that saw increases in force use also were locations with high, or growing crime. “We’re real active in those neighborhoods,” said Assistant Chief Brian Manley.
Police also are reporting using force more often on citizens with mental illness, noting 305 such encounters in 2011 — about 50 percent more than just two years earlier. Figures gathered for the first five months of 2012 show that the department is on pace to see another 50 percent jump over 2011. Austin police say the trend reflects the surging number of times they are summoned to calls involving citizens with mental illnesses.
In 2004, the American-Statesman reported that minorities — and African-Americans in particular — were more likely to have force used against them than white citizens. While changes in reporting policy prevent direct comparisons, that is still true, although in the most recent analysis the numbers appear less dramatic.
Overall, Austin police reported using force at a rate of about 3.2 percent of all arrests in 2011. For African-Americans, who are arrested generally at a rate disproportionately higher than their population, the rate is 3.6 percent.
Finally, the paper’s review showed a handful of Austin police officers consistently use force at a rate considerably higher than most. Officers who used force between 2009 and 2011 filed an average of three such reports per year.
But 21 Austin police officers each reported using force 40 or more times in the past 3½ years. Six of the officers had single years during which they reported 30 or more force incidents; one filed 71 use of force reports from the beginning of 2009 to mid-2012. Each worked primarily in the entertainment district.
No national standard
Experts say that, more than any other single factor, use of force incidents can define a police department’s relationship with the citizens it serves. That makes it all the more surprising there is no meaningful way to measure one department’s force incidents against another’s, or a single standard by which to judge performance.
“We’ve been trying for years to have a national standard or reporting consistency,” said Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who studies use of force issues. That is particularly true with incidents involving nonlethal force — stun guns, pepper spray, hand strikes, batons and so on. “We know a lot more about when an officer decides to pull the trigger than when an officer takes a swing,” Alpert said.
As a result, apples-to-apples comparisons between departments “are impossible,” said John Firman, co-director of the Use of Force Project for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
For starters, the most common measurement of force incidence — use of force per arrest — can be skewed by arrest data. Different cities arrest citizens for different offenses and at varying rates, depending on local policy. Portland, Ore., police make no arrests for marijuana possession, for instance.
The most common difference, however, is what different departments consider a use of force. “Every police department has a little bit different definition,” said Steven Brandl, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee criminal justice professor who produces an annual report for the Milwaukee police department.
In Portland, an officer is considered to have used force not only if he manhandles a suspect, but also if he simply points his gun at a citizen, regardless of whether or not he ever pulls the trigger. In Milwaukee, an incident is labeled forceful only if a weapon is used or if one of the parties complains of an injury.
Such differences can greatly skew comparisons. In 2011, with a population roughly comparable to Austin, Fort Worth’s police department reported 288 uses of force; Sacramento showed 216 and Charlotte had 471. Austin police reported nearly 1,700 incidents over the same period.
Acevedo said a big reason that Austin’s use of force has climbed in recent years is because officers are becoming better at reporting such incidents. There is no way to measure that, however. Austin’s force reporting rules haven’t changed in the 4½ years since June 2008, following the Justice Department investigation, which recommended broad reforms.
Alcohol a factor
Finding an explanation for Austin’s swelling number of force reports is difficult. Researchers say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, police deploy force in response to their subjects’ behavior.
“In all the studies we’ve done, the initial use of force is in reaction to suspects’ action or provocation,” Alpert said. Added Sgt. Pete Simpson of the Portland Police Department, “We’re not encountering sewing circles.”
So Acevedo and some others say it stands to reason that if officers are reporting using more force, it’s because people are behaving more aggressively toward police. “Every city I’ve looked at, I’ve seen more assaults” against police, said Alpert.
Austin Police Department figures show a 30 percent increase, or about 150 more cases of resistance against its officers in 2011 than in 2009. Nationally, assaults on law enforcement officers dropped 10 percent between 2007 and 2011, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Locally, use of force reports filed by the Travis County Sheriff’s Department — deputies file only if someone is injured or a weapon was used — dropped slightly between 2009 and 2011.
Another possible reason for Austin’s high force reporting numbers is that most physical altercations occur when a suspect is being taken into custody — and, while precise comparisons are difficult, Austin police report arresting people far more often than officers in similarly sized cities. In Portland, police make about 30,000 arrests every year; Fort Worth’s officers arrest about 38,000 annually, Charlotte about 27,000.
Last year, by comparison, Austin police reported nearly 59,000 arrests — 160 every day. In 2009, the number was 69,000.
