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– The study of police use of force remains a primary concern of policing scholars; however, over the course of the last several decades, the focus has shifted from deadly and excessive force to a broader range of police behaviors that are coercive in nature, but not necessarily lethal, violent, or physical. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the critical disjuncture between the conceptualization of police use of force and operationalizations of the construct throughout policing literature.

– The current study provides a thorough, systematic review of 53 police use of force studies published in peer-reviewed outlets. These manuscripts were reviewed to determine whether authors cited a conceptualization of use of force and explained how the construct was operationalized, as well as the police behaviors captured in measures of force …