How does DHS define and classify an 'assault' against federal officers in its public data releases?
Executive summary
The Department of Homeland Security’s public use-of-force dataset groups incidents into three categories—officer use of force, subject assault against officer, and maritime vessel disabling fire—but the dataset does not itself restate the criminal statute definitions that prosecutors use; instead it reports incidents as categorized by component agencies and traceable by unique incident identifiers [1]. Federal criminal law that commonly underpins “assault” charges against federal officers is codified at 18 U.S.C. §111, which criminalizes forcibly assaulting, resisting, impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officers engaged in official duties and establishes misdemeanor and felony tiers depending on contact, injury, intent, or weapon use [2] [3].
1. How DHS labels incidents in its public releases
DHS’s Office of Health Security and Safety (OHSS) frames its annual use-of-force report around incidents—not charges—and explicitly categorizes each record into officer use of force against subject, subject assault against officer, or maritime vessel disabling fire; the unit of measurement is incidents except where noted in table footnotes, and every incident is assigned a unique identifier to trace back to source-agency data [1]. The public files therefore present a data-centric taxonomy intended for transparency and lineage, not a legal charging instrument; the report warns statistical information is subject to revision as agencies update records or definitions [1].
2. What “assault” looks like in federal criminal law (18 U.S.C. §111)
The statute most often referenced when public reporting or prosecutors speak of assaults on federal personnel is 18 U.S.C. §111, which broadly proscribes “forcibly assault[ing], resist[ing], oppos[ing], imped[ing], intimidat[ing], or interfer[ing]” with federal officers performing official duties and differentiates penalties: simple assault as a misdemeanor and aggravated forms—those involving physical contact, intent to commit another felony, use of a dangerous weapon, or serious bodily injury—as felonies with higher maximum sentences [2] [3] [4].
3. Gap between DHS incident categories and criminal elements
DHS’s dataset does not enumerate the elements prosecutors must prove under §111—such as whether the defendant knew the victim was a federal officer, whether physical contact occurred, or the requisite intent—and the department’s category “subject assault against officer” functions as an operational label rather than a legal determination of guilt or statutory classification [1] [2]. Courts and Justice Department guidance make clear that some elements (for example, actual physical contact for certain felony enhancements) matter significantly for charging decisions and jury instructions, yet those nuances are not visible in DHS’s incident tables [5] [6].
4. How courts and DOJ interpret “assault” in this context
Judicial guidance emphasizes that §111 convictions require at least some form of assault—force or threatened force—and that lack of knowledge that the victim was a federal officer is often irrelevant to guilt under precedent, although defenses like self‑defense or lack of intent may be submitted to juries; model jury instructions and DOJ manuals therefore add legal texture that the DHS dataset does not replicate [5] [6]. The DOJ’s prosecutorial manuals and archived guidance list related statutes (e.g., §1114, §115) and special circumstances prosecutors may use beyond raw incident categorization [6].
5. Reporting implications, incentives, and blind spots
Because DHS reports are compiled from component agencies and intended for oversight and transparency, they can reflect operational priorities—what an agency records as an “assault” may be influenced by internal investigative thresholds, agency mission, or resource concerns—while outside observers often conflate DHS incident tallies with criminal charges or convictions, a mismatch the public files do not resolve [1]. Legal defense and criminal-practice sources underscore that charging and sentencing are separate processes that hinge on statutory elements, intent, and injury—factors absent from DHS’s incident labels [4] [7].
6. Bottom line and limits of available public information
DHS defines and classifies “assault” in its public use-of-force releases operationally—placing events into a “subject assault against officer” bucket traceable by unique incident identifiers—but it stops short of supplying statutory elements or charging outcomes; for the legal definition and tiered penalties, public sources point to 18 U.S.C. §111 and DOJ guidance, which furnish the elements, defenses, and sentencing distinctions that DHS reporting omits [1] [2] [6]. This analysis is limited to the cited DHS reporting and publicly available statutory and guidance materials; DHS component data and prosecutorial records would be needed to map incident labels to actual charges, pleas, or convictions [1] [6].