Put another way, Austin arrests equal about 7.5 percent of its total population — double the ratio in Charlotte and 50 percent higher than in Portland and Sacramento. The rate is higher even than Dallas’s 5.9 percent.
Local police are particularly aggressive when it comes to alcohol-related detentions. Officers in Travis County — the vast majority Austin police — file about 7,000 DWI cases a year, more than any other Texas county except Harris, which includes Houston, according to the state Office of Court Administration. (The Statesman has reported that about 30 percent of the cases were dropped because prosecutors said the evidence was too weak to take the case to court.)
The city’s policy of flooding the downtown entertainment area with officers also means a commensurately high volume of arrests. “Officer presence deters more crime,” said Shannon Edmonds, governmental relations director for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, which represents prosecutors. “But it also results in more arrests.”
Many of those arrests are alcohol-related. Since 2007, Austin police have filed about 6,000 public intoxication cases each year — an average of 16 every day.
Because the definition of intoxication is up to the individual arresting officer, defense attorneys have questioned if many of the arrests are necessary. “The numbers are completely absurd,” said Austin lawyer Mindy Montford. “I think it tends to be a crowd control technique.”
While it isn’t clear how many public intoxication arrests required force, what is clear is that officers who reported using force along Sixth Street said their subjects were intoxicated in more than 80 percent of the incidents. The highest intoxication rate was in the zone encompassing West Campus — about 85 percent of force subjects were reported to be drunk. Citywide, the number of intoxicated subjects on whom officers used force doubled between 2009 and 2011.
The Statesman’s analysis of city reports also shows what some experts say could be a potential red flag: Of the 4,600 subjects who had force used against them by Austin police since 2009, 699 — about 1 in 7 — weren’t subsequently arrested.
“If there’s use of force without arrests, that could be a problem,” said Alpert. “I’d want to know what’s going on there.” He said the large number suggests that police could be using physical force against citizens in instances that don’t merit it.
Manley said it was difficult to account for all those cases. But he said it was rare for police to use force without making an arrest, so many of the incidents likely included juveniles released to their parents or defendants cited with a crime but released without being detained.
Acevedo points to Austin’s low crime rate as evidence the department’s approach was producing results. He noted that the city was recently named the country’s third-safest large metropolis.
The steady increase in the reported cases in which officers use a weapon or their hands to compel compliance has occurred even as the number of times police come into contact with the public has steadily fallen during the same period. Arrests, too, dropped 15 percent between 2009 and 2011.
The result: Austin police’s reported incidence of force — the likelihood officers used some form of physical coercion during arrests — jumped more than 80 percent between 2009 and 2011, the paper’s analysis found.
In 2011, Austin police reported using force in 1,686 incidents — an average of 4.5 times every day of the year. Many of those cases had more than one officer using force, occasionally on more than one person. A large number occurred downtown.
The Statesman analyzed reports from the first three calendar years following a June 1, 2008, policy change. Prior to that, officers only had to report more serious types of force, but the new policy required Austin police to report all incidents of physical confrontation with the public. Commanders say the climbing numbers represent better reporting by officers responding to the directive, although the policy hasn’t changed since then.
They also argue that a more aggressive public is pushing officers to respond in kind. “The level of resistance against officers on the street has increased,” said Chief Art Acevedo.
If so, that would buck national and regional statistics.
In the past, the city’s police department has come under scrutiny for using disproportionate or excessive force during individual arrests. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated an investigation following citizen complaints.
Last year, however, the federal justice agency concluded that Austin police as a department didn’t use more force than necessary in its encounters with the public and had sufficient safeguards in place to punish officers who do wrong. In recent years, the number of Austin citizens who complain of excessive force has leveled off at about two dozen a year, less than half of what it was in 2007, according to the Police Monitor’s Office, a citizen agency that receives such complaints and provides feedback to the department.
But the federal investigation didn’t address officers’ frequency of force use. Experts say that’s because there is no national standard by which to judge such numbers. Nor is there a common set of guidelines that different departments use to count and compare force incidents, or even what “force” means. Consequently, there is little agreement or even understanding of the point at which a police department might be using force too often in its encounters with the public.
To their credit, experts say, Austin police use a broad definition of force when reporting incidents, including everything from a tackle to a gunshot. Yet even taking that into account, the city’s reported rise in police use of force appears to be moving it in the opposite direction of comparable cities.
In Portland, Ore., police use of force incidents have plunged steeply in recent years. In Sacramento, Calif., the number of such incidents by police has remained steady the past three years. In Charlotte, N.C., Seattle and Fort Worth, incidents of force use by police have either stayed steady or dropped.
