BenchRecon Data Study · Florida
Excessive force is the least-decertified misconduct category in Florida's own officer-discipline record.
We grouped 6,513 Florida officer certification-discipline records (2012–2026) from the state's public FDLE/CJSTC record into 7 misconduct-type categories and measured how often each ended in certification revocation. Excessive-force records were revoked 30.2% of the time (189 records), the lowest of any category, against a 51.7% overall baseline and 63.2% for drug-use records.
Read these as descriptive, not causal, and not predictive. These rates are not adjusted for the statutory severity of each offense category, the plea or settlement dynamics of the CJSTC administrative process, reporting completeness, or the category mapping itself, and they do not measure institutional intent or predict any complaint or officer. A category's lower recorded rate is not a finding about how any agency treats it: how the underlying conduct is charged, adjudicated, and recorded differs systematically before any revocation decision (confounds). The figures describe what the state recorded, not why.
“Revocation” means the recorded CJSTC discipline is a certification revocation (decertification). Records ending in voluntary relinquishment, suspension, probation, or dismissal are counted but are not revocations. 2,016 records matched no category and are excluded from the per-category table (reported for transparency).
Aggregate, category-level analysis. Reproducible from public records. No individual officer, and no agency that would identify an officer, is named.
Key finding — cite this
As of 2026-06-16, excessive force was the least-decertified misconduct category in Florida's officer certification-discipline record: 30.2% of the 189 excessive-force records ended in certification revocation (2012-2026), versus 63.2% for the 399 drug-use (positive-test) records and a 51.7% revocation rate across all 6,513 records. These are descriptive, uncontrolled records-level rates, not adjusted for the statutory severity of each offense category, the plea/settlement dynamics of the CJSTC process, reporting, or the cluster mapping; they measure no institutional intent and predict nothing. Source: Florida FDLE/CJSTC certification-discipline records; BenchRecon analysis.
Descriptive, uncontrolled category-level aggregate reproducible from public FDLE/CJSTC records; confounds named; no institutional-intent or predictive claim; no individual officer or identifying agency is named.
Compare the revocation rate by misconduct category
Pick a misconduct category to see its recorded revocation (decertification) rate, plotted against the overall baseline. Read the bar as a descriptive picture of the state's recorded outcomes for that category, not a forecast for any complaint or officer, and not a claim about why the rates differ.
Descriptive, not causal, not institutional intent, not predictive. These records-level rates are unadjusted for offense-category severity, the plea and settlement dynamics of the CJSTC process, reporting, and the category mapping; they describe what the state recorded for this category, not why, and cannot forecast any complaint or officer.
Every category, side by side
The full breakdown, ordered by revocation rate. The differences across categories are large, but, as the caveat above explains, they reflect differences in how the underlying conduct is charged, adjudicated, and recorded at least as much as anything about accountability. The same caution applies to every figure here.
| Misconduct category | Discipline records | Ended in revocation | Revocation rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drug use (positive drug test) | 399 | 252 | 63.2% |
| Theft / larceny | 490 | 295 | 60.2% |
| Sexual misconduct | 452 | 242 | 53.5% |
| Domestic violence / battery | 1,128 | 535 | 47.4% |
| Crimen falsi (dishonesty / falsification) | 886 | 408 | 46% |
| Driving under the influence | 953 | 418 | 43.9% |
| Excessive force | 189 | 57 | 30.2% |
Methodology & limitations
Source & method
- Source: public Florida FDLE / Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) officer certification-discipline records. Snapshot analyzed: 2026-06-16.
- Population: 6,513 discipline records (2012–2026, 2026 partial), covering 5,922 distinct officer names. The grain is one discipline record, not one officer.
- “Revocation” defined: a record counts as a revocation when the recorded CJSTC discipline is a certification revocation (decertification). Voluntary relinquishment, suspension, probation, and dismissal are recorded outcomes but are not counted as revocations.
- Category mapping (transparent): each record's recorded offense text is assigned to one category by a priority-ordered, first-match-wins rule: excessive force (“excess force” text) → drug use (“test positive”) → sexual misconduct → crimen falsi (perjury, false statement, falsification, fraud) → theft/larceny → driving under the influence → domestic violence/battery. First match wins, so no record is double-counted.
- Unclassified reported, not hidden: 2,016 records matched no category and are excluded from the per-category table rather than forced into a bucket.
- Small cells suppressed: any category with fewer than 10 records is excluded from every figure.
- Reproducible: every figure is regenerated by a verification script run against the public FDLE/CJSTC source data, and the aggregate is published as a downloadable CSV.
