Political Training and Attitudes of Taiwan's Police Recruits

This article investigates police training and attitudes in Taiwan by means of inverviews with educators and students and a questionnaire administered to a random sample of police recruits (N=316). Police recruits in Taiwan are disproportionately rural and Taiwanese in origin; they are children of poorly educated parents whose status is perceived to be low. Today, police recruits are trained in two institutions on Taiwan: the Provincial Police Academy, comparable to a police administration program in a junior college or an extended pre-service program; and the Central Police College, comparable to a four-year, liberal arts institution in the United States.

Most recruits were found to believe they could be highly efficacious and to be supportive of the basic rules of Taiwan's political game. They showed less support for political tolerance and competition, and one-third were cynical toward governing authorities. The site of education appeared to be a major factor in producing differences in attitudes. Recruits trained at the academy were more tolerant and accepting of competition, and they were less cynical; those trained in the regular, four-year program were the reverse. Elite police officers and staff tend to be drawn from the latter institution, and line police officers from the former. These findings suggest that the higher education of police has had consequences in Taiwan different from those observed in the U.S. The findings also bear on Taiwan's security in an increasingly precarious environment     

Variation in the perception of desired qualities of police officers among trainees and senior police officers. Insights into the process and efficacy of police training

Police training is the process of imparting knowledge, skills, and values to police personnel. The study analyses a survey data on the perception of trainees and senior experienced officers regarding desired professional qualities in police officers. There is a high degree of congruence, in the assessment of values which are important for police, among the two groups. There are also differences among the two groups regarding the evaluation of the importance of interpersonal skills and human qualities. The study attempts to explain the similarities and the differences in perception by examining the conservative and innovative nature of police training, and the role of experience in developing an appreciation of human qualities. The study underlines the importance of police training as a mechanism to maintain the stability of operations in the organisation and its pivotal role in bringing about change in the police.     

College Students’ Satisfaction with Police Services in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was threefold: First, it explored the incidence of police-college student confrontations in Taiwan over the course of the three decades following the abolition of martial law in 1987. Second, it examined the correlates of satisfaction with police services among college students. Third, and most importantly, a Chinese cultural value I characterize as benevolent sympathy was introduced and integrated into a theoretical framework developed in Western societies to assess citizen satisfaction with police work. Using survey data collected from 688 college students across Taiwan, results derived from a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses showed that benevolent sympathy plays a significant role in the explanation of satisfaction with police services among these students. In addition, neighborhood disorder, collective efficacy, fear of crime, voluntary contact experience and nature of locality produced significant impacts even after controlling for demographic background characteristics. The public policy implications of the findings included the following: (1) Educators in college-level institutions might benefit from reviewing the curriculum of their academic programs and include the purposeful cultivation of good virtues such as benevolent sympathy in their courses; (2) Police administrators should likely institute training programs designed to improve communication skills, promote professional knowledge, and enhance neighborhood-specific services in sworn police officer training programs (particularly for officers serving in rural areas); (3) Police agencies should pay more attention to their behaviors and services in neighborhoods where disorder crimes and higher levels of fear exist; and (4) To enhance quality of police services to college students in particular, police departments need to take greater advantage of the effectiveness of the Internet for communicating with this population.     

Education,experience and earnings: the career coordinates of female vis-à-vis male police officers in Finland

This study compares the careers of female and male police officers using the common criteria of career success: education, experience, rank, and earnings. The data come from the Police Personnel Barometer 2010-survey, which targeted the entire Finnish police force (N/population?=?7350/11,028). The accumulation of work experience (by age) appears to be slower among female than among male police officers. Female police officers acquire their higher police degrees slightly later during their career than male police officers. Towards the end of the career, male police officers are ahead of females in both rank and earnings. Using comprehensive data from one of the most equal societies in the world, and robust statistical methods, the current paper thus demonstrates that it is very difficult the get rid of the career bias between female and male police officers.     

