Читать книгу Evaluating Police Uses of Force - Seth W. Stoughton - Страница 31

Assessing whether a use of force was reasonable requires asking whether the “the nature and quality” of the use of force is proportional in light of the threat the individual presented to a governmental interest. This requires comparing the officer’s actions to the suspect’s actions. The second and third Graham factors—the immediate threat to officers or others and the suspect’s active resistance or attempts to evade arrest by flight—are both concerned with the nature of the suspect’s actions, which we address in this subsection. We discuss the officer’s actions below.

When officers assert their authority by instructing a civilian to do something—to back up, stop, provide identification, exit a vehicle, or to put their hands behind their back, for example—the officer must assess the actions of the individual on the receiving end of that command. If the individual resists, the officer must assess both the nature of the threat and the severity of that threat.