What the data does NOT show
- Not causal. Not institutional intent. Not predictive. These rates are not adjusted for offense-category severity, the plea/settlement dynamics of the CJSTC process, reporting completeness, or the category mapping. A category's lower recorded rate is not a finding about how any agency treats it, and the figures cannot forecast any complaint or officer.
- Confounds dominate. Categories differ in the statutory severity of the underlying offense, how often the conduct is criminally charged versus handled administratively, and how the CJSTC process resolves it (revocation versus a negotiated voluntary relinquishment). Those independently move the recorded revocation rate. The observed differences reflect that mix.
- The category mapping is itself a limitation. The clusters are built from free-text offense labels; a different mapping would shift the cell boundaries. We publish the mapping so it can be inspected and re-run.
- Records, not officers. One officer can appear in more than one record; the rates describe records, not people.
- No individual officer, and no agency that would identify an officer, is named. This study reports category-level aggregates only.
How a defender reads this
In a use-of-force case, the state's own certification record is institutional context a jury rarely hears: across 2012–2026, excessive force is the misconduct category with the lowest recorded certification-revocation rate of any category. That is a descriptive, sourced fact about the aggregate record, not a claim about your officer or your agency, and it does not predict what will happen in any single matter. To move from this statewide backdrop to the actual discipline history of the officer you are cross-examining, pull that officer's own record, source-linked, in the Officer Lookup below.
Cite this analysis
Journalists and researchers, please link to this page as the source, and please preserve the descriptive, not-causal framing when you cite the figures.
BenchRecon, “Florida officer-discipline outcomes by misconduct type” (descriptive, uncontrolled category-level aggregates; FDLE/CJSTC officer certification-discipline records, 2026-06-16). https://benchrecon.com/florida/officer-discipline-outcomes
Download the full aggregate as a CSV file to reproduce or re-analyze any figure. See also the Florida officer-discipline data study (crimen-falsi analysis) and the Florida sentencing outcomes by county and charge study.
Check the officer in your case
BenchRecon's Officer Lookup ties FDLE/CJSTC discipline rows to a named officer, with every entry cited to the underlying public record and a records-demand roadmap for the internal-affairs and Brady/Giglio files the statewide dataset does not hold, the tailored companion to this category-level view.
Common questions
- What is this data and where does it come from?
- It is a descriptive, uncontrolled aggregate analysis of 6,513 Florida officer certification-discipline records (2012-2026) from the public FDLE / Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) record, grouped into 7 misconduct-type categories. For each category it reports the share of records that ended in certification revocation. It is reproducible from the public source data and identifies no individual and no agency that would identify an individual.
- Does the lower revocation rate for excessive force mean the state treats force less seriously?
- No. These are descriptive, uncontrolled records-level rates, not a measure of institutional intent and not causal. They are not adjusted for the statutory severity of each offense category, the plea and settlement dynamics of the CJSTC administrative process, reporting completeness, or the cluster mapping itself. Categories differ systematically in how the underlying conduct is charged, adjudicated, and recorded before any revocation decision. The lower recorded rate for a category reflects that mix of confounds. Nothing here is a finding about how any agency treats any category of conduct.
- Can I use these figures to predict what will happen to an officer or a complaint?
- No. These are unadjusted statewide category aggregates and cannot forecast the outcome of any complaint, officer, or agency, which turns on the specific facts, the charge, the record, and the CJSTC process in that matter. Treat the figures as descriptive institutional-record context, the observed outcome pattern across the state, not as a prediction. For the discipline record of a specific officer you are cross-examining, see the Officer Lookup tool, which ties the same public records to a named officer and cites every row.
- How is 'revocation' defined?
- A record counts as a revocation when the recorded CJSTC discipline is a certification revocation (decertification). Non-revocation outcomes (voluntary relinquishment of certification, suspension, probation, or dismissal of the complaint) are counted as records but not as revocations. The rate is the share of a category's records with a recorded certification revocation.
- How are the misconduct-type categories defined?
- Each record's recorded offense text is mapped to one category by a transparent, priority-ordered, first-match-wins rule (for example, "Excess Force by LEO" and "Excess Force by Corr" map to excessive force; "Marijuana-Test Positive" and "Cocaine-Test Positive" map to drug use). A record that matches no category is counted as unclassified (2,016 records) and excluded from the per-category table, never forced into a bucket. The full mapping is listed in the methodology section, and the cluster mapping is itself one of the named confounds.
- Why report this at the category level and not by officer or agency?
- Because the honest, defensible unit here is the category. Naming an officer or an agency that identifies an officer from a discipline aggregate would be a defamation and privacy risk and would overstate what an unadjusted rate supports. This study reports category-level revocation shares only; for a named officer's own record, use the source-linked Officer Lookup.