Police Problems Research Articles

Assaults in public places: interesting numbers from a North American university city

PurposeA growing literature emphasizes violence occurring in public places. Yet, police seldom report such violence separately from violent incidents occurring elsewhere. This paper aims to distinguish assaults that occur in public vs private, outdoors vs indoors and in homes vs the night-time economy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors reorganize police data to classify 1,062 assault locations for Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2020–2021, providing basic descriptive statistics that are seldom calculated or published.FindingsIn this city, almost two-thirds of police-recorded assaults occur away from home, often within night-time economy zones. Almost half of police-recorded assaults occur outdoors.Research limitations/implicationsPublic assaults are probably under-reported and under-recorded in police data. The share of assaults occurring in public is likely to vary greatly among cities, along with reporting practices.Practical implicationsPublic assaults can create special problems for police and social services. Poor management of public space can contribute to such violence. Alcohol policy and enforcement in public places is especially relevant to public assaults. Poor urban design might explain some of the problem.Social implicationsPublic assaults are seen by many people and may do extra harm to children and even adults.Originality/valuePolice reports and academic work based on them seldom distinguish public from private assaults and seldom enumerate outdoor assaults in comparison to those indoors. In addition, statistics estimating violence in the night-time economy might not compare risks to other settings.

Campaign-style law enforcement in China: Causes and consequences

This article aims to address two primary research questions: first, why does the Chinese government consistently favour campaign-style law enforcement, and second, what are the consequences of this law enforcement approach for China's criminal justice system? Drawing on a review of the existing literature and official documents on anti-crime campaigns, as well as interview data concerning local policing problems, this article offers both top-down and bottom-up explanations regarding the government's persistent employment of campaign-style law enforcement to tackle serious and organised crime. The top-down approach perceives China's anti-crime campaigns as elite-engineered moral panics and the result of political elites’ long-standing tendency towards “heavy penaltyism.” The bottom-up approach focuses on the failure of routine law enforcement and collusion between local officials and gangsters, which necessitates anti-crime campaigns. To illustrate the consequences of campaign-style law enforcement on the criminal justice system, this article explores empirical data collected during China's latest “Sweep Away Black Societies and Eliminate Evil Forces” campaign and highlights the costs of campaign-style law enforcement, such as eroding the rule of law, generating a criminal justice pendulum and creating serious procedural injustices.

THE FUNCTIONAL POSITION IN THE INDONESIAN NATIONAL POLICE

This paper describes the implementation of functional position conception by the INP. The literature discussing the concept in specific and near terms is investigated. The functional position is widely discussed in the Indonesian literature. However, the direct term (the functional position) is hardly found in Western literature. The near term is the professional. The term discussion is associated with changing from a hierarchical to a flat and agile organisation. The flat and agile structure facilitates the work of cross-functional project teams (CFTs) and professionals. Moreover, the flat and agile structure means fewer managers, enlarging the professionals' roles. However, the police of some countries have not yet streamlined their structures to flat and agile organisations (including the Indonesian National Police [INP]). This study is conducted through a literature review and document analysis. The global literature is reviewed narratively to explore the functional position concept. Subsequently, the functional position application in the INP is studied from the act, regulations and other documents. The INP has developed various functional positions within the organisation since the inception of the Police Act 2002. Besides, the INP develops supporting elements for functional positions. The INP's units, officers, and CFTs may be more capable of handling policing problems by applying for the functional position initiative.  This study introduces the concept of the functional position of the INP to the global literature. The concept may be studied further to understand its mechanism and effectiveness in improving policing.

Idealizing Abolition

The United States system of policing is in drastic need of change. Some recent critics have encouraged that we avoid trying to repair the system—and abolish it altogether. In advancing this position, they often invoke ideas of “dreams,” “speculative imagination,” and “horizons” to guide efforts at fixing the problems of policing. In this essay, I caution against the overuse of this sort of idealized discourse in debates about policing. Specifically, I show how idealizations risk being counterproductive with respect to abolitionists’ activist goals, in that they suggest that if abolition is desirable, approximating abolition is also desirable; fail to clarify what the conditions of application of their view are; and operate without the feasibility-sensitivity that one should expect from a non-evaluative position. My goal is not to suggest that our system of policing is fine as is. Nor is it to diminish the importance of having a long-term revolutionary vision. By pointing out the ways in which the idealizations invoked are inconsistent with abolitionists’ activist agenda, I hope to help clarify the merits of police abolition as a guiding strategy for change and caution against the use of certain forms of idealized thinking in our efforts at police reform.

