Policing & Criminal Justice | Police Mental Health
The increase in UOF occurrences can be attributed to the following:
• Increased response to violent offenses. In evaluating the top 10 dispatched calls for service in 2022 wherein force was applied, Domestic Assaults and Aggravated Assaults comprise 44 % of the top 10 calls for service. This is significant in that APD officers are responding to calls which are violent in nature.
• We also evaluated results of Crimes Against Society, which is a measure of officer’ s self-initiated activity. When we look at those cases of Crimes Against Society, 79 % of them involved drug and narcotic offenses, while 15 % involved weapon law violations.
• Increase focus on de-escalation tactics involving time, distance, and additional officers can be attributed to the increase in the number of occurrences. Additionally, the nature of offenses being dispatched often requires a multiple officer response, both leading to an increase in occurrences when voluntary compliance is not obtained, and force application is warranted.
For clarity, a UOF incident is defined by a singular police incident which involved a force application. A UOF occurrence is defined by a total number of force applications applied in an incident.
For example, a UOF incident involving one officer applying one level of force on one subject is classified as one incident
with one occurrence. In contrast, a UOF incident involving two officers applying one level of force on one subject is classified as one incident with two occurrences. Some changes of note include an overall decrease in the use of CEW( taser) and an overall increase in the use of empty hand control( laying a hand on an individual to encourage compliance with a lawful order.) resulting from a policy change to elevate the CEW( i. e. taser) on the Use of Force Continuum.
APD continues to work to build trust with Arlington’ s minority communities to encourage voluntary compliance with police officer orders. Building this trust increases the safety of both police officers and members of the public.
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