What Is Empty-Hand Control on the Use-of-Force Continuum?

Empty-hand control in the use-of-force continuum is the level at which an officer uses physical body techniques, with no weapons or tools, to gain control of a person who hasn’t complied with verbal commands. It sits above officer presence and verbal direction but below batons, chemical sprays, conducted energy devices, and firearms.¹ The category splits into soft techniques (holds and joint locks) and hard techniques (strikes and forceful takedowns), and which one an officer is allowed to use depends on what the subject is doing at that moment.

Where It Sits on the Continuum

Most law enforcement agencies organize their force options into a progressive framework. The specifics vary by department, but the general structure runs from officer presence, to verbal commands, to empty-hand control, to less-lethal tools like batons and conducted energy devices, and finally to lethal force reserved for situations involving an imminent threat of death or serious injury.¹

The continuum isn’t a rigid ladder. Officers don’t always start at the bottom and work up, and the situation can jump levels if circumstances demand it. What the framework does is create a shared vocabulary for evaluating whether force matched threat. Empty-hand control occupies the critical middle ground. It’s where an encounter first becomes physical, which is exactly why it draws so much legal scrutiny.

Soft Empty-Hand Techniques

Soft techniques are designed to gain compliance without delivering impact. They rely on leverage, joint manipulation, and targeted pressure rather than strikes. The National Institute of Justice groups these as grabs, holds, and joint locks.¹ In practice that means:

Joint locks that apply pressure to the wrist, elbow, or shoulder to limit movement and encourage compliance through discomfort.
Pressure point techniques that target nerve clusters to create brief, localized pain and motivate the person to move in a particular direction.
Escort holds that grip the arm or shoulder firmly enough to guide a person during transport without striking or throwing them.
Controlled takedowns that bring a person to the ground using leverage and body positioning rather than impact force.

The common thread is that the discomfort stops the moment the person complies. A wristlock hurts while it’s being applied but typically doesn’t cause lasting injury when performed correctly. These are the first physical step when someone refuses verbal commands but isn’t physically attacking anyone. The bridge between talking and fighting.

Hard Empty-Hand Techniques

Hard techniques involve direct impact. The NIJ defines these simply as punches and kicks, but the category also covers knee strikes, elbow strikes, and forceful takedowns intended to stun or temporarily overwhelm a combative person.¹ The purpose is to create enough of a physical advantage that the officer can apply restraints on someone who is actively fighting.

The injury risk jumps considerably at this level. Bruising, fractures, concussions, and lacerations are all realistic outcomes for both the subject and the officer. That elevated risk is why hard techniques are reserved for situations involving active aggression rather than simple noncompliance. An officer using a knee strike on someone who is merely standing still and refusing to move will have a much harder time justifying that choice than one responding to someone throwing punches.

Takedowns carry a secondary risk worth separating out: what happens after the person hits the ground. Driving someone face-first into pavement creates a head injury risk that goes beyond the force of the takedown itself. How the person lands, what surface they land on, and whether the officer follows with additional control measures all factor into whether the force was proportional.

Matching the Technique to the Level of Resistance

Every physical technique has to track back to what the subject was doing at the time. Agencies generally recognize three resistance categories, and the force used needs to correspond.

Passive resistance: the person refuses to comply but doesn’t physically fight. Going limp, locking arms with other protesters, refusing to move. Soft empty-hand techniques are the typical response.
Active resistance: the person uses physical energy to defeat the officer’s control. Pulling away, tensing and bracing, struggling against handcuffs, or trying to flee. This justifies a higher level of empty-hand control and possibly hard techniques depending on intensity.
Active aggression: the person attacks or attempts to attack the officer or others. Punching, kicking, biting, attempting to tackle. Hard empty-hand techniques are justified here, and the situation may also warrant less-lethal tools.

The distinction between passive and active resistance matters enormously. Refusing to walk is not the same as pulling away from an officer’s grip. Both are noncompliant, but only one involves physical energy directed against the officer. An officer who uses hard strikes on a passive protester faces a much steeper legal burden than one who responds to someone actively swinging at them.

How Courts Judge Whether the Force Was Justified

Every use of empty-hand control in the United States is measured against the standard the Supreme Court established in Graham v. Connor (1989). The Court held that excessive force claims arising from arrests and investigatory stops are analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard rather than a more abstract due process test.²

Objective reasonableness means force is judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene, with the information available at that moment, not with the benefit of hindsight. The Court identified three factors that shape the analysis: the severity of the crime at issue, whether the person posed an immediate threat to the safety of officers or others, and whether the person was actively resisting or attempting to flee.²

Those factors aren’t a checklist. Courts weigh the totality of circumstances. An officer who uses a hard takedown on someone resisting arrest for a violent felony is in a fundamentally different position than one who uses the same takedown during a traffic stop where the driver pulled away slightly. Same technique, very different legal outcomes.