Community Policing Problem Solving in Security Enhancement in Gasabo District, Rwanda

In Rwanda, the aftermath of 1994 genocide against Tutsi, the security situations were critical and the government adopted mechanisms such as community policing as a strategy for security enhancement. However, the country still struggles with insecurity challenges despite the introduction of community policing. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of problem solving on security enhancement in Gasabo District, Rwanda. The study adopted mixed methodology approach and the concurrent triangulation design. The study targeted approximately 139,358 household heads of Gasabo District, 73 Community Policing Committee (CPC) chairpersons, 15 Community Liaison Officers, and 260 Police Officers. The study sampled 576 household heads for quantitative data whereas the CPC chairpersons, Community Liaison Officers, Police Officers and Opinion leaders were used for qualitative data. Multistage sampling technique was used to select the participants. Questionnaire, interview guides and discussion guides were used to collect data. The findings indicated that problem solving had a positive and significant influence on security enhancement. The study concludes that problem solving contributes significantly to security enhancement. The study recommended the need for RNP to strengthen the problem solving for security enhancement. In particular, the institution should focus on enhancing the following problem-solving components: night patrols, focus on vulnerable community members, resolving family disputes, proactive arrests to solve criminal activities, and adopting technological trends. Keywords: Community policing, problem solving, security enhancement

From defunding to refunding police: institutions and the persistence of policing budgets.

Dozens of municipalities in the United States pledged to defund the police after Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, while he was in their custody. We first consider whether the municipalities that promised to defund the police actually did so. We find that they did not: municipalities that promised to defund the police temporarily reduced police budgets, only to later increase them beyond what they were previously. We then argue that two mechanisms-the electoral incentives of city politicians to provide jobs and services (what we call allocational politics) and the strength of police unions-explain why the predominant political equilibrium is one with protected police officers as a barrier to reform. We discuss several additional reforms suggested by public choice scholars interested in the problem of predatory policing.

The challenge of inclusivity, capability and change in complex, multi‐stakeholder problem situations—Practical insight from the application of participative systems methods, models and facilitation within an organisational setting

AbstractReflecting on learning from the practical experience in the employment of systems thinking and facilitation to tackle complex, multi‐stakeholder problems in work settings, three interconnected challenges were commonly encountered: an inclusivity challenge, a capability challenge and a change challenge. A series of typical cases are outlined to help illustrate these challenges, where combinations of participative systems methods, models and facilitation practices were employed within complex, multi‐stakeholder policing problem situations.

Solution of the Personnel Issue in the City Police of the Russian Empire at the End of the 18th – the First Qarter of the 19th Centuries: Normative and Legal Regulation

The article analyzes the evolution of the legislation of the Russian Empire
 in the field of personnel policy in the city police of the declared period. When
 considering the degree of the problem under study, special attention is paid to
 modern historiography. The source base of the study is represented mainly by the
 legal acts of the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th – the quarter third of the
 19th centuries.
 The analysis of legal documents allowed the author to conclude that the
 dynamics of personnel policy in the field of work of city police in the late 18th –
 first quarter of the 19th centuries were aimed at strengthening public order and
 security. At the same time, the maintenance of the city police was shifted to the local authorities. A special role in the appointment of officer ranks in the city
 police was played by the Committee of August 18, 1814.
 It is noted that the following circumstances had an inhibitory effect on the
 implementation of an effective personnel policy in the field of public order.
 Firstly, the class structure of society limited the opportunities for recruiting and
 promotion of people from the unprivileged classes, which was also reflected in
 the different approaches to working with officers and lower ranks. Secondly, the
 solution to the problems of the city police was seen in increasing its staffing, and
 not in strengthening its material base, raising salaries, improving training and
 retraining of personnel.

Competent Witnesses: How Penitentiary Workers Explain the Violence in Italian Prisons during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Italian prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (SMCV), prison police repressed a riot with extreme violence, bringing the state of prisons and the conditions of prisoners back to the attention of the Italian public opinion. This exploratory study aimed to collect the experiences and the competent opinions of the social and health personnel of Italian prisons regarding the episode of violence that happened in SMCV; the general state of health of the Italian prison system was explored, too, together with the collection of proposals for interventions aimed at the eradication of violence in prison. The study employed a qualitative research design. Eighteen social-health workers from 12 Italian prisons were interviewed using in-depth interviews of ~60 min each that were conducted and recorded via Skype video calls. The interview transcripts were analyzed with qualitative reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) to identify the most relevant and recursive themes. Four themes were identified: (1) reactions and thoughts about the events of SMCV; (2) structural problems of Italian prison police; (3) Italian prison system; and (4) reform proposals. A new and deeper awareness of the suffering of the current Italian penitentiary system emerged, together with courageous reform proposals that can restore dignity and centrality to the re-education of the detainees, preventing further future violence.