Tracking the evolution of police training and education in Poland: linear developments and exciting prospects

ABSTRACT

An important issue for police services across the world is the training and education of police personnel. Both training and education have often been linked to the professionalization of policing. An overview of current developments in police training and education in Poland is provided by a discussion and delineation of learning pathways for Polish police officers and the relevant pieces of legislation that have influenced these pathways. This contributes significant knowledge to international literature by being the first repository of information about Polish police training and education. The historical context of police and police training in Poland is introduced first, followed by an overview of the two-tier system of training. Finally, developments of police training in the Polish context are critically assessed to demonstrate the slow, yet undeniable, approach toward professionalisation of police officers in Poland.     

The police education qualification framework: a professional agenda or building professionals?

ABSTRACT

Given the growing complexity in British policing, the College of Policing are implementing a Police Education Qualification Framework through a professionalization agenda. This aims to standardise entry to the police and allow serving officers to gain accreditation for their previous training and experience. Part of this process involves the development of a national police curriculum for higher education institutions to deliver to new recruits. Different definitions of what constitutes professionalism can impact on officers’ interpretations of this concept and how they subsequently engage with the proposed reforms. This paper, which is based on in depth qualitative interviews with serving officers who have undertaken an academic qualification in policing, suggests that the relationship between police education and the development of professionalism is complex. Officers need to be trusted and encouraged to use their learning in a way that develops their own personal sense of professionalism. However, this paper will argue that current perceptions amongst officers are sceptical of the wider agenda and brings into question the development of a standardised curriculum which may ultimately be viewed as further governance over officer behaviour.     

The role of religious coping on problematic alcohol consumption by police officers

Problematic alcohol consumption by police officers is well documented in the literature. It also shows that critical incident stress is correlated with this behavior. A separate body of research indicates that religious coping exerts a moderate protective effect on various types of problematic behavior, including problematic alcohol consumption. We merge these literatures in an effort to determine if religious coping reduces problematic alcohol consumption by police officers and whether it mitigates the positive relationship between critical incident stress and problematic drinking. Data from the Police Stress and Domestic Violence in Police Families in Baltimore, Maryland, 1997–1999 are analyzed to examine these propositions (n = 1004). Results indicate that police officers with higher levels of religious coping were in fact less likely to report problematic alcohol consumption. However, religious coping did not mitigate the positive relationship between critical incident stress and problematic alcohol consumption. The implications of our findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Teaching police ethics: An experiential model

Attempts have been made in recent years to decrease police misconduct and improve police performance in areas of ethical decision-making. One attempt has been to provide ethics instruction to police officers at training academies and in-service training sessions. Experiential case studies have been used to help students apply theoretical concepts to practical situations. An evaluation of the experiential teaching model for police ethics was made in a quasiexperimental research design with two groups of police officers. The results supported the experiential approach for teaching police ethics. Police officers were found to better differentiate between ethical and unethical conduct in both an idealistic and realistic manner.     

Maintaining legitimacy using external communication strategies: An analysis of police-media relations

Police organizations must strategically control their external environment in order to maintain organizational legitimacy. Exploiting their relationship with the news media is one way to accomplish this goal effectively. Despite the documented importance of crime, justice, and social control as a news topic, there is a limited understanding of the variables driving how police and media evaluate this relationship. This study used data collected from a national sample of police media personnel to fill this gap, and concluded that the police and media valued their interdependent relationship, but for different reasons. Police public information officers recognize the power of the media and attempt to use this power to promote the organization. News personnel are satisfied because the police provide data so they can easily produce crime stories. The implications for understanding how police organizations control their external organization are discussed.     

Voluntary turnover of field operations officers: A test of confluency theory

This article explores classic and contemporary explanations for voluntary police turnover in one of the largest police departments in the Southeast—the Birmingham (Alabama) Police Department (BPD). It specifically tests confluency theory and eight variables associated with job satisfaction as predictors of turnover among field operations officers. Confluency theory, an untested theory, attributes police turnover to an absence of preemployment job awareness and to incongruencies between job expectations and job realities. Results from a survey of 232 current officers and 60 former officers disagreed with conventional wisdom and the majority of turnover research findings. Former BPD officers were generally more satisfied with their jobs in BPD than current officers. Logistic regression further indicated that confluency theory and the job satisfaction variables investigated are poor predictors of field operations officers who leave the BPD.     

