CJUS 630 Liberty University The Use of Lethal Force by Police Research Paper-hw.pdf

Research Paper: Topic Selection Assignment Instructions

Crisis intervention in law enforcement can take many forms. Police are called to respond to potential

suicide, individuals with mental illness, unruly children, armed citizens, fights, and many other potentially

dangerous situations. In recent year, law enforcement officers have been criticized for their response to

many of these crises. Whether or not this criticism is warranted, it is imperative that law enforcement

agencies follow evidence-based practice when establishing policy. The only way to ensure this happens

is to conduct empirical research that identifies crisis intervention problems and offers potential solutions

to help inform the law enforcement response. This assignment offers you the opportunity to identify a

problem in the area of crisis intervention and propose research that would study the issue. The criminal

the following question: What is it I am researching? What is the current problem? What is the solution?

What do critics say about the problem and possible solutions? What does the literature say about the

problem? What gaps in the literature will my solution address? If successful, what are the implications of

my research? Add a brief conclusion to the assignment as well. Suggested topics include but are not

limited to: Crisis response to active shooter situations, suicide response, police training for hostage

taking crisis, police officer stress, and use of force. A thesis statement would include a statement of the

problem along with statistics or some other method for expressing the depth of the issue. For example, if

you were discussing suicide among law enforcement, you would want to include suicide statistics to

illustrate how significant this problem is and why it needs to be addressed. This assignment should be

one-half to one page in length, written in APA format, and include at least one properly formatted

Research Paper

The research will focus on the problem of the use of lethal force by police officers. The

use of lethal force has become a huge concern that has drawn a lot of attention from the media,

investigators, protestors, and even government actors. There has been lots of public outcry about

this issue leading to the development of movements such as Black Lives Matter, calling for

systematic changes in the police agencies to reduce the number of fatal incidents resulting from

police use of lethal force on citizens. According to Mappingpoliceviolenc.org (2021), so far in

the year 2021, the police have killed 414 people. The statistics are an indicator of the urgency

that is needed to resolve this problem.

The existing research on this issue has focused on identifying the racial disparity in the

number of deaths due to excessive violence by police. Much focus has been on showing that

eliminate this problem. Agency policies would be appropriate for this problem because past

studies have shown that agencies with stringent guidelines record low cases of inappropriate

behavior (Jennings & Rubado, 2017). These policy changes will restrict law enforcement

personnel from applying unnecessary lethal force when responding to crises, such as when

apprehending a subject. Instead, they should use de-escalation tactics when possible.

Jennings, J. T., & Rubado, M. E. (2017). Preventing the use of deadly force: The relationship

Mappingpoliceviolence.org. (2021). National police violence map. Mapping Police