Police Citizen Research Articles

Measuring “what matters” in 21st-century policing: partnering with civilian oversight to assess procedurally just policing in Philadelphia

ABSTRACT Police oversight bodies routinely audit body-worn camera (BWC) footage for binary policy compliance (e.g., Was the camera activated per policy?), and police performance assessments traditionally focus on quantifiable outputs. In both cases, the ‘process domain’ that reflects service quality is largely ignored, resulting in impoverished metrics. In partnership with the Philadelphia Police Department and the Citizens Police Oversight Commission, we conducted a systematic social observation (SSO) of BWC footage from 233 randomly selected traffic stops to evaluate a protocol for measuring procedurally just policing (PJP). Rater consistency and validity assessments showed that coders provided reliable ratings, capturing elements of participation, dignity/respect, and trustworthy motives, with lower correlations for neutrality. Mean PJP scores varied with suspect tone, supporting predictive validity and aligning with procedural justice theory. The PJP protocol enables oversight entities to assess service quality and alignment with democratic policing values, though refinements are needed to address the range of police–citizen interactions. We discuss our findings and their implications for automation.

The impact of weather on the racial composition of traffic stop and citation issuance in the United States

ABSTRACT We analyze how adverse weather influences the racial composition of traffic stops and the issuance of citations within the context of administrative discretion. The behavior of police officers and drivers may be affected by weather, leading to a change in the composition of stopped drivers. If changes in racial composition are due to police officers choosing to forego traffic stops because those are more costly in wet conditions, it could indicate racial bias. Based on data from 37 city and 11 state police departments, our analysis reveals that the racial composition of drivers stopped and the probability of a citation being issued are not independent of adverse weather conditions, especially for state agencies. These findings contribute to the existing literature on factors influencing police–citizen interactions and provide a foundation for investigating the potential connections among weather, administrative discretion, and racial bias.

Diverting 911 calls: Lessons from early adopting urban jurisdictions

AbstractResearch SummaryTwo perceptions drive interest in finding ways of diverting more 911 calls from police to civilian first responders: (1) police responses can result in inadvertent harm to citizens and (2) many calls to which police respond require services that police often cannot provide. Thus, using other personnel may improve police–citizen relations and strengthen crime fighting by reducing extraneous police burden. Using a case study design, we conducted formative evaluations of programs that have developed beyond pilots in three large U.S. cities: Albuquerque, Atlanta, and Houston. In each city, we interviewed officials, program operators, and other stakeholders and reviewed program documents and statistics. We detail the events and forces that led to the establishment of each program, the way in which the programs have been institutionalized, and the way they interact with the Police Department. We then discuss key lessons learned for these jurisdictions.Policy ImplicationsMany U.S. cities are considering diverting some emergency calls for service from police to civilian first responders. This analysis provides evidence to aid policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders in the development and evaluation of community responder programs. In all respects, we find that cities’ unique experiences inform program design. For example, in Albuquerque, a City Hall‐driven initiative established a new city agency parallel to the Police Department. In Atlanta, decarceration activists drove the initiative; the program is a city/county‐funded nonprofit, more fragile in its funding. Risk aversion among call takers and dispatchers has led to low call diversion rates across all sites, but training and collaboration have shown promise to resolve this problem. Public safety officials external to the diversion programs commonly expressed concerns about first responder safety and perceptions that police are expected when 911 is called. This risk aversion has led to slower‐than‐expected expansion of the program within each city.

Recognizing “camera cues”: policing, cellphones and citizen countersurveillance

AbstractOver the past decade, recording technologies have enabled organized activists and ordinary residents to capture and circulate videos of police misconduct. Existing research focuses primarily, however, on organized activists who rely on formal training programs to record police behaviors. If formal programs train organized activists to capture police abuses on camera, how then do ordinary residents determine when they should record police behavior? Drawing on in-depth interviews with Black men who live in a Southside Chicago neighborhood, this study finds that residents’ recurrent interactions with police enable them to interpret officers’ words and actions as symbols of police misconduct, which, in subsequent exchanges, serve as signals to record events with their cellphones – what I term “camera cues.” Camera cues facilitate situated conceptions of legal authority that trigger residents’ distrust of police, reflecting the micro-dynamic connections between individuals’ legal consciousness and legal cynicism. Equipped with cellphones, residents scrutinize officers’ outward displays and police–citizen interactions to challenge police misconduct. While recording police behavior makes it possible at least occasionally to resist the dominance of legal authority, doing so often involves additional risks, including the destruction of their cellphones, verbal and physical threats, and arrests.