Mapping the Police-Media Institutional Relationship

The relationship between police and media has been and remains one of the most significant for both institutions. The modern police and modern newspaper developed contemporaneously, each influencing the form, function, and popular appeal of the other. Theories of media and power, however, often address the police as part of larger power structures and ignore the unique police-media institutional relationship.
 This research paper establishes essential characteristics of the police-media relationship and identifies frequent sites of interaction between them, with a focus on crime reporting. Media effects, dominant ideology, and institutional approaches are then assessed as interpretive frameworks, concluding that institutional theory provides the strongest theoretical model for analyzing internal and interorganizational behaviours.
 The professional norms and practices that compose police and media institutional logics are defined, and their historical origins and evolutions are investigated. These long-established logics continue to direct how police and media construct and respond to crime, and consequently how crime is perceived by the public and treated by legal authorities. Because the habits of crime reporting shape policing practices, altering routine media coverage of crime and police issues may help address systemic problems in policing.

Social, health and ethnicity correlates of complaints of excessive police force.

Following several high-profile police shootings of Black Americans, renewed debate has focused on race as a predictor of police violence. Past research has been inconsistent on this score. Some scholars argue that socioeconomic issues are better predictors of police-related violence than are race and ethnicity. To test relationships between complaints of excessive use of police violence and racial/ethnic population demographics, allowing for social and mental health variables. We examined records from all 195 municipal police departments in California to identify complaints of excessive force by police and tested for associations between such complaints and health, socio-economic and demographic data from county records, using multivariate analyses. There was no difference in reporting between communities according to Black or White American residency proportions; communities with more Latino Americans were less likely to complain formally of excessive use of police force. The strongest associate of complaints to police departments that their employees had used excessive force was experiencing mental distress in the community. Our findings are limited by reliance on complaints to police authorities rather than actual incidence of police use of excessive force and by having to map municipal data on to county data, but the finding that factors other than or in addition to any inherent police problems may contribute to excessive use of force by the police offers new lines for remedying the problem. In particular, our findings suggest that more training for police in recognising and managing mental distress and more provision of mental health experts to work alongside police would be worth evaluating as a next step.

Copaganda and post-Floyd TVPD: broadcast television’s response to policing in 2020

Abstract After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, U.S. police procedurals faced increased scrutiny with regards to the ideological implications of how police are represented. This genre has historically represented police as the “good guys,” even when they break the rules in their quest for justice, but cop shows face increased public pressure to include more diverse perspectives and stop normalizing brutality. This study examines ten U.S. police procedurals that aired in the 2020–2021 season to investigate how they navigated public calls for police reform. As a cultural forum, contemporary cop shows offered varied narrative strategies and ideological positions as they articulated the problems in modern policing, considered potential solutions for improving policing, and identified impediments to progress. This forum is ultimately quite limited in scope, reinforcing the status quo even as narratives lack resolution.

Awe: Helping leaders address modern policing problems

Policing in America is facing unprecedented issues, including surges in violent crimes, record-low levels of morale, recruitment and retention issues, COVID-19 as the leading cause of death in policing in 2021, police suicide described as an epidemic, and an overall increase in mental health conditions. As the resilience of police officers is pushed to the limits, police leaders must develop innovative approaches to enhance and sustain their workforce’s mental health and well-being. This paper shares how one aspect of resilience—reflecting on and experiencing awe—can assist police leaders in exploring creative and meaningful ways to address current policing issues.

Identifying misconduct-committing officer crews in the Chicago police department.

Explanations for police misconduct often center on a narrow notion of “problem officers,” the proverbial “bad apples.” Such an individualistic approach not only ignores the larger systemic problems of policing but also takes for granted the group-based nature of police work. Nearly all of police work is group-based and officers’ formal and informal networks can impact behavior, including misconduct. In extreme cases, groups of officers (what we refer to as, “crews”) have even been observed to coordinate their abusive and even criminal behaviors. This study adopts a social network and machine learning approach to empirically investigate the presence and impact of officer crews engaging in alleged misconduct in a major U.S. city: Chicago, IL. Using data on Chicago police officers between 1971 and 2018, we identify potential crews and analyze their impact on alleged misconduct and violence. Results detected approximately 160 possible crews, comprised of less than 4% of all Chicago police officers. Officers in these crews were involved in an outsized amount of alleged and actual misconduct, accounting for approximately 25% of all use of force complaints, city payouts for civil and criminal litigations, and police-involved shootings. The detected crews also contributed to racial disparities in arrests and civilian complaints, generating nearly 18% of all complaints filed by Black Chicagoans and 14% of complaints filed by Hispanic Chicagoans.

