© Credit Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesPolice Commissioner William J. Bratton, left, spoke last month on the mistaken arrest of James Blake, a former tennis pro who was slammed to the ground outside his hotel.
Every police officer will have to detail virtually every instance when force is used not only in an arrest but also in other encounters with the public, including the sort of brief, violent detention and release that occurs routinely on the street and, in the case of the retired tennis star James Blake, is captured on video.
Officers, who have long been required to intervene when they see other officers using excessive force, will now face formal discipline, up to and including dismissal, not only if they fail to step in or report excessive force, but also if they also fail to seek medical assistance for someone who requests it.
The new rules for the New York Police Department are to be announced on Thursday by Commissioner William J. Bratton after more than a year of consideration by top police officials. They coincide with a rollout of 900 new Taser stun guns to patrol officers, until now carried only by some supervisors and by officers from the elite Emergency Service Unit.
"What we're developing here could become the national template for how do you not only investigate all levels of use of force, but how do you report it in a way that it is transparent," Mr. Bratton said in a brief interview on Wednesday.
Taken together, the department's new rules, to go into effect early next year, cover the range of police encounters with unarmed black men and women that have drawn widespread condemnation since last summer, from the death of Eric Garner in an arrest on Staten Island, to the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn housing complex, to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore.
Those deaths focused national attention on the inconsistent and incomplete data collected on police killings and other use of force. The Obama administration has sought to address the lapses and, on Monday, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James B. Comey, urged the country's 18,000 local police agencies to provide comprehensive data on officer shootings.
The New York Police Department, the nation's largest, with more than 35,000 officers, is now going further than most.
For years, each shot fired by a New York City police officer has been meticulously studied to look for trends in who is shooting, who was struck, when, where and why.
But no such systematic treatment was given to the far more routine episodes of force — baton blows, physical altercations, mace spraying, takedowns — that erupt in an instant on the street, drawing witnesses, complaints and, increasingly, video recorded by bystanders and officers' own body cameras.
In part, that was because the Police Department simply did not know how often force was used by its officers. Mr. Bratton admitted to a "hole in our data" in a letter to The Daily News in September.
Many of the everyday rough encounters between officers and civilians, which rankle observers but that Mr. Bratton has called "awful but lawful," are not presently documented. Officers can note force on forms filed for an arrest, but not after hundreds of thousands of other interactions, including car stops, criminal summonses and dealings with emotionally disturbed people.
The changes will not occur overnight, police officials conceded.
The department first started closely monitoring firearms discharges in the early 1970s, when they reached a peak of nearly 1,000. Last year, the department recorded 79, a new low. Of those, 35 episodes of gunfire involved an officer's shooting at a person, resulting in 10 deaths.
In the 1970s, as now, there was a public outcry over police killings — particularly that of a 10-year-old black boy by a white officer in 1972 — that ushered in changes to how officers used their weapons. The department even compiled a list of 150 officers considered violence-prone or unstable, who might fire their weapons or use force unnecessarily.
By more closely tracking every physical encounter, including by race, and requiring officers to justify their actions, police officials expect that the new data will capture an increased number of forcible episodes. But they also expect that those encounters will be better understood.
Every episode will be captured in a new form, known as the Force Incident Report. The Police Department will make public an annual report analyzing the documented episodes.
"Once you have the data," said Chief Kevin P. Ward, chief of staff to Mr. Bratton, "you can do a lot of things with it, analyzing it, as trends or individuals."
Mr. Bratton said he had discussed revising the use-of-force policies with Mayor Bill de Blasio before his second stint as commissioner began in 2014. "This is reflective of what Mayor de Blasio has been insistent on," Mr. Bratton said. "With transparency comes public understanding and with public understanding comes public support. And I happen to believe the same thing."
Officers will now be required to check a box on the new two-page form any time they use force — including a hand strike, a takedown, a baton blow, a bite by a police dog — or encounter force from a person, such as a strike with an object, hand or foot, or spitting, pushing or grappling.
But some officer actions — such as putting a person against the wall during a street stop, or drawing a weapon — will still not be counted on the new form or subsequent analysis.
In a signal of the growing attention to use of force by officers, the inspector general for the police prepared its own report on the issue. That report is expected to be released on Thursday.
Police officials argue that in a vast majority of cases officers use force to meet the force or resistance of a person they are interacting with. The structure of the new form appears intended to track with that notion, with "force against MOS," or member of service, on the first page, and "force by MOS" on the second.
While preparing the new guidelines, New York police officials consulted other departments, including in Los Angeles and Seattle, that have similarly overhauled their policies, mostly in response to consent decrees with the federal government. Officials also conferred with the city's police unions, which have chafed at even the suggestion that officers are using force irresponsibly. In responding to Mr. Garner's death last year, the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Patrick J. Lynch, said Mr. Garner would have lived had he not resisted.
For years, police officers have recorded when force was used during an arrest. Mr. Bratton has said force was used in only 2 percent of arrests last year.
Beyond the self-reporting of officers, criminologists often look to charges of "resisting arrest" as a proxy for the use of force by officers. A New York Times analysis last year found charges of resisting arrest in roughly 3 percent of all arrests made, suggesting officers have not always documented force even where required.
How accurately officers will fill out the new forms is an open question. Episodes around the country have shown officers' accounts — as well as those of witnesses — betrayed by video footage.
The new guidelines are to be adopted as a new chapter, 221, to the department's rule book, known as the Patrol Guide, and include definitions of levels of force: physical and pepper spray (Level 1); impact weapons, Tasers and other so-called less-lethal weapons (Level 2); and deadly force (Level 3).
Injuries — to officers and civilians — are also divided into three levels, from a minor physical injury, like swelling, to a "substantial physical injury," such as a laceration requiring stitches, to a "serious" injury, including broken bones.
The new guidelines also detail when a gun should be drawn. That issue gained new attention with the death of Mr. Gurley in November, shot by an officer, Peter Liang, who was patrolling with his gun drawn, a common practice for housing officers.
The new policy, Chief Ward said, will make clear that to draw his gun, "an officer has to have an articulable belief there is a potential for serious physical injury."
Officers will be explicitly prohibited from using force as punishment, retaliation or a means to stop a suspect from swallowing drugs. Chief Ward said officers at times held people down and tried to pry out drug evidence, leading to formal complaints.
The prohibition on the use of chokeholds will remain unchanged, keeping an expansive definition of a chokehold adopted in 1993, Chief Ward said. (Police officials had told the City Council in June that they would narrow the definition to match one proposed by council members, and also add exemptions.)
The overarching goal is to emphasize the duty of officers to protect people, including those in their custody, and to move to de-escalate encounters whenever possible.
Comment: