The King County Sheriff's office has posted a Use of Force dashboard on its website. The graphs and lists there detail over time from January 2014 to the end of 2019 what kinds of force have been used, what kind of incident they were applied to and what the outcomes have been. Under the heading of Officer Force Tactics used for example the dashboard shows that Grab or Pull was used 67% of the time, takedowns 46%, Weight 33%, Pain compliance 16%, Push 14%, Strike 12%, Hair hold 2% and Lateral Neck restraint was used in only 1% of cases.
The most used weapon was an electronic control weapon such as a taser in 46% of cases with canine bites much less at 7% and others even less with guns being used in only 1% of cases.
Handcuffs were extremely common with 97% of cases but even so 75% of cases resulted in some level of injury to subjects. In 21% of cases officers themselves were injured.
The sheriff made the announcement in a press release:
I am pleased to announce that today we placed interactive Use of Force dashboards on our website. Now our community members can query KCSO’s use of force data by day, time and location of force incidents as well as deputy force tactics. To our knowledge, we are now one of only two law enforcement agencies in the state, the other being Spokane PD, to provide these dashboards and this level of transparency.
What data is included in the dashboards? I contracted with Police Strategies LLC to conduct an extensive analysis of KCSO use of force incidents occurring in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Our intent is that the dashboards will be updated annually. Here is a link:
https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/sheriff/on-line-reporting/dash-boards.aspx
Further explanation of our uses of force can be obtained in our 2019 Use of Force Report, which is also posted on our website here:
https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/sheriff/documents/about-us/iiu-reports/kcso-iiu-report-2017-and-2018-final.ashx?la=en
My desire is to work collaboratively, with both county elected officials and the people we serve, to answer our community’s call for transparency, accountability and action.
Mitzi G. Johanknecht, Sheriff\
