Latest in a series of posts responding to the George Floyd killing 
Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday, August 11, 6PM: must register
Prof Holona Ochs:
This graph shows the purpose of the uses of force. It destroys the fallacy that police have to be forceful because their lives are at risk; instead it is most often just to make a successful arrest. In a context where Bethlehem primarily experiences nonviolent crime, one should question why police are using violence to complete their arrests of primarily nonviolent offenders.
It is also worth noting that the BPD use of force policy allows for very loose definitions of “threat,” and so the increase of using force to “defend” may be more about shifting ideas of what constitutes threat than a threat that you or I would define with all the facts in hand.
What is the difference between the yellow “defend another” and the green “defend another?”