USE OF FORCE DEFINITION ON POLICE OFFICER TASK

Law enforcement officers (police) are legally justified to utilize force in many situations to bring suspects to justice, protect others, and for personal defense. However, Police training on the use of force has no single consistent method in Indonesia to demonstrate the best response to subject resistance levels, even though many countries have adopted very creative use of – force matrices and continuums.

                Criminal justice research has persistently demonstrated that a small percentage of police encounters with the public involve use of force. While extreme use of force often gamers media attention, lesser of force are used regularly by police without notice. Research in the areas use of force, and subsequent suspect injuries, has focused on the level of force used by the police officer and the suspect, excessive force, and officer misconduct. The literature on suspect injuries, police officer injuries, and the environmental and situational factor leading to police uses of force, is limited.

                Force can be defined as the “exertion of power to compel or restrain the behavior of others” or when used in context of policing “act that threaten or inflict physical harm on suspect”. Generally, police force can be classified in several modal categories including: 1) deadly vs. non- deadly; 2) physical vs. non – physical; and 3) reasonable vs. excessive (Garner, Buchannan, Schade, & Hepburn 1996).

                “Deadly force “is used to define force that likely to cause death or some serious bodily injury (Fyfe 1988).

                “Non- Deadly force “is the application of force that is not likely to result in death or serious bodily injury (Klinger 1995)

                “Physical force” implies the touching, prodding, redirection, or physical manipulation of subject to comply with demand (Garner, Buchannan, Schade, & Hepburn 1996).

                “Non- physical” implies to use of threats or other verbalization techniques to gain compliance ( Clade 1987).

                “Reasonable force” is applied force which is necessary to achieve a legal goal, while “ excessive force” is applied which is disproportionate to what is necessary to achieve a legal goal ( petrowski 2005).

                The decision of police officers to intervene, or apply force, in given incident is a subset of discretionary choices facing them everyday. As noted by Davis “a police officer may be said to exercise discretion whenever effective limits of his o her power leave the officer free to make choices among possible choices of action inaction”(1969).

                Conclusion to use of force, and decision concerning the extent of force to be used, are within the discretion of police officers. Thus, an individual officer must decide in each situation whethere to ignore, or confront and coerce a citizen to follow his direction. Through observational studies of police work, studies that have examined police use-of- force reports, citizen complaint report, and from police/ citizen survey, it has become clear that police officers today rarely apply physical force (bureau of justice statistics 1998. National institute of justice 1999).

Sumber ( use of force/ Less lethal weapon)