The United States relies on police for safety, but data show police inflict violence against residents at alarming rates. Black and brown people, people with low incomes, unhoused people, and undocumented people experience the highest rates of such violence. Yet laws and general officer codes of conduct protect many police officers who take violent action.
Despite officers’ various roles, on average, their training does not prepare them for all the situations they will confront. They typically spend about 20 percent of basic training on firearms, self-defense, and use of force. This is a disproportionate amount of time considering their many other duties (including engaging in routine traffic stops, issuing traffic citations, responding to a wide variety of emergency and nonemergency service calls, interviewing witnesses and victims, logging evidence, and testifying in court). When they are on the job, officers rely on the tools and skills they learn during training, which often means they respond to crises using force and violence.
Amid an increasingly urgent national conversation that police violence is a public safety and health issue, understanding the amount of harm taking place in communities is more important than ever. To bolster their understanding, policymakers can turn the robust evidence that exists into action and center civilian voices to learn more about the violence they experience and get their opinions on effective alternative safety solutions.
What is police violence?
Though police violence is labeled differently, it meets the same or similar classifications as civilian violence:
- Homicide. Homicide, which includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, can cause collective social trauma to members of harmed communities, as well as direct trauma to firsthand witnesses. The criminal legal system often punishes perpetrators of homicide harshly.
Comparatively, when a law enforcement officer kills someone, it is described as “a use of deadly force,” rather than a homicide, and it is often not treated with the same scrutiny. In 2020 alone, law enforcement in the US killed 1,022 people. Nearly one-quarter of those killed were Black.
- Assault. Though most police encounters do not involve physical force, those that do can cause victims significant physical and psychological harm. Black and Latinx people are more than 50 percent more likely than white people to experience some form of force when interacting with police. In Washington, DC, Black community members (43 percent of the population) were victims in 91 percent of use of force reports in 2020. Native Americans are also disproportionately victims of police violence.
Police use of force is not categorized as assault, but the outcomes are the same. Health consequences of violence include depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicide for victims. Assault also has physiological effects, such as increased rates of cardiovascular disease and premature mortality. Police activities like raids result in mental and physical harm similar to that from assaults. - Sexual violence. Evidence shows sexual violence is one of the most reported types of police misconduct, only behind excessive force. Despite the gap in the research on police sexual violence, it is clear that it is underreported and rarely addressed. Victims are often women of color (PDF).
Though sexual assault is recognized as a crime, police sexual violence is difficult to address because most states lack laws that prohibit sexual conduct between an officer and a person in custody. This absence of laws allows them to use consent as a defense, despite unequal power dynamics. - Robbery. Between 2000 to 2019, police seized more than $68.8 billion in forfeiture revenue. These civil asset forfeitures have been carried out against innocent people under threat of use of force and jail time, such as in Tenaha, Texas. When civilians carry out the same acts at this high-dollar amount, the law considers them larceny or robbery if accompanied by force.
A hallmark of civil asset forfeiture is that cash or property can be seized without an arrest or conviction. These acts most greatly affect people of color and communities with low incomes because they are most victimized by law enforcement. Forfeitures are used by departments as a source of profit, and they’re often then used for law enforcement, rather than specific community well-being improvement. To support these policies, police departments have argued that civil asset forfeiture can deter organized crime, but a recent study shows otherwise. On average, when small amounts of money are seized, victims are unlikely to be connected to organized crime.
Reimagining public safety requires being informed by the communities affected by police violence.
For years, local policymakers have inflated criminal legal system funding by defunding public school systems and investing in incarceration , deprioritizing mental health care and incarcerating those with mental illnesses, and perpetuating the cycle of housing instability and incarceration. Funding decisions such as these continue to support for policing without recognition or discussion of the violence experienced in communities at the hands of law enforcement.
Recognizing and acknowledging that police contribute to violence—and that this violence disproportionately affects Black and brown Americans—is a first step toward change in policy, budgets, and community safety decisionmaking. Another key step is including the people most affected by this violence in conversations and decisionmaking.
And lastly, if policymakers want to lessen the violence experienced by communities, considering alternative safety initiatives is essential. By addressing risk factors of crime outside of law enforcement, cities get to the roots of harm and create community safety while reducing reliance on the criminal legal system.
Making evidence-based decisions and centering civilian voices are the first steps toward achieving effective alternative safety solutions.
The Urban Institute has the evidence to show what it will take to create a society where everyone has a fair shot at achieving their vision of success.
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