In 2023, the St. Louis County Police Department saw a surge in police use of force, which commonly includes use of guns, physical restraint, pepper spray, Tasers, and canine bites. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that 2024 numbers are expected to surpass last years, a trend observed since the start of the pandemic. Officers and supervisors cite an increase in the reporting of uses of force, aided by bodycam footage, departmental force policy shifts, and understaffed departments as reasons for this surge in police use of force. Assessing an increase in use of force is complicated by the fact that the FBI does not have established standards for what would be considered use of force. Police departments define uses of force differently, and experts, like CPE’s own Matt Graham, Senior Data Analyst, acknowledge that this complicates comparisons:
“It’s basically impossible to get a comprehensive national accounting of police use of force,” said Matthrew Graham, a data analyst at the Center for Policing Equity, a nonprofit research group that works with communities to develop safer policing practices.
These partnerships give Graham an inside look at use-of-force data from police departments across the U.S. “Even behind the scenes the level of data quality and completeness varies greatly,” he said.
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