It is estimated that roughly 3,600 deadly force incidents that involve citizens occur every year. The use of deadly force is rare, however, and is only one option an officer may choose. Explanations of police behavior (detection, arrest, service, and violence) are classified into five levels of analysis: (1) organizational explanations, (2) community explanations, (3) legal explanations, (4) individual officer explanations, and (5) situational explanations. Situational factors play the largest role in explaining police violence. The “paradoxes of police work” suggest that the nature of policing dictates that police officers are often faced with numerous conflicting tasks, sometimes leaving them in a no-win situation. It is hoped that their training, character, and instincts provide officers with the ability to act appropriately. Assessing police behavior can lead to public distrust of policing and possibly public disorder. Situational explanations of police behavior suggest that “the structural attributes of police-citizen encounters will determine their outcomes regardless of the characteristics of the officers involved.” The manner in which police enter an encounter, the characteristics and behaviors of the suspect and complainant, and the visibility of the encounters are the primary situational factors that have been observed to impact police behavior. Analyses indicate that the use of both reasonable and improper force is more likely to occur in encounters involving violent crimes, Black citizens, males, those over eighteen, those who appear drunk or mentally disturbed, and those who demonstrate a hostile or antagonistic demeanor. The continuum of force typically consists of six steps: officer presence, verbal commands, restraints, chemical agents, tactical weapons, and firearms. To calculate the force factor, the suspect’s level of resistance and the officer’s level of force are measured on the same scale. Police work often requires officers to become preoccupied with potential violence and through this they develop perceptual shorthand to identify certain kinds of people as symbolic assailants. This may be a reason that officers are willing to escalate the use of force on the continuum more quickly than others. 83 references