The US’ Arrogance in Exporting American Policing Values to Developing Countries

This article aims at highlighting the role of police and the problems of policing in the third world and the involvement of the United States (US) in assisting police forces in these countries to enhance their professional capacities. The article argues that despite its noble goals the US assistance programmes for foreign police have resulted in nothing but human rights violations and militarization of police in the recipient states. Moreover, the US’ lack of competent human resources for such trainings, the lack of internal and external coordination, and absence of clear objectives result in the failure of such programmes. With a clear history of failure of almost all such initiatives, the insistence of the US to train and equip foreign police do not contribute to the globalisation of police and is nothing but arrogance.

Assessment of the Effects of Stress and Age on Decision to Commit Suicide among Male Police Officers at Tabora Region, Tanzania

Decision to commit suicide is one of the most prevalent problems among male police officers. The study aimed at assessing the effects of stress and age on decision to commit suicide among male police officers at Tabora region. 262 Survey were conveniently distributed to male police officers in Tabora region. The information collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regressions. The findings indicated that both age and stress have statistically significant effects on the decision to commit suicide among police officers. The study recommends that the government should consider police problems and priorities to enable them work with passions despite the danger of the work . There should be more training to police officers, chief officers but the supervisors need to know how to handle matters in their duties so that they can reduce stress among each other .

Too much policing: Why calls are made to defund the police

The repeat use of fatal force against unarmed people of color has driven global protests against police violence and fueled criticism of policing as a mechanism for public safety. In the US, calls to abolish, transform, or reform policing have reemerged with a primary focus on the elimination of structural racism. In this essay, we contend that a two-tier policing problem exists. The first is the continued use of policing to enforce racial dominance through policing practices labeled as “proactive”. The second is contemporary “warrior-style” police training that normalizes the expectation of unquestioned compliance with police directives and authorizes police to use physical force in its absence. This dangerous combination results in over-policing the public generally and Black members of the public specifically. Select incidents are provided to support these claims. We conclude by expressing support for the call to reallocate portions of policing budgets toward other government and community-based structures that function to enhance the ability of people to survive and thrive rather than operate as mechanisms of pre-adjudication punishment and state-sanctioned coercion.

The use of semiotic resources in traffic policing: an exploration of genre structure and exchanges in traffic accident handling in China

Abstract In China, the increasing traffic pressure has created traffic policing problems such as the heavy workloads of traffic police, as well as more conflicts between traffic police and road users. The treatment of traffic policing as a semiotic practice provides both a new perspective in and a helpful approach to dealing with these problems, yet few studies have investigated how semiotic resources are used in traffic policing interactions. This article examines the supportive role of semiotic resources in traffic policing, and draws upon genre and exchanges involved as an illustration. The data include three audio recordings of traffic accident handling cases in Shanghai, China. Through qualitative analysis of the data from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this article identifies the genre stages (both obligatory and optional stages) in traffic accident handling and their logico-semantic relations, and situates the typical exchanges and moves used by traffic police in different stages. It also discusses the usefulness of semiotic resources for traffic policing and the implications of these resources in tackling the existing problems of traffic policing in China.

Four Characteristics of Policing as a Practice

Abstract The purpose of this article is three-fold: (1) to provide an analysis of autoethnography as a method in policing research; (2) to distinguish between policing as a practice and policing as an institution; and (3) to outline the characteristics of policing as a practice. I deploy an autoethnographic method to identify the characteristics of the practice of city policing in democracies. These characteristics—heroic struggle, edgework, absolute sacrifice, and worldmaking—draw attention to a crucial mismatch between policing as a practice and policing as an institution. I conclude by suggesting ways in which the characteristics of the practice can provide a firm foundation for further research into the contemporary problems of policing as an institution.

Representations of Policing Problems and Body-Worn Cameras in Existing Research

In this article, we analyze scholarly publications on body-worn cameras (BWCs) to shed light on scholars’ grounding assumptions about BWC technology and the policing problems assumed to be amended by it. We conducted a systematic search and a double-blind review, including 90 peer-reviewed journal articles, and analyzed how scholars warrant their studies, their findings and their recommendations. We found that BWC research largely investigates the effectiveness of BWCs worn by police officers in the United States and build upon a set of dominant policing problem representations: the police crisis in the United States and the police use of force, lack of oversight and control of police officers, citizen dissatisfaction and lack of police legitimacy, and police officer resistance toward BWC use. Assumptions underlying all four problem representations is that BWC technology will amend these problems and is legitimate and useful if the public supports it. Taken together, this enhances the representation of BWC technology as a self-evident means of improving community relations and police legitimacy in the United States. Finally, we provide recommendations for future research on BWCs, particularly the need for research departing from altogether different problem representations.