Chief’s Corner: F-bombs harm everyone

When I went through the police academy, I was taught that for some people, profanity was the only vernacular that they would understand.

Fast-forward, and now we have several studies that demonstrate the negative effects of profanity on people’s perceptions of the police or the reasonableness of a use of force. When viewing the exact same actions, people are more likely to find something unreasonable if profanity is involved.

Researchers recently provided a deep dive into this particular issue and found that officer profanity significantly reduces public perception of the reasonableness of force. [1] In the experiment, 234 participants watched the same use-of-force dashcam videos — some with clean language and others with heavy profanity inserted via captions. In both a domestic violence arrest and a warrant arrest scenario, viewers rated the profane versions as substantially less reasonable, regardless of the force level. The effect held even among participants likely to be tolerant of swearing (i.e., college students) and remained statistically significant after controlling for age, race and gender.

There is a big difference between an officer cussing at someone in a demeaning or disparaging way and using profanity as an expletive during a high-stress incident. The former is addressed with discipline; the latter should be handled differently. Still, both are harmful to the officer, the agency, and the profession. While using an F-bomb in a life-or-death situation is understandable, it is never optimal.

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It is up to us as leaders to address this issue and follow the research. Police leaders should do a few things to work on changing the culture:

1. Explain why it is bad for the officer to use profanity (use the research in a digestible format to back this up)
2. Have a discussion about this topic and work through all the issues.
3. Use scenario-based training to weed out the undesired behavior.
4. Address slip-ups through coaching and remedial training.
5. Reinforce professional responses to a tough situation.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Share them below.

Police1 readers respond

• I agree that using vulgar language just makes things worse. If you talk to someone like you respect them, they are more likely to cooperate with you and settle down to where you can talk to them.
• I am of the “never say never” mindset. I do not use profanity due to my faith as a Christian. That faith overrides everything else including my desire (because sometimes I sure want to) to use profanity. I will say that, in 14 and a half years on the job that have involved just about every kind of incident, I have never had to use profanity to gain compliance from anyone. Might it happen one day? Sure. But I purposely will try to make sure it doesn’t. That is just my take and my experience.
• The problem with using profanity is that the noncompliant people officers deal with are unfazed by curse words — they hear them every 10 seconds. When someone constantly drops F-bombs, it doesn’t have much impact, even coming from a cop. But it does hurt your professional image. I don’t care how many people argue that profanity is sometimes necessary — I disagree. You’re using it with people who curse far more than you do. It won’t shock, scare or rattle them. And consider this: When movie cop Harry Callahan gave orders, he didn’t yell or scream profanities. He rarely used them, and when he did, it was usually in a quiet, low tone that was more intimidating than shouting. Your words matter. So does how you deliver them.
• I dissent. In a high-stress incident, #1 should be communicating to the potentially-violent suspect/criminal in a powerful way that *gets through to the threat* — the armchair critic’s later hot-take is secondary. Arresting grandmoms peacefully protesting abortion? Then F-bombs are bad PR with no safety upside.
• Using profanity escalates the problem most of the time. Officers should never come down to the level of street level talk. Talk with authority and talk with intelligence.
• As a longtime DTAC/use-of-force instructor — 14 years full time and 11 years prior as a collateral — we should be cautious about using absolutes like “never” and “always.” There’s a big difference between an officer showing up at a “level 12” and immediately carpet-bombing the scene with profanity, versus a situation where multiple polite attempts to gain compliance have failed — and selective use of strong language is then employed as a verbal tactic. In that second scenario, if the use of profanity helps de-escalate and avoid a higher level of physical force, that outcome should be recognized by leadership. Upper management must take that into account. We must always apply the reasonable officer standard: Given the totality of the circumstances, would another similarly trained and experienced officer — not an administrator — view the actions and words used as reasonable?
• As a former police chief, I discouraged using profanity in normal police/citizen encounters. But when things go south and become physical, using it is not a big issue for me. When officers go hands-on, being a gentleman is not required.
• Thirty-five years sworn and still in it as a trainer, background investigator and chaplain. My experience, through thousands of contacts and many “knock down-drag outs,” is that profanity detracts from our servant-warrior ethos, professionalism, etc. And it often escalates rather than de-escalates. We need to train hard and be able to do “the hard” and stay in control when everything and everyone around us is resorting to the lowest common denominator.
• I have heard many police officers use the F word often and it is used more than those who may be in trouble. I hear it while in normal conversation with officers as well. I also see videos of people being arrested for that word as “disorderly conduct, or indecent language” which is wrong constitutionally.

Reference

1. Martaindale MH, Sandel WL, Duron A, Blair JP. (2023). “@#%$!: The impact of officer profanity on civilians’ perception of what constitutes reasonable use of force.” Police Quarterly, 26(2), 194–212.

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