The Supreme Court addressed pain compliance against passive resistors directly in 2026. In Zorn v. Linton, the Court ruled that an officer who used a rear wristlock on a nonviolent protester after giving repeated warnings was entitled to qualified immunity, holding that no prior case had established with enough specificity that using a routine wristlock to move a resistant protester, after warning her, violated the Fourth Amendment.³ The decision doesn’t bless all pain compliance on passive resistors. It says whether a particular technique crosses the line depends on the specific facts, including whether the officer gave warnings first. What it makes harder is bringing a lawsuit over routine joint locks when the officer followed a warning-then-escalation sequence.

Techniques That Have Been Pulled Off the Table

Not all empty-hand techniques are treated equally, even within the same resistance level. Some carry risks that have led to outright prohibitions or heavy restrictions.

Chokeholds and Carotid Restraints

The Department of Justice maintains a department-wide policy that prohibits chokeholds and carotid restraints by federal law enforcement unless the situation justifies deadly force, meaning the officer reasonably believes the subject poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.⁴ Many state and local agencies have adopted similar restrictions. The practical effect is that neck restraints are no longer treated as an empty-hand control option in most departments. They’ve been reclassified as deadly force, subject to the highest justification threshold.

Prone Restraint

Keeping a handcuffed person face-down on the ground creates a risk of positional asphyxia, where the body position itself interferes with the ability to breathe. The risk increases significantly for people who are obese, intoxicated, or have heart or respiratory conditions. Federal guidance instructs officers to get the person off their stomach and into a side or seated position as soon as handcuffs are applied, never sit on the person’s back if they continue struggling, and never connect handcuffs to ankle restraints in a hogtie position.⁵ An officer who takes a combative person to the ground has won the immediate struggle but inherited a new obligation: monitoring that person’s breathing and repositioning them quickly.

What Officers Are Expected to Do Before and During the Force

Before reaching for any physical technique, officers are increasingly expected to attempt de-escalation, meaning communication, time, distance, or positioning used to reduce the intensity of a confrontation without force. The Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy requires that officers be trained in de-escalation tactics and use them whenever objectively feasible without increasing danger to the officer or others.⁶ The Department of Homeland Security requires its officers to attempt verbal warnings and give the person a reasonable opportunity to comply before applying force.⁷

De-escalation isn’t just good practice; it feeds directly into the legal analysis. An officer who jumps from a verbal command to a wristlock without pausing to see if the person was processing the instruction looks very different under Graham v. Connor than one who gave clear directions, waited, repeated them, warned of consequences, and then acted.

When backup is present, the DOJ policy also imposes an affirmative duty to intervene: officers must act to prevent or stop another officer from using excessive force or any force that violates the Constitution or department policy.⁶ If one officer has a subject in a joint lock and a second officer begins delivering strikes the situation doesn’t warrant, the first officer has an obligation to step in. Watching excessive force happen without intervening can create liability for the bystander officer as well.

When Empty-Hand Control Becomes Excessive Force

When empty-hand control crosses the line from reasonable to excessive, the legal consequences flow primarily through 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal statute that allows anyone deprived of their constitutional rights by someone acting under government authority to sue for damages.⁸ A successful claim can result in compensation for medical costs, lost income, pain and suffering, and emotional distress. Settlements and jury awards range from tens of thousands of dollars to several million, depending on the severity of injuries and the egregiousness of the officer’s conduct.

The analysis circles back to the Graham factors. A plaintiff must show that the force was objectively unreasonable given the circumstances the officer faced.² Officers can raise qualified immunity as a defense, arguing that the specific conduct wasn’t clearly established as unconstitutional at the time. As Zorn v. Linton shows, that defense often succeeds when the technique was routine and the officer gave warnings first.³ Qualified immunity has limits, though. When the force is obviously disproportionate, such as hard strikes on a handcuffed person or continued force after resistance has stopped, courts are far less sympathetic to the defense.

Beyond individual lawsuits, patterns of excessive force can trigger federal oversight through consent decrees that impose external monitoring on entire departments. Internal affairs investigations and disciplinary proceedings run on a parallel track, with consequences ranging from retraining to termination.

1
National Institute of Justice. The Use-of-Force Continuum
2
Library of Congress. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Zorn v. Linton, No. 25-297
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice Announces Department-Wide Policy on Chokeholds and No-Knock Entries
5
Office of Justice Programs. Positional Asphyxia – Sudden Death
6
United States Department of Justice. Department of Justice Policy On Use Of Force
7
Department of Homeland Security. Update to the Department Policy on the Use of Force
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 42 – 1983