Police Use of Force Declined in 2007

Austin Police arrested slightly fewer people in 2007, but used force less often when making those arrests, according to the department's annual use-of-force (or, more recently coined, "response to resistance") report. APD officers made 51,465 arrests last year, and employed force against 636 people; in 2006, police arrested 51,714 folks and used force against 822 of those arrested. Still, blacks were more likely to be on the receiving end of police force: of 11,915 arrests, police used force against 176 people, revealing a 14.8% force rate per 1,000 arrests -- compared to just 9.8% for whites.

As usual, the most force reports were filed by cops working in the city's downtown command, which includes the party districts (in 2007, 266 people felt force downtown, down from 372 in 2006), and most incidents occurred in situations where police were responding to dispatched calls for service (in 2007, police filed reports involving 380, down from 482 last year).

Police used "soft hand" force most often -- 324 times last year, which was second only to use of OC spray, which happened 196 times in 2007, down from 310 uses in 2006. Police reported using impact weapons, impact munitions, and diversion devices more often last year, although the use of those weapons was nonetheless infrequent.

You can read the entire report here.