Who is better for handling domestic violence? A comparison between Taiwanese female and male Officers

This study examined Taiwanese female and male police officers’ perceptions of handling domestic violence. Specifically, it assessed officers’ attitudes toward whether female officers, male officers, or a combination of female and male officers are more suited for handling cases of battered women, offenders, and domestic violence overall. Survey data were collected from 96 female and 156 male officers from two police departments in Taiwan. Frequency distributions showed that a combination of male and female officers were most preferred by officers for handling abused women, offenders, and domestic violence overall. Regression analysis found that female officers were significantly more likely than male officers to favor a combination of male and female officers over female officers alone for handling battered women. Female officers were found to be more likely than male officers to favor male over female officers and a combination of male and female officers for handling offenders. Police supervisors’ attitudes toward domestic violence also influenced officers’ attitudes toward who is more suited for handling offenders. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

Women in Law Enforcement and Police Use of Deadly Force

We test the hypothesis that law enforcement agencies that have a larger share of female officers should experience lower rates of police use of deadly force. We use the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics 2013 survey of police and sheriff departments (N?=?1,983). We measure police-involved violence as the number of civilians killed by law enforcement officers from 2013 through 2015 as reported by the website Mapping Police Violence. Using a variety of empirical estimators to take into consideration the structure of the distribution of police-caused deaths, we find consistent results that a higher share of female officers is associated with a higher likelihood of police-caused deaths. These results are consistent with prior findings within the literature and implies that in order to “fit in” with their male counterparts female officers will use coercive tactics to the same extent.     

Attitudes of police recruits towards domestic disturbances: An evaluation of family crisis intervention training

Police student officers' attitudes towards domestic disputes following family-crisis-intervention training are analyzed. A total of 359 student officers from fourteen training classes participated in the study. The most dramatic improvement in attitudes was observed in officers' perceptions of disputants and in their perceptions of domestic disturbance calls. The study also investigated the attitudes of student officers toward organizational policy, training, and community relations. Student officers' attitudes significantly improved in thirty-one of fifty-one items (p < .05). In general, the changes in attitudes demonstrated that the family-crisis-intervention program did affect the attitudes of student officers in the predicted direction of change. Following training, student officers were more likely to view domestic disputes as legitimate police business and more likely to believe that their actions could influence families in crisis and that people in crisis both want, and will benefit from, assistance. It is concluded that crisis-intervention training appears to be responsible for the change in officer attitudes and that family-crisis training should be included in the curriculums of police training academies.     

Understanding how police officers think about mental/emotional disturbance calls

Police officers frequently respond to calls involving persons with mental illnesses and in doing so, they are key gatekeepers of access to mental health treatment as well as entry into the criminal justice system. Programs such as Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) are being implemented across the United States and elsewhere to train officers to respond more effectively and facilitate access to mental health services when appropriate. These programs would benefit from a thorough understanding of these encounters from the perspective of police officers. We take as a premise that officers develop frames of reference or “schema” for understanding and responding to these encounters that are shaped by socialization, training, and their experience as police officers. In this study, we examine police officer schema of mental/emotional disturbance (M/EDP) calls. Qualitative interviews provided the foundation to develop the Needs on the Street Interview (NOSI) to tap officer schema of four types of M/EDP scenarios. The NOSI was administered to 147 officers in Chicago and Philadelphia. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was conducted separately for each scenario to examine groups of officers with different schema as well as predictors of schema group. For three of the four scenarios, officers were classified into a two category or schema model, for the fourth (crime reported) a three category model was supported. Schema groups tended to be differentiated by ratings of level of resistance/threat and substance use. Contrary to our expectations, CIT and law enforcement experience did not predict officer schema group. While the CIT model emphasizes de-escalation skills to reduce resistance and the need for officers to use force, CIT and other training programs may want to consider increasing content related to factors such as co-occurring substance use and managing resistance.     

