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Violent encounters with police send thousands of people to the E.R. every year and that’s probably an undercount. But data from San Jose offers a glimpse of what the national scale of police violence might be.

Eliel Paulino was less than a block from home in 2015 when he was pulled over because the light on his license plate was out. Within minutes, the traffic stop became a beatdown. An officer yelled at Paulino to stop talking, a second jabbed his baton into Paulino’s gut, and a third struck him more than a dozen times with a baton. An emergency room doctor needed four staples to close wounds on his arm.

The police report claimed that Paulino fought and resisted arrest, but video from a security camera showed he did not. The city ultimately paid Paulino $700,000 after a jury found the beating violated his constitutional rights. The jury noted that the San Jose police department has a problem with using excessive force, and that it needs to stop.

Most police departments don’t keep a record of encounters that result in injury or emergency room visits after officers break arms, bruise faces, or shock with tasers.

Places like San Jose, however, require officers to report injuries and encourage them to take people they’ve injured to the hospital, so we have a glimpse of what the notional scale of the issue might be. The city took the rare step of tracking injuries and hospitalizations. as part of a years-long effort to reduce violent interactions because of long-standing reports that officers were beating residents during arrests.

Despite those efforts, about 1,300 people ended up in the E.R. after interacting with city police from 2017 to 2020, an analysis of San Jose’s data by NBC News and The Marshall Project found.

Most of the E.R. visits involved officers using their hands on people, our analysis found. “Control holds” — twisting arms or holding people down — played a role in 60% of the cases. Almost 20% of people who went to the E.R. were shot with stun guns, and 10% were hit with an “impact weapon” such as a baton.

In those four years, city data shows, encounters with San Jose police left 72 people “seriously injured,” which includes broken bones, dog bites and internal injuries. Nine more people died, all from gunshot wounds.

Rough arrests have cost the city more than $26 million in lawsuit payouts for civil rights violations since 2010, according to the analysis by NBC News and The Marshall Project.

We would like to thank The Marshall Project for the content. Click HERE to view the original comprehensive article.