Party areas
On a recent Saturday night in December, police officers blanketed the streets in the heart of downtown Austin’s most vibrant party areas — Sixth Street, the Fourth Street warehouse district and a stretch of bars and clubs on West Seventh Street, between Congress Avenue and Lamar Boulevard. The 2-square-mile sector is staffed by 58 officers, who patrol by foot, bicycle, horses and car — the city’s densest concentration of police by far.
The officers do everything from give directions to revelers to look for suspicious behavior and provide a visible presence they hope will deter crime. Over the course of a shift, they regularly respond to 911 calls for weaving drunks, bar fights and muggings — incidents that become more common around 2 a.m. as bars close and intoxicated patrons spill onto the street.
Frequently, officers said they must use force to break up fights. “It’s the nature of the work down here,” said senior police officer Robert Padilla. “People drinking tend to not think before they act. You can’t just sit there and watch them.”
Police in 2011 reported physically engaging citizens in the core entertainment district on more than 700 occasions — nearly twice every day of the year. In all, the EastSixth Street district accounted for about a quarter of all the police department’s use of force incidents in a given year.
Acevedo said that’s hardly a surprise. On weekends downtown, “all you will hear is sirens — drunks fighting, people passed out,” he said. “That huge entertainment district is a driver for us.”
Many of the encounters are chaotic. In a March 2011 incident on EastSixth Street, records show, six officers each filed force reports after mixing it up with six young men. Before the call was over, according to the reports, police had used a stun gun, pepper spray and weaponless hand tactics.
“You have your people who flex up because they want to challenge the police,” said officer Hector Ramirez as he patrolled the area.
Such police-versus-public encounters are increasingly common, according to the Statesman’sanalysis. From 2009 to 2011, the number of police use of force reports generated by officers working in the police district that makes up the heart of downtown’s entertainment area surged 92 percent. In the part of the entertainment district closest to Interstate 35, the number of incidents in which Austin police reported resorting to force jumped 150 percent.
It’s not the only place where police are using force in greater numbers, according to a review of the reports. In the police district centered around South First Street and Slaughter Lane, use of force reports were up 163 percent.
West of Decker Lake, in far East Austin, they climbed 192 percent, and in the Southeast Austin neighborhood centered around Riverside Drive east of Pleasant Valley Road force incidents reported by police nearly tripled over the past three years. Police reported using force in their interactions with citizens in the North Austin neighborhood around Rundberg Lane and Lamar Boulevard more in the first five months of 2012 than in all of 2009.
Administrators said areas that saw increases in force use also were locations with high, or growing crime. “We’re real active in those neighborhoods,” said Assistant Chief Brian Manley.
Police also are reporting using force more often on citizens with mental illness, noting 305 such encounters in 2011 — about 50 percent more than just two years earlier. Figures gathered for the first five months of 2012 show that the department is on pace to see another 50 percent jump over 2011. Austin police say the trend reflects the surging number of times they are summoned to calls involving citizens with mental illnesses.
In 2004, the American-Statesman reported that minorities — and African-Americans in particular — were more likely to have force used against them than white citizens. While changes in reporting policy prevent direct comparisons, that is still true, although in the most recent analysis the numbers appear less dramatic.
Overall, Austin police reported using force at a rate of about 3.2 percent of all arrests in 2011. For African-Americans, who are arrested generally at a rate disproportionately higher than their population, the rate is 3.6 percent.
Finally, the paper’s review showed a handful of Austin police officers consistently use force at a rate considerably higher than most. Officers who used force between 2009 and 2011 filed an average of three such reports per year.
But 21 Austin police officers each reported using force 40 or more times in the past 3½ years. Six of the officers had single years during which they reported 30 or more force incidents; one filed 71 use of force reports from the beginning of 2009 to mid-2012. Each worked primarily in the entertainment district.
No national standard
Experts say that, more than any other single factor, use of force incidents can define a police department’s relationship with the citizens it serves. That makes it all the more surprising there is no meaningful way to measure one department’s force incidents against another’s, or a single standard by which to judge performance.
“We’ve been trying for years to have a national standard or reporting consistency,” said Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who studies use of force issues. That is particularly true with incidents involving nonlethal force — stun guns, pepper spray, hand strikes, batons and so on. “We know a lot more about when an officer decides to pull the trigger than when an officer takes a swing,” Alpert said.
As a result, apples-to-apples comparisons between departments “are impossible,” said John Firman, co-director of the Use of Force Project for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
For starters, the most common measurement of force incidence — use of force per arrest — can be skewed by arrest data. Different cities arrest citizens for different offenses and at varying rates, depending on local policy. Portland, Ore., police make no arrests for marijuana possession, for instance.