Questioning the link between organizational justice and external procedural justice in police–citizen interactions

External procedural justice in police–citizen interactions has been found to have a relationship with cooperation, compliance, and police legitimacy. The individual dimensions of organizational justice comprised of distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice, have been less frequently examined. Organizational justice has been found to be associated with many desirable outcomes both within policing and in other professions. This study utilized a convenience sample ( n = 106) of police officers from five school district police departments in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area. The study combined two sections of two existing instruments for the purpose of examining the extent to which officer perceptions of the four dimensions of organizational justice contribute to officer perceptions of external procedural justice in police–citizen interactions. Results indicated officers rated themselves very highly on the levels of external procedural justice they demonstrated with the public. Officers rated their supervisors highest in the interpersonal justice dimension of organizational justice. Surprisingly, no significant associations emerged between any of the four dimensions of organizational justice and external procedural justice. The findings of this study were inconsistent with the majority of extant research which found that organizational justice correlates with and predicts external procedural justice. This study indicated that officers may overestimate their own utilization of external procedural justice. In addition, it suggests the four dimensions of organizational justice may not predict external procedural justice and raises questions regarding the relationship between these two variables.

Mediating Citizen Complaints Against Police Officers: Community Viewpoints From Trinidad and Tobago

Given the confrontational nature of citizen–police interactions, citizen complaints against the police are inevitable. In Trinidad and Tobago, citizen complaints are frequently ventilated via litigation or through a range of police-led and non-police-led investigations. However, it has been argued that these mechanisms for resolving citizen complaints against the police are ineffective. With this in mind, there is need for alternative mechanisms to resolve citizen complaints against police officers, and mediation has emerged as the leading contender. Despite the proclivity toward mediation, the phenomenon has attracted sparse scholarship in Trinidad and Tobago. As a result of this lacuna, this study employs a qualitative approach to measure (a) citizens preference for mediation or traditional mechanisms of complaint resolution and (b) citizens willingness to use mediation to resolve complaints against police officers in Trinidad and Tobago, if mediation becomes available.

‘Robocops’ in the Making: Reframing Police–Citizen Interactions Through the Lens of Body-Worn Cameras

Abstract This paper examines new meanings that police–citizen interactions take on when officers make sense of them through the lens of body-worn cameras (BWCs). Drawing on 30 interviews with frontline police officers in a large Canadian city, we analyse the embodied character of BWCs to show how officers reframe their role and the subtleties of their approach in dealing with the public as more robotic. First, the participants believe BWCs curb their ability to build rapport with citizens, and therefore dehumanize interactions. Second, they report a need to operate more mechanically to follow protocol for case-building and use-of-force. Still, 100 per cent of participants remain in favour of BWC use—in an era of high visibility and pressure for accountability, video recording technology offers protection.

Downsizing and recovery: Perceived quality of police services in Finland before, during, and after three major police management reform programs

Abstract This study analyses the effects of three major police management reform programs on the perceived quality of police services in Finland. Downsizing in the early 2010s, and recovery of the number of personnel of the police towards the end of the 2010s, were notable over the police management reform years. The study is based on the analysis of three quality indicators from cross-sectional Police Citizen Surveys (1999–2020). We find that the reform period had a significant impact on the perceived quality of police services: negative in the early 2010s, and positive in the late 2010s. Respondents’ emergency response time estimates as well as perceived effectiveness of crime reporting deteriorated during the police management reform period. Since then, they have recovered. Policy-wise we conclude that in labor-intensive services such as policing management reform programs associated with downsizing constitute a real hazard, reducing, almost inevitably, the volume and the accessibility of services.

Intake and service staff: practices and challenges of a pivotal yet underexplored police occupation

Abstract This paper puts the spotlight on what is known within the Dutch police as ‘intake and service staff’ who are responsible for collecting, handling and filing crime reports from citizens. Comparable occupations are, for example, ‘front counter staff’, ‘call-takers’ and ‘police dispatchers’ in the Anglo-Saxon world. Many of the intake and service staff are women employed in part-time jobs. They hold the lowest rank in the force, have received only basic training and represent an underexplored police occupation. Scholarly publications that address the intake and service aspect of police work are scarce. However, intake and service staff are of utmost importance for ensuring satisfactory police–citizen contact and building public trust and legitimacy. We report on empirical research into the everyday practices and challenges of intake and service staff carried out in Rotterdam, with the aim of describing their work and formulating suggestions for improvement and for future research.

Can Light Contact with the Police Motivate Political Participation? Evidence from Traffic Stops

AbstractHarsh, highly intrusive, personal contact with the criminal justice system has been shown to politically demobilize, but it is unclear whether less intrusive forms of police contact have any political effects. As the modal type of involuntary police–citizen contact is less invasive and more routine (e.g., a traffic stop), it is critical to understand the ramifications of lighter forms of contact. We argue that, unlike harsh police contact, light, personal, police contact can mobilize individuals, under certain circumstances. When a negative encounter with the police—even if it is minor—runs counter to prior expectations, people experiencing the contact are mobilized to take political action. Using 3 years of observational data and an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that individuals who receive tickets or are stopped by the police are more likely to participate in politics. These effects are most pronounced for individuals with positive evaluations of the police, often White respondents.

