FORT MYERS, FLA.- It's hard not to have an emotional reaction when you see videos from around the nation, showing officers doing things you would never expect. But to get you facts, Fox 4 pushed aside the emotion and looked at the numbers, both here in Southwest Florida and across the country. Those numbers may surprise you.
What you see in those videos demonstrating excessive force, isn't happening here. Fox 4 requested data from all the law enforcement agencies in our area. Use of force cases are a small percentage of total arrests, and many report they're going down.
Through the past five months, we joined Scripps investigative teams across the country, digging into the use of force records from police agencies nationwide. We found more than half of the police departments showed use of force is actually going down.
It's a trend that does not surprise the President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Richard Beary.
"Use of force against citizens in the United States of America is really very very miniscule when compared to the number of, of police citizen contacts that happened every year in this country."
According to records from Fort Myers police, use of force cases dropped from 94 in 2010 to 36 so far this year, with no excessive force allegations the past two years.
Cape Coral maintained low numbers, averaging 74 use of force arrests a year since 2010.
Sgt. Dana Coston of Cape Police said they haven't had an excessive force claim in years. "I don't believe we've had a single sustained excessive force complaint in the last five years."
The Lee County Sheriff's office following suit with 301 cases in 2010 and just 149 in 2015, none of them alleged to be excessive.
Discourtesy complaints, or disrespect shown by the officer, followed a similar pattern- all agencies saw a decline.
Big picture: use of force arrests make up less than two-percent of total arrests in all three agencies.
But even with low numbers, national cases are affecting how people, right here in Southwest Florida, view the people in blue and green.
"People see things in the media and it all of a sudden becomes reality wherever they are, in their own mind or their perception is it's happening here, and it's not true."
