@#%$!: The Impact of Officer Profanity on Civilians’ Perception of What Constitutes Reasonable Use of Force

• Published date: 01 June 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10986111221111332
• Author: M. Hunter Martaindale,William L. Sandel,Aaron Duron,J. Pete Blair
• Date: 01 June 2023

Article

Police Quarterly

2023, Vol. 26(2) 194–212

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10986111221111332

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@#%$!: The Impact of Off‌icer

Profanity on Civilians’

Perception of What

Constitutes Reasonable Use of

Force

M. Hunter Martaindale

1

, William L. Sandel

2

,

Aaron Duron

1

, and J. Pete Blair

1

Abstract

The current study was conducted to test how the presence of profane off‌icer language

during a use of force incident impacts how civilians perceive the reasonableness of the

applied force. The study followed a 1 × 4 independent groups design with random

assignment to one of four test conditions. Two dashcam use of force videos were

stripped of audio and subsequently transcribed with a clean and profane-laden de-

piction of the off‌icer’s language. Participants (n= 234) answered a short questionnaire

after watching their randomly assigned video. Measures include a 5-item reason-

ableness index, demographics, and test conditions. Two-way ANOVA and OLS re-

gression were performed. Overall, participants considered videos with profane

language to be less reasonable than the same video with clean language. While sig-

nif‌icant, most differences also correspond with medium and large effect sizes. This

research found that profane off‌icer language impacts how civilians perceive force

reasonableness. Practical and policy implications are presented to move policing

forward.

1

Texas State University - ALERRT Center, San Marcos, TX, USA

2

Missouri State University, Springf‌ield, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

M. Hunter Martaindale 601 University Drive, Encino Hall 324, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA.

Email: Hunter.Martaindale@txstate.edu

Keywords

civilian perception, community relations, policing, profanity, use of force

Introduction

While it is unclear that Robert Peel actually wrote the nine principles of policing that

have been attributed to him, the second principle states, “… the power of the police to

fulf‌il their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence,

actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect”(Lentz

& Chaires, 2007, p.73). While global surveys conducted by Gallop in 2019 show that

almost 70% of adults worldwide have conf‌idence in their local police, recent polling

suggests that Americans’conf‌idence in police is at an all-time low with just 48% of the

public expressing a “great deal”or “quite a lot”of conf‌idence in the police (Brenan,

2020;Ray, 2020). This is the f‌irst time in the almost three decades that Gallup has been

tracking conf‌idence in the police that approval of the police has dropped below 50%

(Brenan, 2020). It appears that regular media coverage of high-prof‌ile police killings,

such as Michael Brown, may have an impact on American conf‌idence in the police

(Kochel, 2019;Weitzer & Tuch, 2005).

Yet, even before the recent media focus on police shootings, American support for

police use of force had been decreasing. In reviewing General Social Survey data from

1990 through 2018 on police use of force scenarios that are prima facie legally rea-

sonable, Mourtgos and Adams (2020) found that the proportion of respondents in-

dicating that the use of force in these scenarios was not acceptable had been increasing

since the 1970s. For example, more than one-third of the respondents in 2018 said that

there were not any situations where they could imagine approving of a police off‌icer

striking an adult male. This suggests there may be a mismatch between legally rea-

sonable uses of force by police off‌icers and public perceptions. In order to better

understand what inf‌luences these public perceptions, this paper examines the impact

that profanity has on people’s perceptions of police use of force.

Imagine watching a police off‌icer arresting an individual who is resisting. During the

struggle, the off‌icer refers to the suspect as “sir”and tells him to “put his hands behind

his back.”What if the off‌icer called the suspect a “mother fucker”and told him to “put

his fucking hands behind his back”instead? Could this impact how one assesses

reasonableness for the off‌icer’s use of force? Does the use of profanity inf‌luence

perceptions of the reasonableness of force? The law does not consider this question, yet

the academic literature suggests that profanity impacts a variety of perceptions, in-

cluding the use of force (Baseheart & Cox, 1993;Patton et al., 2017). The current study

seeks to add to the literature by suggesting that the use of profanity by a police off‌icer

impacts observers’assessment of the reasonableness of the force. We begin by re-

viewing the literature regarding use of force by police, then turn to citizen perceptions

of police use of force, followed by profanity and the use of profanity by law en-

forcement. We f‌inally provide a theoretical framework for the current study.

Martaindale et al. 195