Orlando Sentinel: OPD used force on 3,100 people in past five years

The Orlando Sentinel published the results of a 10-month investigation Friday where they found 3,100 people had been “hit, kicked, pepper-sprayed, shocked or had some other force used on them” by the Orlando Police Department from 2010 to 2014.

You should really read the entire interactive piece, but some highlights include:

• OPD used force in 5.6 percent of arrests. That’s double the rate of agencies of similar size.
  
• The city is currently facing 30 pending excessive-force lawsuits, but Orlando and its insurer have already paid $3.6 million in police brutality claims.
  
• Orlando officers injured 1,900 suspects during the period studied, and the majority of them (1,200) required medical treatment. 
  
• When the agency used force, 55 percent of the time it was on black suspects, who only make up 28 percent of Orlando’s population.
• Orlando officers used force on people ages 11 to 84. 
  
• The use of force peaked in 2012, at the same time as the number of suspects who were injured. Both those numbers are currently declining. 
  

This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2015.