Survey Studies Police, Citizen Encounters

Law enforcement officers threatened or used force in encounters with an estimated 500,000 people last year, according to a Justice Department survey released Saturday. It is the first national study of routine interactions between police officers and citizens.

The survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 45 million people out of the total population of 216 million Americans age 12 and older, about 20%, have face-to-face contact with police officers annually.

There are notable disparities in the frequency, causes and nature of those contacts according to the race of the individual involved. Latinos and blacks are about 70% more likely to have contact with police than whites, and for Latinos those contacts are more likely to have been initiated by police, often in the investigation of a crime, rather than by the individual. Whites and blacks, on the other hand, are more likely than Latinos to seek out police to ask for help or to report a crime against them.

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The force reported in the survey included being hit, pushed, choked, threatened with a flashlight, restrained by a dog and threatened with a gun. Blacks and Latinos make up about half of those who have those kinds of experiences even though they represent only a fifth of the population covered by the survey.

The survey does not attempt to determine whether the threat or use of force was justified or excessive. The study indicated, however, that most people who experience the threat or use of force are taken into custody because 400,000 of them also reported being put in handcuffs. An additional 800,000 reported being put in handcuffs without experiencing any force.