![]() because this evaluation is from the perspective of a police officer, it necessarily incorporates how police officers process the facts and circumstances around them.” Put another way by Columbia University law student Jesse Chang, “the reasonable officer is a construct for a range of acceptable police responses. ![]() As Washington Post columnist Radley Balko argues, “It’s basically an invitation to let policing be governed by and ultimately only accountable to cop culture.” In fact, their assessment is based on a “ composite officer” representing the state of policing when force was used. Use of the reasonable officer standard is still subjective because those evaluating the officer are themselves officers. It may be viewed by departments to be objective because the evaluation is made from the perspective of someone other than the officer being investigated. ![]() Under subjective objectivity, the reasonableness of that officer’s actions would be evaluated by the officer’s co-workers or their superiors. So, let’s look at how a police department might evaluate the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force. Officer use of force is evaluated by a number of entities, including courts but also individual police departments. This is important because the use of force standard under Graham directly relies on the “perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene.” However, not being able to clearly identify who a reasonable officer is allows courts and law enforcement agencies to make a determination of reasonableness based not on objectivity, but something commentators have called “ subjective objectivity.” Research indicates that while the Supreme Court has used the term “reasonable police officer” in at least seventeen cases, there is no mention of what characteristics define just who a reasonable officer is. Unfortunately, after decades of application, the reasonable officer standard not only has a lack of clarity on how it is analyzed, but the Supreme Court has mostly failed to provide guidance on what qualities characterize the hypothetical reasonable police officer. Who would be against an objective assessment of any situation, let alone police use of force? Connor that excessive use of force claims brought against police officers would be evaluated using an “objective reasonableness” standard, taking into account that “police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments.” It was determined that officer use of force should be judged “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight” and “in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them.” In 1989, the Supreme Court decided in Graham v. ”īut what is the reasonable officer standard? ![]() After the bill passed, Lexipol’s founder said, “When we were dealing with legislators, one of the last things that we, law enforcement, threw in was a qualifier is exactly. Although AB 392 now requires the use of deadly force to be “necessary,” whether an officer believed their use of deadly force was necessary is still evaluated by the reasonable officer standard. When the California Legislature tried to replace the reasonable officer standard in an early version of AB 392-a 2019 law governing the use of deadly force- Lexipol successfully lobbied to keep the standard in place. Lexipol, a national private company that develops police policies and training, embraces the reasonable officer standard and helped draft use of force policies for almost one-third of law enforcement agencies across the nation-including 95 percent of those in California. This phrase is all too common when it comes to police use of force. While studying these policies, I’ve noticed one phrase come up time and time again: “reasonable officer.” Hoang Pham, one of our Research and Policy Fellows, shares about the “reasonable officer” standard and how it relates to police use of force.Īs part of SCRJ’s ongoing work with public safety, I’ve spent significant time reviewing use of force policies from around the country. ![]() Democratizing Knowledge is a regular se ries produced by the Stanford Center for Racial Justice (SCRJ), breaking down complex racial justice issues to make information clearer and more understandable for everyone. ![]()
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