Forceful De-escalation and Organizational Inertia: Identifying Novel Justifications for Entrenched Police Violence

Abstract

Despite reforms aimed at reducing racial disparities, the police department in this study experienced ongoing disparities in use of force. Through an analysis of the department’s policies, training, and interviews with officers, this article identifies a practice termed ‘forceful deescalation,’ involving preemptive low-level force against passive non-compliance. Falling outside official use of force classifications, forceful de-escalation emerges as the department attempts to reconcile reform goals with perceived realities of street enforcement. Justifications rest on presuppositions of: a double-bind between crimefighting and reform; verbal and passive non-compliance as threats; and low-level force as minimally harmful. Forceful de-escalation reveals how police violence is reproduced in response to reform. As attention focuses on “less lethal” force, this paper illuminates how low-level police violence maintains harms and inequalities associated with deadly force. Through interactions often escaping official scrutiny, aggressive tactics become reinscribed and normalized as “de-escalation,” perpetuating racial inequities under the guise of progressive change.