Of the 77 use of force cases the Roanoke Rapids Police Department reported in 2023, 100 percent were closed as being used in accordance with the general order that covers the matter.

Chief Shane Guyant said last year no officers were disciplined for excessive force.

The department did send four officers to crisis intervention team training to broaden their knowledge of de-escalation.

“Everyone had a reason behind it,” he said last week.

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Explaining the city’s use of force policy, Guyant said, “If you are an officer and you are to arrest someone, first we like to de-escalate. We try to make things really calm. No one likes yelling over top of somebody and nobody likes fighting somebody. No officer wants to come to work fighting anybody because you get hurt — nobody wants to get hurt.”

The chief said, “This isn’t the game of football where you get paid to tackle somebody and get hurt. We don’t make that kind of money and this ain’t what we do this job for.”

There are cases when an officer goes to a call and might have a warrant on someone. “You may have a call on this person for not behaving and not doing what they’re supposed to do. The first thing we're going to try to do is de-escalate it, diffuse it — let’s find the most non-violent way to handle this.”

That doesn’t always happen. “Of all the encounters we had last year, we stated we had made over 934 arrests last year and there were 24,000 calls for service. If you take the 24,000 calls for service and the 934 arrests that we had and we only had 77 uses of force — that is a pretty incredible number. It says a lot about our officers not wanting to put hands on somebody and get somebody injured.”

Most of the uses of force were from grabbing people, Guyant said, while pointing a firearm was the second. “When we have to pull out our gun and point it at somebody we consider that a use of force.”

It comes back to officers not wanting to hurt anyone, he said. At the same time, however, he said officers don’t want to get hurt. “We want them to comply and sometimes you have to go hands-on with somebody and you have to grab them and get them in custody.”

Officers don’t put a chokehold on anybody, he said. “That is outlawed in our policy unless it is a life or death situation. If I am an officer and I’m fighting for my life with somebody on the ground and they reach for my gun and they’re getting ready to shoot me, absolutely you can put them in a chokehold. You can do whatever you want to to save your life and to save the life of someone else.”

Guyant said the police department goes by the standard of use of force laws in North Carolina as well as Tennessee versus Garner which is a Supreme Court ruling “that has been drilled in our heads over and over again.”

It is a case that states an officer must have a reason to use deadly force. “If someone’s running away from you, you don’t have the reason to take that person’s life unless they're running away from you and they’re shooting at other people as they’re running away. But if the threat has gone away you don’t have the reason to use that force to kill them.”

Use of force, however, is not always about deadly force. “We didn’t have one deadly force situation last year. The 77 use of force situations we did have — we had to tase people, we had to point our firearms at people, we had to put our hands on people, we had to fight people — we got injured in the process too and people got injured also as well.”

The police department only used a Taser twice last year but that is considered use of force.

The police department used what Guyant described as a little more force on the African American population than it did with any other population. “We, unfortunately, arrest more in the African American population.”

Asked why, the chief said, “That population is committing the bulk of the crimes. I don’t why that is and I wish it would stop. I don’t want it to be that way.”

There were 29 people who got injured as part of the department’s use of force. “We also had officers get injured as well. We had at least four officers get injured in the process this past year. We had 66 officers get assaulted out of the 77 uses of force.”

Most of the cases were off traffic stops.

The third highest comes from disturbances and the fourth highest is assault calls. “People are already amped up as it is and when you try to diffuse it and then they turn their anger on you officers are to protect themselves and I expect them to.”