ARTICLE 05 · MULTIPLE OFFICERS
One officer. Two. Three or more.
When additional officers become involved in a physical restraint, the physical configuration of the encounter changes.
There are more hands, more points of contact, and more possibilities for controlling the arms, legs, and torso. At the same time, new demands involving space, communication, and coordination emerge.
For this reason, simply recording how many officers were present tells us little about what occurred during physical control.
A more useful question is: how many officers were physically involved, when did they become involved, and what was happening at that moment?
Being present does not mean participating in physical control. Participating in physical control does not mean being coordinated.
NUMBER OF OFFICERS
The number changes. So does the configuration.
An interaction that begins between one officer and one person can change rapidly when additional officers arrive.
A second officer may take control of an arm, control another part of the body, assist with stabilization, or apply the handcuffs.
With three or more officers, new possibilities emerge. But several people are also acting on the same body, often within a confined space and over the course of only a few seconds.
This means that the number of officers should not be treated merely as a count.
THREE DIFFERENT MEASURES
How many were actually involved?
In an analysis of real-world incidents, at least three numbers need to be considered separately.
01
Officers present
How many officers were at the scene during the incident, regardless of whether they made physical contact.
02
Officers in physical contact
How many officers actually touched, held, moved, or used force on the person.
03
Officers involved in control
How many officers were simultaneously involved in physical restraint at a given point in time.
26 AGENCIES · UNITED STATES
When the dataset records how many officers used force.
A study by Kevin Petersen, Christopher S. Koper, Bruce G. Taylor, Weiwei Liu, and Jackie Sheridan-Johnson compiled data recorded between 2015 and 2019 by 26 law enforcement agencies across 14 U.S. states.
The complete dataset contained 3,707 incidents involving less-lethal weapons.
The primary analysis used 2,348 incidents from 17 agencies that contained sufficient information for the variables examined.
One of those variables identified whether two or more officers used force during the same incident.
01 26 agencies
across 14 states provided data for the overall research dataset.
02 2,348 cases
from 17 agencies formed the primary analytical sample.
03 37%
was the weighted proportion of incidents in which two or more officers used force.
There is an important limitation: this study does not represent all police encounters. The sample was constructed from incidents involving less-lethal weapons.
Even so, the dataset demonstrates something methodologically important for CS-001: the number of officers who actually use force can be recorded separately and analyzed as an incident-level variable.
CAUSE OR CONSEQUENCE?
Why were more officers involved?
An important difficulty arises when we attempt to relate the number of officers to the duration of resistance, the intensity of the intervention, or injuries.
More complex incidents may naturally lead to the involvement of additional officers.
Resistance may begin with one officer and additional officers may become involved as the incident develops. A planned operation may already have several officers present before any resistance occurs.
Therefore, finding more officers in incidents involving greater levels of force does not, by itself, allow us to conclude that the number of officers caused that intensity.
RESISTANCE & INJURIES
Before the number of officers, there is the behavior occurring within the incident.
Edward R. Maguire and Eugene A. Paoline III analyzed 2,265 use-of-force incidents recorded by the Tucson Police Department in Arizona between January 2018 and June 2020.
Officer injuries were recorded in 253 incidents â approximately 11% of the sample.
In 25% of incidents, the person displayed defensive resistance to arrest or attempted to flee. In 10%, the person assaulted an officer or another person.
In the multivariate analysis, defensive resistance or attempted flight was associated with a greater risk of officer injury. Assaults against officers or third parties were also significantly associated with that risk.
Physical tactics classified in the dataset as hands-on were also associated with a greater risk of officer injury.
COORDINATION
More participants create new variables.
When several officers engage in physical contact simultaneously, we are not simply adding force.
The structure of the interaction itself changes.
01
Division of control
Different officers may control the arms, legs, torso, or perform other functions during restraint.
02
Communication
Those involved need to recognize what other officers are doing and adjust their own actions accordingly.
03
Space
Hallways, vehicles, rooms, sidewalks, and other environments may limit how many officers can act simultaneously.
04
Interference
One officer may unintentionally restrict another officer's movement or access during physical restraint.
05
Transition
Participation may change as the incident moves from standing resistance to a fall, ground control, handcuffing, and custody.
