An Exploration of Officer Gender and Use of Force Incidents in a Transit Police Department

Abstract

The literature is unclear about whether male officers engage in more use of force incidents than female officers. One limitation of the research is that studies tend to focus on local police and have ignored other law enforcement. To address this, we explore potential gender differences among transit police officers using use of force data from 2009 to 2016. The results revealed a similar level of force used by male and female officers, but there appear to be some noteworthy differences by weapon type. While they were equally likely to use tasers, male officers were more likely to use batons and hand control and female officers were more likely to use firearms and OC spray. Additionally, we found some interesting differences in the predictors for taser use as compared to other weapons, particularly OC spray. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.