A Policy Evaluation: Comparing Levels of Police Injuries Associated with the Use of Less-Lethal Instruments in Law Enforcement - Conducted Energy Devices vs. Other Less-Lethal Instruments

• Main Author: Adkins, Lydia Denise
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: ScholarWorks 2017
• Subjects: Conducted Energy Device; Democratic Policing; Less-Lethal; Less-lethal Instruments/Weapons; Police Policy; Policy Officer Injury; Criminology; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Public Administration; Public Policy
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3332; https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4435&context=dissertations

Police officers continue to sustain injuries during close proximity encounters with non-compliant and combative suspects. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine whether the use of less-lethal instruments, such as conducted energy devices, oleoresin capsicum, impact batons, and hands/feet defensive tactic reduced police officer injury during confrontations with uncooperative suspects at a medium-sized police department in a southern state. Fichtelberg's democratic policing was used as the theoretical framework for this study. Data were acquired from Suspect Resistant Reports (n = 409) written by police officers over a 10-year period (1/05 - 12/14). The dependent variable was police officer injury and the categorically ranked independent variable was the less-lethal instrument. A significant association was found between officer injuries and less-lethal instruments using chi-square analysis (p