The most common difference, however, is what different departments consider a use of force. “Every police department has a little bit different definition,” said Steven Brandl, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee criminal justice professor who produces an annual report for the Milwaukee police department.
In Portland, an officer is considered to have used force not only if he manhandles a suspect, but also if he simply points his gun at a citizen, regardless of whether or not he ever pulls the trigger. In Milwaukee, an incident is labeled forceful only if a weapon is used or if one of the parties complains of an injury.
Such differences can greatly skew comparisons. In 2011, with a population roughly comparable to Austin, Fort Worth’s police department reported 288 uses of force; Sacramento showed 216 and Charlotte had 471. Austin police reported nearly 1,700 incidents over the same period.
Acevedo said a big reason that Austin’s use of force has climbed in recent years is because officers are becoming better at reporting such incidents. There is no way to measure that, however. Austin’s force reporting rules haven’t changed in the 4½ years since June 2008, following the Justice Department investigation, which recommended broad reforms.
Alcohol a factor
Finding an explanation for Austin’s swelling number of force reports is difficult. Researchers say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, police deploy force in response to their subjects’ behavior.
“In all the studies we’ve done, the initial use of force is in reaction to suspects’ action or provocation,” Alpert said. Added Sgt. Pete Simpson of the Portland Police Department, “We’re not encountering sewing circles.”
So Acevedo and some others say it stands to reason that if officers are reporting using more force, it’s because people are behaving more aggressively toward police. “Every city I’ve looked at, I’ve seen more assaults” against police, said Alpert.
Austin Police Department figures show a 30 percent increase, or about 150 more cases of resistance against its officers in 2011 than in 2009. Nationally, assaults on law enforcement officers dropped 10 percent between 2007 and 2011, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Locally, use of force reports filed by the Travis County Sheriff’s Department — deputies file only if someone is injured or a weapon was used — dropped slightly between 2009 and 2011.
Another possible reason for Austin’s high force reporting numbers is that most physical altercations occur when a suspect is being taken into custody — and, while precise comparisons are difficult, Austin police report arresting people far more often than officers in similarly sized cities. In Portland, police make about 30,000 arrests every year; Fort Worth’s officers arrest about 38,000 annually, Charlotte about 27,000.
Last year, by comparison, Austin police reported nearly 59,000 arrests — 160 every day. In 2009, the number was 69,000.
Put another way, Austin arrests equal about 7.5 percent of its total population — double the ratio in Charlotte and 50 percent higher than in Portland and Sacramento. The rate is higher even than Dallas’s 5.9 percent.
Local police are particularly aggressive when it comes to alcohol-related detentions. Officers in Travis County — the vast majority Austin police — file about 7,000 DWI cases a year, more than any other Texas county except Harris, which includes Houston, according to the state Office of Court Administration. (The Statesman has reported that about 30 percent of the cases were dropped because prosecutors said the evidence was too weak to take the case to court.)
The city’s policy of flooding the downtown entertainment area with officers also means a commensurately high volume of arrests. “Officer presence deters more crime,” said Shannon Edmonds, governmental relations director for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, which represents prosecutors. “But it also results in more arrests.”
Many of those arrests are alcohol-related. Since 2007, Austin police have filed about 6,000 public intoxication cases each year — an average of 16 every day.
Because the definition of intoxication is up to the individual arresting officer, defense attorneys have questioned if many of the arrests are necessary. “The numbers are completely absurd,” said Austin lawyer Mindy Montford. “I think it tends to be a crowd control technique.”
While it isn’t clear how many public intoxication arrests required force, what is clear is that officers who reported using force along Sixth Street said their subjects were intoxicated in more than 80 percent of the incidents. The highest intoxication rate was in the zone encompassing West Campus — about 85 percent of force subjects were reported to be drunk. Citywide, the number of intoxicated subjects on whom officers used force doubled between 2009 and 2011.
The Statesman’s analysis of city reports also shows what some experts say could be a potential red flag: Of the 4,600 subjects who had force used against them by Austin police since 2009, 699 — about 1 in 7 — weren’t subsequently arrested.
“If there’s use of force without arrests, that could be a problem,” said Alpert. “I’d want to know what’s going on there.” He said the large number suggests that police could be using physical force against citizens in instances that don’t merit it.
Manley said it was difficult to account for all those cases. But he said it was rare for police to use force without making an arrest, so many of the incidents likely included juveniles released to their parents or defendants cited with a crime but released without being detained.
Acevedo points to Austin’s low crime rate as evidence the department’s approach was producing results. He noted that the city was recently named the country’s third-safest large metropolis.