The nature and frequency of homeless contacts with the police

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study assesses differences between citizen and police initiated homeless-involved dispatch incidents, as well as the resulting police reports. This is accomplished by analyzing dispatch data and police reports identified as involving homeless individuals in a mid-sized city in the central United States from 2020 to 2021. Altogether 12,843 dispatch incidents and 1,762 (13.72%) reports are analyzed. This study found 93% of documented police contacts to be citizen initiated. Incidents that did not involve the homeless were substantially more likely to be officer initiated than homeless-involved incidents. Significant differences are found on the basis of initiation type and offense type for nine of the 18 offense categories. Police initiated incidents are more likely to produce reports about failure to appear or comply, homeless encampments, and drugs or alcohol. Citizen initiated incidents are more likely to produce reports about trespassing, assault or menacing, and theft or shoplifting. The results support prior research (Herring, 2019) and suggest that care should be taken regarding assumptions about why officers contact the homeless. Given the non-criminal nature of many citizen generated incidents, some support exists for an alternative response to address loitering, suspicious persons, or other non-serious and non-criminal homeless incidents.