Community Satisfaction With Policing on Guam

Guam is a Pacific Island in Micronesia with a complex colonial history. Strategically located, Guam is an unincorporated territory of the United States and critical military asset. Policing on Guam is influenced by external stakeholders and budgetary limitations. Recently, a community policing model was introduced to better meet community needs and expectations. This study explored the relevance of predictors of satisfaction with police service provision in the Guamanian context. Residents of Guam ( n = 701) participated in a survey that included demographic characteristics, community context, and police–citizen interactions. Satisfaction with police service provision was predicted by age and perceptions of procedural justice, police performance, and police legitimacy. Higher income predicted lower satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of police legitimacy and related constructs for satisfaction with police service provision on Guam. Initiatives that focus on police performance and procedural justice may help improve satisfaction with police service provision on Guam.

Trust in the police and policing by consent in turbulent times

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the potential impact on policing by consent and trust in the police of diminished political and generalised trust.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on a range of academic literature on trust, the legal foundations of policing by consent, police occupational culture, disproportionality and neighbourhood policing.FindingsAn analytical framework is developed by recognising that policing by consent can be conceived as comprising two complementary facets, police state consent and police citizen consent and drawing lose mappings between police state consent and political trust and police citizen consent and generalised trust. This supports the argument that the importance of tackling disproportionality in policing practices and an increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing are not only valuable for reasons recognised in existing literature but also because they may bolster policing by consent in circumstances of reduced political trust and contribute to increased generalised trust across society.Originality/valueThis paper builds upon existing work on trust in the police and policing by consent to give novel insights into the importance of neighbourhood policing and tackling disproportionality. The analytical frame developed also highlights new areas for nuanced research questions in the field of trust and provides grounding from which policy objectives for policing can be developed.

Religious policing: how religion and level of religiosity shape officer’s interaction with minority groups

Like other Western nations, policing in Australia is considered a secular practice. Whilst policing in Australia is meant to be free from the influence of religious ideals and religious doctrine, it is unknown whether Australian police officers are influenced by the social practices, morals, beliefs, cultural practices, and laws fortified by religious ideologies. Arguably religious beliefs may influence police officers’ adherence to retributive policing practices, police prejudice towards certain groups, and intergroup anxiety, but research examining this is missing from the extant Australian policing literature. As such, this study determines how Australian officers’ religious identity and individual level of religiosity (religious belief, religious knowledge, religious experience, religious practice, and religious consequence) may shape policing of people from minority groups during police–citizen interaction. Using a logistic regression, the results from this research conducted with police officers from one Australian state police organisation (N = 1172) indicate that many officers with high levels of religiosity perceive that they are likely to follow their religion's teachings and doctrines closely and will apply them in different contexts at work, which may also shape their judgement of people from minority groups during police–citizen interaction.

Fear and legitimacy in São Paulo, Brazil: Police–citizen relations in a high violence, high fear city

AbstractWe examine consensual and coercive police–citizen relations in São Paulo, Brazil. According to procedural justice theory, popular legitimacy operates as part of a virtuous circle, whereby normatively appropriate police behavior encourages people to self-regulate, which then reduces the need for coercive forms of social control. But can consensual and coercive police–citizen relations be so easily disentangled in a city in which many people fear crime, where the ability to use force can often be palpable in even mundane police–citizen interactions, where some people fear police but also tolerate extreme police violence, and where the image of the military police as “just another (violent) gang” has significant cultural currency? Legitimacy has two components—assent (ascribed right to power) and consent (conferred right to govern)—and consistent with prior work from the US, UK, and Australia, we find that procedural justice is key to the legitimation of the police. Yet, the empirical link between legitimacy and legal compliance is complicated by ambivalent authority relations, rooted in part in heightened cultural expectations about police use of force to exercise power. We finish the paper with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

Rethinking police procedural justice

While procedural justice theory has become the dominant paradigm in thinking about police legitimacy, it has several important weaknesses. First, procedural justice's conceptually essential distinction between ‘process’ and ‘outcome’ is blurred in reality, which is visible both in empirical operationalizations and in researchers’ understanding of police work. Second, procedural justice theory views society through an implicit consensus lens, making it poorly equipped to address police–citizen conflicts and structural societal inequalities. This is evident in the theory's inability to unpack the dynamics of police–citizen interactions and its reluctance to problematize the police role in contemporary plural societies. To advance our understanding of police legitimacy and police–citizen relations, particularly among marginalized groups, we strongly recommend working toward theoretical renewal and empirical diversification.

