Exploring Use of Force as an Interactional Process: A Qualitative Video Analysis of How Dutch Police Officers Use Physical Force

Objective: This article highlights how interactional dynamics draw police-citizen conflicts toward use of force. The objective is to explore and describe pathways to force, to forward an interactionist perspective on force. Method: The analysis is based on a small-scale qualitative analysis of 17 video-recorded encounters in Amsterdam that all escalate to some form of physical force. We coded and analyzed these videos inductively and qualitatively to identify common patterns, leading us to a categorization of force processes. We focus primarily on how behaviors of officers and citizens function in these encounters, and how they interplay and influence each other in conflict, and consequently how police use of force comes into action. Results: We observed two distinct processes that may help us understand this: what we call officer- and citizen-driven escalations. In officer-driven escalations, we observe citizens challenge the authority of officers, and officers responding with force to regain it, while in citizen-driven escalation, we observe citizens challenging the situational control and safety, that officers respond to with force. We found that what we call a behavioral ultimatum plays a key role in understanding how force comes into action. Conclusion: We discuss how our findings can be used to derive hypotheses about force, how future research can replicate and nuance our findings, and how the findings can be relevant for de-escalation in practice.