10 1 Police and Law Enforcement—Adult Forensicsthe highly controversial Rodney King incident (see the following case illustration).
Although the officers involved maintained they acted according to police standards
and that such force was necessary in the apprehension of King, the beating of Rod-
ney King has been cited as a clear representation of the use of excessive force and
stands to support the idea of the authoritative and aggressive police officer.
In the early morning hours of March 3, 1991, in a suburb of Los Angeles, police
began a high-speed chase in pursuit of a suspect who was driving recklessly and believed
to be dangerously intoxicated. The driver, Rodney King, led police on a chase that
reached approximately 100 m.p.h. and ended when he reached an entrance to a park
which had been closed off with a cable. After King, who was unarmed, stepped out of
his car, police attempted to restrain him by striking him with a TASER gun and then
followed by beating him repeatedly with their batons. King suffered multiple fractures,
broken bones, and internal injuries. As this was occurring, a citizen who lived across from
the park grabbed his video camera and proceeded to record the event. The tape was then
sold to television stations which broadcasted the tape nationwide. Initially the officers
were acquitted in court, although upon appeal two of the four officers were convicted
of excessive use offeree. The King incident produced widespread public outrage that
spawned numerous questions and concerns about police power and brutality.
Following the Rodney King incident, many police departments looked to es-
tablish a clearly defined set of guidelines for the use of excessive and deadly force.
However, more recent explanations offeree suggest it is impossible for such spec-
ified standards to be established and maintained because the act of force is based
on a "split-second" decision that involves an immediate analysis of the situation
by the police officer (Fyfe, 1985). Such an analysis is accompanied by intense
stress and the possibility of a life-threatening situation. Some experts believe that
to expect an officer to make an appropriate decision under these circumstances is
unrealistic.
In contrast, there have been several studies that attempt to understand the process
by which an officer makes his or her decision and the circumstances behind these
decisions. Binder and Scharf (1980) researched the circumstances that evolved dur-
ing a conflict and developed a four-phase model that describes the steps involved
at the final decision to use deadly force. This model submits that "the violent
police—citizen encounter is considered a developmental process in which successive
decisions and behaviors by either police officer or citizen, or both, make the violent
outcome more or less likely" (Binder & Scharf, 1980, p. 111). The model consists
of the Anticipation Phase, Entry and Initial Contact Phase, Information Exchange,
and Final Phase. Each phase describes the emotional as well as the environmental
details as they unravel in a potentially violent situation. The Anticipation Phase is
composed of the immediate involvement of the officer when he or she is first called
to intervene and the information that is relayed as a result. Entry and Initial Contact
include what the officer is confronted with when arriving at the scene and the de-
velopment of the crisis. The Information Exchange Phase consists of any verbal or
nonverbal exchange of information between the suspect and the officer which also
contributes to the officer's assessment of the dangerousness of the situation. In the