Dip in use of force by NYPD officers credited to better training

The NYPD’s use of guns, Tasers and other force in arrests fell to a 22-year low last year, when firearm discharges by officers also dipped to near-historic lows, according to the department’s first detailed annual report on use of force.

Force was used in 1.3 percent of arrests, or 4,115 out of more than 314,800 last year, compared to 7.1 percent in 1994, the report released Thursday said.

Officers fired their guns in 72 incidents in 2016, up from 67 in 2015, but those figures were the lowest since the department began tracking them in 1971, officials said.

The report marks the first time the NYPD has examined the use-of-force issue in a comprehensive way by including incidents with Tasers, physical moves such as hand or foot kicks, and K-9 bites of suspects and officers.

The report was dedicated to Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo, 41, of Long Island, who was killed in November 2016 during a shootout in the Bronx with an armed suspect.

Many of the statistics focus on the last seven months of 2016, when the department began requiring enhanced reporting on use of force. Those changes were part of a wider effort to examine how the NYPD handles confrontations following the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who died on Staten Island after an officer put him in what was described as a chokehold.

Since June, there were 4,087 reported cases of force — including officer suicides — and the majority of them, or 63 percent, involved arrests, the NYPD said.

More than 4,600 people were subjected to use of force by police, and 246 people, or 5 percent, were seriously or fatally injured, the NYPD said. Nine people were killed by police gunfire, and another person was fatally shot when a suspect grabbed an officer’s gun, the report said.

During the same seven-month period, 1,855 officers were injured, and 210 of them, were seriously injured, the report said. Tuozzolo was the sole police fatality.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill attributed lower numbers in use of force to beefed-up training on how to deal with emotionally disturbed people, community outreach and a host of other efforts implemented following allegations of police brutality and incompetence.

“Our recurring training in enforcement encounters is teaching our officers de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to force,” O’Neill said in the report, “and our use-of-force policy is holding us accountable in situations when force is necessary.”