Daily Police-Citizen Interactions

Every day, police officers and other law enforcement personnel interact with citizens on the street, and in most of these encounters, there is mutual respect and cooperation. In a small fraction of cases, officers use physical force—estimated at about 0.1% of interactions in the Netherlands (Police, 2022). 'Previous research has shown that a citizen's attitude and behavior can be important predictors of police use of force and/or arrest,' says Sunde. 'However, these studies have limitations, as they rely primarily on surveys and interviews—on how incidents are recalled after the fact and how officers remember them. But conflicts arise in the moment; what happens and how someone acts is determined in real-time.'

Pointing, Yelling, and Gesturing

By analyzing CCTV footage, Sunde was able to observe police-citizen interactions with precision and objectivity. He coded specific behaviors such as pointing, yelling, and argumentative gesturing, linking them to levels of police force used in these interactions and identifying common patterns. The result is an ethogram (a categorization) of police behavioral processes, providing a more detailed understanding of how police use of force develops.

More or Less Physical?

Sunde examined the relationship between four types of citizen behavior—compliant, bad attitude, noncompliant, and aggressive—and the degree of physical force used by police officers. His findings confirm the hypothesis from previous studies: police officers are more likely to become physical with citizens who have a bad attitude or act rudely, even if they do nothing illegal. The difference compared to compliant citizens is small but significant.

Sunde explains: 'When police use force against people who behave in an obnoxious manner, it is relatively mild—for example, holding them in place, separating them from friends, or giving a slight push on the shoulder, and at most, handcuffing them. This is very different from how police react to noncompliant citizens who try to flee or resist arrest. In those cases, police respond much more physically. The biggest difference is with aggressive behavior—when a citizen is physically violent or commits a criminal act. In such cases, police are most likely to use force, sometimes even resorting to striking or shooting.'

De-escalation Strategies in Norway

Sunde also investigated de-escalation. 'There hasn’t been much research on this yet. I was curious about how and why police officers naturally apply de-escalation as a strategy to resolve or even prevent conflicts,' he says. He conducted seven in-depth interviews with police officers in Norway. 'Norwegian police are not exactly the same as Dutch police, but they are comparable because both countries emphasize communication in resolving conflicts.'

The officers were asked to describe three conflicts they had experienced—a verbal conflict, a conflict with threats, and a physical conflict involving violence—and how they handled them. They used three de-escalation methods: preventive de-escalation, communicative de-escalation, and physical de-escalation. They also adapted their communication styles based on the citizen's behavior, using calming, autonomy-promoting, or commanding speech. A striking finding was that the interviewed officers sometimes viewed physical force as a form of de-escalation—for instance, to quickly control a dangerous situation. This challenges the common belief that the use of force is always a sign that de-escalation has failed.

Raising Awareness

Sunde’s research provides detailed insight into how conflicts between police and citizens arise. 'I hope my findings will be used in police training, such as scenario-based or VR training, to make officers more aware of citizen behavior and help them prevent escalations in their interactions on the street.'