Police Use of Force, National Data Collection on Police Use of Force, a report prepared by Tom McEwen for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC (February 1996). Most of what is known about the incidence of police use of force in this country is a result of projects funded by NIJ and BJS over the last 20 years. The basic problem has been a lack of routine, national systems for collecting data on incidents in which police use force during the normal course of duty and on the extent of excessive force. This report describes federal efforts and approaches to overcoming the difficulties of past data collection efforts. Subsequent annual reports will provide results from these federally funded activities. (52K)