What is 'Objectively Reasonable'? Resistance and Force in Police and Persons with Behavioral Health Issue Interactions

Rachel Jensen

Advisor: Charlotte Gill, PhD, Department of Criminology, Law and Society

Committee Members: Evan Marie Lowder, Sue-Ming Yang, Brenda Russell

Online Location, #Online
October 23, 2024, 12:00 PM to 02:00 PM

Abstract:

While society’s expectations of policing roles have transformed over time, one of the most salient changes is within the area of policing and mental health. Encounters between American police and persons with a behavioral health issue (PBHI) have become a contentious discussion in the public forum. Therefore, studying the content and nature of these interactions is vital to improving crisis situations and other types of police-PBHI interactions. Often the specific circumstances of, and best practices for, assisting high-risk individuals are unknown to law enforcement until they encounter one another in the ‘heat of the moment.’ In these situations, officers may revert to traditional enforcement responses that increase the risk of force or excessive use of force. When officers rely on tactics that are more likely to increase aggression rather than decrease it, the negative experience can affect how citizens view police in future encounters, even if they are different officers. While citizen resistance and police use of force been widely studied, there is still not much known about how behavioral health issues (BHI) impact the occurrences of resistance and force in police-citizen encounters.

This dissertation addresses this gap by analyzing the person and interaction characteristics of PBHI and BHI incidents on resistance and force by analyzing a sheriff’s office calls for service and incident report data collected over a three-year period in a mid-size city. To better understand what characteristics, impact the occurrence of resistance and force, this dissertation uses both descriptive analyses and two types of regression analysis. Descriptive analyses revealed that while PBHI engage more frequently in resistance, police officers engaged in more severe applications of force. Logistic and multiple linear regression analyses on two types of resistance and force measurements indicate that certain characteristics such as the demeanor of PBHI, intoxication, and an officer suspecting the presence of BHI have an impact on resistance and force occurring in interactions between police and PBHI. The results from this dissertation can inform future research on the unique dynamics between police and PBHI and provide knowledge on how departments can better prepare officers to interact with those in crisis or suffering from a behavioral health issue (BHI).