06
Participation
Not every officer present performs the same function or engages in the same level of physical contact.
A DATA PROBLEM
One incident can generate multiple reports.
The structure of a reporting system itself can change the way its numbers need to be interpreted.
In the official statistics for England and Wales, for example, each report represents one officer's use of force on one person.
If two officers use force on the same person, two reports may be produced even though only one person was involved in that incident.
Research on physical dynamics must therefore distinguish at least between report, officer, person, and incident.
REAL-WORLD INCIDENTS
What should we measure?
To study the involvement of multiple officers during physical restraint, a simple final count is not enough.
01
How many officers were present at the beginning of the incident?
02
How many made physical contact?
03
How many were simultaneously involved in the restraint?
04
At what point did the second officer become involved in physical control?
05
At what point did the third and subsequent officers become involved?
06
What behavior was observed immediately before each additional officer became involved in physical control?
07
Was there an identifiable division of roles during physical control?
08
Did any officer disengage before custody was established?
09
How much time elapsed between the onset of resistance and the establishment of control?
10
At what point did any injury to an officer or the restrained person occur?
RESEARCH QUESTION
One against one. Two against one. Three or more against one.
Separating these configurations makes it possible to observe incidents that might otherwise appear grouped under the same general category of physical restraint.
Potential variables include duration of resistance, time to control, transition to the ground, attempts to flee, loss and recovery of control, handcuffing, and injuries.
But these configurations cannot be compared in isolation.
Level of resistance, the person's behavior, presence of a weapon, environment, type of incident, and the point at which each officer became involved may also be related to the outcome.
COMBATIVES RESEARCH · CS-001
Presence, participation, and sequence will be separate variables.
CS-001 â COMBATIVES Physical Control Study
Observational Study of the Dynamics of Resistance and Physical Control in Police Encounters
In CS-001, the incident will be treated as the primary unit of analysis, regardless of the number of officers involved or the number of recordings available.
The number of officers present will be distinguished from the number of officers who actually participated in physical contact.
Where the available evidence permits, officers entering and leaving the physical interaction over the course of the sequence may also be recorded.
This distinction makes it possible to study not only how many people were at the scene, but how the physical configuration of the incident changed between resistance and custody.
The studies presented in this article are references for the methodological development of CS-001 and do not represent original findings from the project.
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Number of officers is only one of the variables.
The studies below support the examples presented in this article. Their findings should be interpreted according to the population, study design, variables, and limitations of each study.
Petersen, Kevin; Koper, Christopher S.; Taylor, Bruce G.; Liu, Weiwei; Sheridan-Johnson, Jackie
Less-Lethal Weapons and Civilian Injury in Police Use of Force Encounters: A Multi-agency Analysis. Journal of Urban Health, 102, 389â399, 2025. Multi-agency study using data from 26 law enforcement agencies across 14 U.S. states. DOI: 10.1007/s11524-024-00940-1.
Maguire, Edward R.; Paoline III, Eugene A.
Non-fatal injuries among police officers during use-of-force encounters. Occupational Medicine, Volume 73, Issue 8, 2023, pp. 479â483. Analysis of 2,265 use-of-force incidents recorded by the Tucson Police Department. DOI: 10.1093/occmed/kqad101.
Home Office · England and Wales
Police use of force statistics, England and Wales: April 2024 to March 2025 â Second Edition. Official statistics updated on 4 June 2026. The system defines each report as one officer's use of force on one person and allows a single incident to generate multiple reports.
Observational studies can identify associations, but they do not, by themselves, demonstrate that the number of officers causes a particular outcome. More complex incidents may also lead to the involvement of additional officers, creating a selection problem that must be considered in the analysis. References to researchers, institutions, and organizations are provided solely for documentary and research purposes and do not imply affiliation, certification, support, sponsorship, or institutional endorsement of COMBATIVESâą.
COMBATIVES RESEARCH · CS-001 · ARTICLE 05
Counting officers is easy. Understanding participation is another matter.
An incident may begin with one officer, receive additional support during resistance, and end with several officers involved in physical control.
To understand this dynamic, we need to know when each officer became involved, what was happening at that moment, and how the situation changed.
Presence is only the first number. Participation needs to be observed over time.
How many participated?
When did they become involved?
What changed?