Excessive force cases
Most officers disciplined in Florida kept their jobs, analysis shows.
Most Florida law enforcement and corrections officers who were disciplined for using excessive force on suspects and inmates kept their jobs, according to a USA TODAY Network – Florida analysis of the state’s law enforcement complaint data.
From 1985 to mid-2018, there were 1,671 cases in Florida in which deputies, police officers and jail and prison guards were disciplined by their agencies for using excessive force, according to the analysis of Florida Department of Law Enforcement data.
That’s the equivalent of nearly one excessive force case per week since the state’s Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission began tracking discipline cases in 1985.
More than 70,000 people work as law enforcement or corrections officers in Florida, and the data show that only a small fraction are ever disciplined for using excessive force. But they also reveal that officers who use unnecessary force are often spared the worst consequences.
Fewer than a third of the cases, or 515, resulted in an officer’s termination or resignation. At least 104 of those officers, or about 20%, landed another law enforcement or corrections job in Florida, reporters found.
The commission stripped law enforcement credentials from 141 officers, and 44 voluntarily relinquished them, representing about 11% of all the cases.
An additional 175 received penalties ranging from letters of guidance to suspension of their certificates but were not permanently barred from working in Florida law enforcement.
Derek Chauvin, the now-former Minneapolis police officer charged with the second-degree murder of George Floyd, had previously used deadly force. Between 2006 and 2011, the police department cleared Chauvin in three shootings, one that resulted in a death. And Chauvin and another officer involved in the Floyd case faced a complaint in 2013 for drawing their weapons on a teenager, USA TODAY reported.
It’s unclear from the data how many of the excessive force cases in Florida were fatal, but media reports show some were.
Matt Puckett, executive director of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, said there is no acceptable number of excessive force cases. But he noted that “the predominant number of interactions with law enforcement end without any type of physical altercation.”
What happened to Floyd in Minnesota is “just unconscionable,” Puckett said.
“Nobody wants bad cops in a police department or sheriff ’s department or a correctional facility. We don’t want the bad apples.”
Challenging authority
The 1,671 excessive force cases are almost certainly an undercount of instances when officers used more force than necessary, experts say.
They only include cases reported to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and don’t include those that were unsubstantiated or violent encounters that were never reported.
Data on use of force incidents nationwide are also limited.
The FBI began collecting use of force data last year as part of an effort to create a national database, but less than half of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have submitted data.
Puckett said he was “a little surprised” there weren’t more than 1,671 cases, considering the nearly 35-year period and that Florida is a heavily traveled state with more than 21 million residents.
“I don’t think that’s that bad,” Bobby Jenkins, president of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police, said of the 1,671 excessive force cases, considering they date back to 1985.
But, he said, “there’s always room for improvement. That’s the reality.”
According to the analysis of the cases:
❚ About 94%, or 1,563, involved male officers.
❚ The average age of an officer accused of using excessive force was about 36.
❚ 1,142 – or about 68% – involved white officers, 19% involved black officers and 11% involved officers classified as Hispanic.
❚ About 59%, or 979, involved corrections
officers.
As of 2019, about 60% of law enforcement officers in Florida are classified as white and 21% are black, according to the FDLE.
The discipline data lists the race of the officers involved, but not the race of the people subject to the excessive force.
Excessive force most often happens when an officer’s authority is challenged, said David J. Thomas, a senior research fellow with the National Police Foundation and professor in forensics at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.
“Officers take this personally,” they can become angry and cross the line between use of force and excessive force, he said.
In Minnesota, officers couldn’t get Floyd into the car and could have used a Taser or pepper-spray to gain control, Thomas said. But once a suspect is under control, the officer must de-escalate, he said, which didn’t happen in this case.
“He’s lying on the ground and pleading. It went from establishing control to excessive. And you can literally watch it happen.”
Deadly encounters
The 1,671 cases identified by USA TODAY Network - Florida include officers assaulting motorists after traffic stops, injuring young people in juvenile detention centers, and punching, kicking and using stun guns on handcuffed inmates, according to media reports.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had 72 cases of officers being disciplined for excessive force, more than any other law enforcement agency in Florida since 1985, according to the analysis. Only the Florida Department of Corrections regions 1 and 2 had more cases.
In Jacksonville, Officer Jeffrey Edwards
in 2012 shot and killed Davinian Williams after Williams, who was unarmed, refused orders to put his hands on the steering wheel and reached under his seat, according to news reports from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. Edwards was fired, but an arbitrator ordered him reinstated with back pay.
Pensacola Police Detective Daniel Siemen in 2019 shot and killed Tymar Crawford, who officers had seen tossing drugs from the window of his car and then struggled with officers after a traffic stop, the Pensacola News Journal reported. After Crawford grabbed another officer’s Taser, Siemen shot him seven times.
Siemen was fired for violating the department’s deadly force, use of force and use of physical force policies. An Escambia County Grand Jury declined to indict him.
Most excessive force cases aren’t deadly.
Clearwater police officer Michael Leonardo was fired for using excessive force after he slammed a 13-year-old boy’s face into the sidewalk at a local youth shelter in 2017, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Volusia County sheriff’s deputy Andrew Jenkins was fired after he used a leg sweep to take down a handcuffed man, breaking the man’s leg in 2016. Jenkins was initially cleared, but the case was reopened when the Sheriff’s Office was provided a witness video, according to a Daytona Beach News-Journal report.
Collier County deputy John Dennison was fired after a 2005 encounter in the Naples jail where he used his Taser on a handcuffed man who was being combative and spitting at a deputy. Dennison later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge.
Staying on the job
Anthony Thomas, a community activist in Fort Myers, said he believes excessive force has been a problem with the local police department for decades.
When people do file complaints, he said, “nine times out of 10 they come back saying it was unsubstantiated.”
Thomas, the FGCU professor and retired law enforcement officer, agreed that complaints of excessive force may not be investigated, and if they are, the actions taken against the officers can be inconsistent and appear arbitrary. Sometimes officers from the same department commit the same infraction, he said, yet “one gets fired and the other gets demoted.”
Thomas said the reason so few officers lose their credentials or jobs is because the panel determines the facts presented in a hearing don’t rise to the level of termination.
“There has to be a preponderance of evidence to agree to support removing an officer’s credentials,” he said.