why use of force is a big deal

Everyday law enforcement officers face danger situations while still maintaining responsibilities. Especially dealing with dangers and unpredictable situations. Use of force by police departments has become a huge controversy for deaths around the United States. Tamir Rice, Mike Brown and Eric Garner names should ring a bell.

Just recently, unarmed teen fatally shot by a Madison, Wisconsin officer. Many innocent young African American men are losing their lives to someone that is supposed to protect them.

This is what happen in the case with Oscar Grant in San Francisco who was trying to enjoy the fireworks on the Fourth of July and got into an altercation with the police and ended in a tragedy. Officer Johannes Mehserle, assumed he had reached for taser but it was really his gun.

The computer-assisted reporting class was sent out to receive numbers of use of force incidents, use of force policies, analysis and weapons fired from various locations in Ohio and other surrounding states.

Unfortunately, I was not able to receive any information from Athens, Ohio Police Department. Athens County Sheriff's Office Records Clerk, Angela Waldron, told me "the files are not kept electronically and the records you are asking for are an excessive amount and are all boxed away."

According to Waldron per policy each report is reviewed by the shift supervisor, Chief, Captain and Investigations Lieutenant. I was transferred to many different voicemails of officers at the police station and no one contacted me back with information after calling numerous of times.

There was not much of a problem to receive records from Ohio University Police Department. The highest number of use of force reports was 12 in 2013.

When asked if Ohio University Police Department had any experts in use of force Officer Timothy Ryan stated, "the only way I am aware that one can be considered and "expert" is when a court grants the designation of "expert witness" for a particular hearing; OUPD does not keep records on such designations and I am personally unaware of anyone that needed such a designation for their testimony."

Here's an example of the police action incident report from Ohio University Police Department. The reports are fully detailed and gives a lot of information that happen during the incident.

Professor Karl Idvoosg gave each student a different state to locate an expert in use of force. North Carolina happens to be the state I received. I contacted a few different cities and got in contact with Office Ronnie Watson of Washington City, North Carolina.

The first mistake police departments make I don't want to say that because a police department shouldn't make mistakes, but the first mistake they is that we always reach for our weapon first in any situation," said Officer Watson.

For the students that did receive accurate numbers from their states about use of force they were very interesting, almost impossible to believe some students were not even able to receive information from certain departments.

In states like Toledo, Madison, WI, Minneapolis, Bloomington and Lansing, MI required a excessive amount of money for the request of use of force reports leaving students with no information at all.

Check out use of force reports  from colleges around Ohio to see how numbers vary in different cities from 2010 until 2014. After all of the class investigations it shows that many cities and colleges have problems with releasing public record request within their police departments.

Here's a demonstration on use of force and how it should be done.

As a result we learned as a class asking for certain detailed information from a police department is not as easy as it may seem. You have to work for the information that you need and it takes a lot time.