Police use-of-force policies should be replaced by those based more closely on legal principles

In the United States, many police forces determine how much force to use when dealing with suspects through a continuum which ranks different levels of force based on resistance. In new research which examines more than 700 use of force incidents in one city, Scott M. Mourtgos, Ian T. Adams and Samuel R. Baty find that there is very little difference in how police use less-lethal force, despite this apparent ranking. They argue that rather than using continuums to determine the level of force to use, US police forces should base their use of force on legal principles.