Surprise, anticipation, sadness, and fear: A sentiment analysis of social media’s portrayal of police use of facial recognition technology

Abstract Policing agencies are adopting or trialling facial recognition technology (FRT). While the public tend to be sceptical of any new technology, public support is needed for both legitimacy and strong police–citizen relationships. The media can greatly influence not only the public agenda, but also the attitudes and sentiments towards the topic. This study takes an agenda-setting perspective to explore social media’s portrayal of police use of FRT. To do this, a sentiment analysis was conducted of 203 YouTube videos. Overall, the discourse was mostly positive for the use of FRT by police. An examination of the emotional language found high levels of surprise and anticipation along with sadness and fear. Notably, trust was expressed only in low levels. These findings inform the development of police practices and policies when adopting new technologies and the communication strategies of such policies and practices.

Police contact and future orientation from adolescence to young adulthood: Findings from the Pathways to Desistance Study

AbstractIn response to the changing nature of policing in the United States, and current climate of police–citizen relations, research has begun to explore the consequences of adolescent police contact for life outcomes. The current study investigates if and under what conditions police contact has repercussions for future orientation during adolescence and the transition into young adulthood. Using data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a multisite longitudinal study of serious offenders followed from adolescence to young adulthood, results from a series of fixed‐effects models demonstrated three main findings. First, personal and vicarious police contact, compared with no additional police contact, are negatively associated with within‐person changes in future orientation. Second, any exposure to police contact, regardless of how just or unjust the contact is perceived, is negatively associated with future orientation. Third, the negative association between police contact and future orientation is larger for White individuals compared with that for Black or Hispanic individuals. Considering the importance of future orientation for prosocial behavior, the findings suggest that adolescent police contact may serve as an important life‐course event with repercussions for later life outcomes.

Body‐worn cameras, lawful police stops, and NYPD officer compliance: A cluster randomized controlled trial*

AbstractThe federal court settlement of Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. (2013) mandated that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) implement a series of reforms to address unlawful stop, question, and frisk patterns and practices. Among other changes, the remedial order required the NYPD to implement and evaluate a pilot body‐worn camera program to determine whether outfitting officers with the technology led to more lawful and civil police–citizen encounters. A cluster randomized controlled trial involving 40 police precincts and 3,889 NYPD officers was used to evaluate the effects of body‐worn cameras on a series of police work activity, civility, and lawfulness outcomes. Relative to control officers, citizen complaints against treatment officers outfitted with body‐worn cameras were reduced by 21 percent. Treatment officers, however, also filed nearly 39 percent more stop reports when compared with control officers. Treatment stop reports tended to involve minority subjects, were less likely to involve arrests and summons, and were significantly more likely to be rated as not meeting constitutional justifications for stops, frisks, and searches. These results suggest that body‐worn cameras improved NYPD officer compliance with mandates to document all stops and could be used to address unlawful policing through better detection of problematic police–citizen encounters.

Cop Wisdom and the Democratic Consequences of Citizen–State Interactions

The existing literature on citizen–state interactions lacks variation, and new research must be conducted to better understand the consequences of such interactions. Using the theoretical frame of cop wisdom, defined as strategies that citizens change or adapt based on the circumstances of their previous interactions with police, interactions between individuals and police officers are interrogated utilizing the 2015 Police-Public Contact Survey. The existence of cop wisdom within these encounters is demonstrated, along with findings that consider the impact of race, class, and citizenship on aggressive behavior in police–citizen encounters.

A EVOLUÇÃO DA EDUCAÇÃO NA POLÍCIA MILITAR DO DISTRITO FEDERAL E SUAS IMPLICAÇOES NA LAVRATURA DE AUTOS DE PRISÃO EM FLAGRANTE MILITAR

This article addresses the matter of Education inside the Military Police of the Federal District (PMDF) under the aspect of schooling. It aims to undertake an analysis of the several changes regarding the educational level required for joining the force, the internal training process dedicated to the candidates and their professional conduct after graduation. The analysis is based on military arrest procedures accomplished by the Control and Correctness Department of the force. Society demands the police activity to be adequate to the law, what reinforces the people claim for a kind of safety conquered by a citizen police. That’s the reason why it’s necessary to establish a parameter between these two factors: the admission with higher education levels and the correct practice of police activity after graduation on the training process. The objective is to identify the relation between the modification of the education level required for joining the force and the quantitative variation in the number of military arrest procedures issued by the internal corrections unit of the institution. This work is based on bibliographical revision on the military criminal field and on the history of teaching and internal control inside the Military Police of the Federal District as well as on a field research undertaken on the force’s Department of Personal Management and Control and Correctness Department. The research proves that, after the insertion of the requisition of an undergraduate degree, there has been a severe reduction on the numbers of military arrest procedures issued by the police. Because of this variable, it’s possible to identify the relation between schooling and the committing of military crimes.