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The number of incidents in which Milwaukee police officer used force – such as physical force, pepper spray, a Taser or a service weapon – increased 15 percent in 2010, according to a new report submitted to the city Fire and Police Commission. The analysis, however, notes there was an 11 percent increase in arrests between 2009 and 2010. Meanwhile, use of force last year was about 30 percent less likely to result in citizen complaints.

The study, by UW-Milwaukee criminal justice professor Steven Brandl, was based on internal data collected by the Milwaukee Police Department. It found there were 529 incidents documented by police in which officers used force in 2010, including 50 incidents when officers used force against dogs or other animals, up from 459 in 2009.

TASER

But arrests, which are closely correlated with use of force, also rose to 38,641 in 2010, up from 34,707 in 2009.

“While the number of contacts between police and members of the community substantially increased in 2010,” says a statement from Fire and Police Commission Executive Director Michael Tobin, “the likelihood of officers using force has remained at previous levels.”

He adds, “The use of force by Milwaukee police officers is a statistically rare event, occurring in about 1 percent of all arrests that are made.”

As in 2009, the seventh police district on the city’s North Side accounted for the largest share of 2010’s use of force incidents, about 31 percent. The fewest were reported in the first police district, which covers the Downtown area.

District Seven officers made 6,601 arrests last year, second only to District Three, another North Side district where officers made 7,530 arrests. But in District Seven, force was more common: Its use was involved in 138 arrests as compared to 73 in District Three.

Citywide, 76 percent of people who were on the receiving end of force used by police officers were African Americans.

Use of bodily force was the most common (and the method most associated with officer injuries) followed by Tasers, pepper spray or some other chemical agent and firearms. Batons were rarely used: Only two uses of them were reported. Officers were injured in 16 percent of use of force incidents.

The study also notes that the complaint rate – the percentage of force incidents that later prompted citizens to file complaints – fell from 6.1 percent of incidents in 2009 to 4.3 percent in 2010, about a 30 percent decline in frequency.

The data used for the report, and past ones Brandl has done for the fire and police commission, comes from the reports supervisory officers are required to file.

Brandl writes that since 2009, “The amount of missing data in the (files) has decreased substantially and the completeness of the narratives associated with the reports has greatly improved.”

He notes, however, that the database could be configured differently to more easily track how many officers are involved in multiple use of force incidents.

In 2010, 94 officers were involved in two incidents; 35 were involved in three incidents; and 28 were involved in more than three incidents.

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