Short answer. No more than necessary. Rule 113, Section 2 commands that no violence or unnecessary force shall be used in making an arrest, and that the person arrested shall not be subject to a greater restraint than is necessary for his detention. Necessity is the entire measure — force beyond it is outside the rule.
What the law says
No violence or unnecessary force shall be used in making an arrest.
Rule 113, Section 2 — Arrest; how made. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The person arrested shall not be subject to a greater restraint than is necessary for his detention.
Rule 113, Section 2 — Arrest; how made. Read the full provision →
What an arrest legally is
The section first defines the act: An arrest is made by an actual restraint of a person to be arrested, or by his submission to the custody of the person making the arrest. Two routes, and only one involves the officer's hands. A person who submits to custody is arrested just as completely as one who is physically restrained — which matters, because where submission is offered, restraint has nothing left to accomplish. The definition itself already leans against force: the arrest is complete the moment custody exists, however it came about.
The force limit
Then comes the limit: No violence or unnecessary force shall be used in making an arrest. The sentence bars two things. Violence is prohibited outright. Force is measured against necessity — what is actually required to take a resisting or fleeing person into custody, in that situation, against that resistance. The word unnecessary is doing the work: force is not licensed by the fact of an arrest, it is licensed by need, and it ends where the need ends. An arrest of a person offering no resistance supplies no necessity at all.
Restraint after the arrest
The standard follows the arrested person into custody: The person arrested shall not be subject to a greater restraint than is necessary for his detention. The question shifts from taking custody to keeping it, but the yardstick stays necessity. Restraints that add nothing to securing detention — measures that punish, humiliate or intimidate rather than detain — exceed what the section permits. Arrest is the beginning of a process that is supposed to happen in a courtroom; this sentence keeps the street and the cell from becoming the punishment.
If you believe excessive force was used
If you or a family member was hurt in an arrest, preserve the facts while they are fresh: seek a medical examination promptly and keep the records, photograph injuries with dates, write down the time and place, the officers' names or descriptions, and the names of anyone who saw it. Necessity is judged against circumstances, so the details of the circumstances are the evidence — what resistance, if any, was offered, and what force answered it. A lawyer evaluating the incident will measure that record against this section's standard, and the record can only be built in the days right after.