I often hear law enforcement officers of all ranks express a desire to tell our own story, to take back the narrative, and to not let the media or others control the dialogue. Often, the wish is to demonstrate to our communities that the image of police that is often presented by the media or spread through social media largely misrepresents the profession and paints an inaccurate picture of what our officers do each day.

Unsurprisingly, much of today’s discussion about policing focuses on the use of force. Police use of force is often a lightning rod for media attention and community scrutiny. All too often, a use-of-force of incident can garner national or even worldwide attention and draw criticism and scrutiny to the profession as a whole.

As we all know, managing uses of force by officers is one of the most difficult challenges facing law enforcement leaders. The responsibility of law enforcement officers to enforce the law, protect the public, and guard their own safety and that of innocent bystanders also comes with challenges. Interactions with uncooperative subjects who are physically resistant present situations that may quickly escalate. Ideally, an officer is able to gain cooperation in such situations through the use of verbal persuasion and other de-escalation skills. However, if the situation requires it, an officer’s use of force to gain control in these and other circumstances is necessary.

Even when the topic is difficult, we have a responsibility to our communities to be as transparent as possible.

The difficulty we collectively face is that these incidents are often presented to the public without the proper context and without an understanding of how rare use-of-force incidents actually are.

Sadly, some of the reasons behind the public’s misconception about use of force lay at the feet of the police. By this, I mean that, until recently, the largest databases on police use of force were maintained by media organizations. Without having the data on use-of-force incidents, we let others establish and maintain the narrative about police use of force. The IACP, federal law enforcement partners, and other law enforcement organizations and agencies realized that this was both unacceptable and potentially harmful to community-police relations.

As a result, in January 2019, the FBI, working with the IACP and others, launched the National Use-of-Force Data Collection. Through this effort, the FBI now collects use-of-force information from U.S. local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement and investigative agencies in the first-ever national database on police use of force. The program is voluntary and thus relies on agencies submitting their use-of-force statistics. Arguably one of the most important things for agencies to submit is a report of zero incidents for each month in which they don’t experience a use-of-force incident. Don’t just think of this as a database for when incidents occur; it’s more than that. Its purpose is to shed light on the facts about these incidents, including how rare they are, so we need every agency to participate.

Why is this effort so important?

Our goal as police leaders should be to tell the story of our work, including use-of-force incidents. Even when the topic is difficult, we have a responsibility to our communities to be as transparent as possible.

Only through this national collection process will we be able to identify and understand trends associated with use-of-force incidents and ensure that all information is being accurately collected and tracked.

Therefore, to assist our profession in telling its story, I am calling on my fellow police leaders to submit their agencies’ data on use-of-force incidents to the national database.

The project focuses specifically on those incidents that result in the death or serious bodily injury of a person or that involve the discharge of a firearm at or in the direction of a person. Submitting the data is simple and is not time consuming.

Significantly, even if your agency has not had a use-of-force incident during the reporting period, you should still submit a “zero report” so the public and our communities have the full picture of the use of force in the United States.

To help guide agencies in this process, the IACP has developed a checklist for chiefs to assist you with the implementation of use-of-force data collection.

This effort is vital to our profession. It will allow law enforcement to truly tell our story and help enhance our relationships with the communities we serve. But it will only work if we all participate! I urge each of you to download the IACP checklist or visit www.fbi.gov/useofforce to find more information about this critical effort. 🛡

Please cite as

Paul M. Cell, “Telling Our Own Story: A Call for Police Leaders to Take Part in the National Use-of-Force Data Collection,” President’s Message, Police Chief 86, no. 6 (June 2019): 6–7.