Use of vascular neck restraints in law enforcement: A case-study of Spokane, WA

ABSTRACT

The high-profile deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd have led to legislative actions banning the use of neck restraints by law enforcement officers. The debates behind these policy changes are important, but they are also entirely lacking in any data on the actual use of neck restraints. We write neither to defend nor condemn the use of neck restraints by law enforcement; rather, we seek to provide information to assist with data-driven decision-making about the technique. We present data from a police department in Washington State where, prior to the May 2021 statewide ban on use of neck restraints, officers had used them quite regularly: 230 times over the previous eight years. Results indicate that neck restraints were typically used when dealing with subjects who were physically non-compliant or actively resisting police, were associated with use of other physical tactics (rather than weapons), yielded a lower rate of injury to subjects but a higher rate of injury to officers, and resulted in no subject fatalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Police use of force
• vascular neck restraint
• vnr
• lnr
• chokehold

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Session Law C320 L21. ‘Chokehold’ is defined in this law as ‘the intentional application of direct pressure to a person’s trachea or windpipe for the purpose of restricting another person’s airway.’ ‘Neck restraint’ is defined as ‘any vascular neck restraint or similar restraint, hold, or other tactic in which pressure is applied to the neck for the purpose of constricting blood flow.’

2. From this point forward, we will use the term vascular neck restraint (VNR).

3. For context, these rates are higher than the estimated rates for cities of 100,000 to 249,000 residents (452 violent and 2,704 property crimes per 100,000) and are perhaps more comparable to the rates for cities of 250,000 to 499,999 residents (670 violent and 3,268 property crimes per 100,000) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2020).

4. This holds true when race and ethnicity categories are collapsed into white and non-white, Χ²(1, N = 788) = 0.14, p = .71.

5. At iteration 1, U = 69,386.00, z = 1.69, p = .09; iteration 2, U = 39,649.00, z = −5.26, p < .01; iteration 3, U = 19,577.00, z = −6.47, p < .01; iteration 4, U = 11,475.00, z = −2.69, p < .01; iteration 5, U = 4201.00, z = −2.03, p = .04; and iteration 6, U = 1202.00, z = −1.20, p = .23.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew J. Hickman

Matthew J. Hickman is Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, Criminology & Forensics at Seattle University. His general research interests include police behavior and quantitative research methods. He was previously a statistician in the law enforcement unit of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Robert M. Scales

Robert M. Scales is an attorney and CEO of Police Strategies LLC. He worked for 14 years for the City of Seattle as a Public Safety Policy Advisor, Director of Government Affairs and Compliance Coordinator for the Seattle Police Department. Bob also worked for 6 years as a Deputy Prosecutor for King County Washington and a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington.

Jared N. Strote

Jared N. Strote is Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington. His research focus is on injury prevention from the study of police use of force.

John L. Worrall

John L. Worrall is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics ranging from legal issues in policing to crime measurement. He is also the author or coauthor of 17 books, including the popular Crime Control in America: What Works? (4th ed., Pearson) and Introduction to Criminal Justice (16th ed., Cengage). He currently serves as Editor of the journal Police Quarterly and as Executive Director of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.