Post-FTO Performance Evaluations of Rookie Police Officers

Abstract

The literature surrounding the Field Training Officer (FTO) program examines how police recruits navigate post-academy on-the-job training, the reactions these novices have, and how these fledgling officers assess their training experience. Absent from this literature is any consideration of how new officers perform after graduation from the FTO program. The present study examines 347 monthly evaluations issued by immediate supervisors for 66 rookies at the Tallahassee (FL) Police Department. An analysis of scores registered in 18 areas over the first six months after FTO completion determines that race and sex of the sergeant and officer exhibit a statistical influence on grading practices. While these effects do not appear to taint the transition from probationary to full employment status, long-term ramifications are explored.     

Crisis intervention skills training for police negotiators in the 21st century

Summary While Crisis Management training and intervention skills are not new areas for police officers or for police crisis negotiators, it is certainly true that such training must be included in the overall preparation for police officers in general and for police crisis negotiators in particular. Not to do so ignores the need for such skills in the day-to-day functions and calls-for-service of these groups. It has been the experience of this author, in talking with police negotiators, that more and more calls for their services are being made, in situations which are non-hostage related, than ever before. These areas continue to include barricaded individuals, suicidal persons, family disputes in which one member of the family is holding other members of the family against their will, and abuse situations including spouse abuse and child abuse. Additional areas include those in which there are juveniles involved as well as within school settings. Some of the latter may involve hostages while others do not. Finally, it is becoming less unusual for negotiators to be summoned only to find that the subject has engaged in acts designed to evoke fatal responses from those officers involved. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as “death by cop.” Further, it is also important that those indirectly involved in these situations receive this type of Crisis Intervention training. These may include first response officers, first response police and security personnel in our public and private schools, security officers in our hospitals and courthouses, and others who, due to their particular jobs, may be involved in these types of incidents.     

Can You Build a Better Cop?

Research Summary

By drawing from psychology and economics, we present an experimental evaluation of a procedural justice training program designed to “slow down” police officers’ thought processes during citizen encounters. We find that officers who were randomly assigned to participate in training were as engaged in the community as similarly situated officers, but they were less likely to resolve incidents with an arrest or to be involved in incidents where force was used. These changes were most evident among officers who worked in areas with a modest level of risk.

Policy Implications

Police officers who are actively engaged with the public can reduce crime through general deterrence and by arresting criminals. Nevertheless, excessive discretionary arrests and the use of force by officers can reduce public trust in the police. To date, there is scant evidence as to how police departments can successfully train officers to balance enforcement and public trust in the field. Through our study, we demonstrate that a relatively minor supervisory intervention may cause substantive changes in how police and citizens interact with each other.     

Investigating the Reliability of the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) Crime Report

The Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) is a computerized investigative aid, developed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is used to increase information sharing and enable crime linkages in serious crime investigations. The current study examines the reliability of the ViCLAS Crime Report by calculating the level of agreement among two samples of police officers who received one of two fictitious crime scenarios; homicide (n = 116) or sexual assault (n = 121). Results from this study show that the observed inter-rater reliability among police officers completing the ViCLAS booklet was 79.30% for the homicide scenario, and 87.70% for the sexual assault scenario. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Anxiety and cynicism: Companions of the police officer

The work of enforcing the law has inherently aerated anxiety and cynicism among police officers. Through the use of Neiderhoffer’s Police Cynicism Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the levels of anxiety and cynicism were measured in a random sample of peace officers from the Attanta area. The authors found, through the use of a single-factor analysis of variance, that when anxiety decreased, cynicism decreased. One conclusion, contrary to earlier studies, was that cynicism is higher among new police officers than among veteran officers.     

Predicting Officer Physical Assaults at Domestic Assault Calls

Police work is rife with the potential for physical harm, and domestic assault calls are one source of assaults on officers. Inability to accurately predict what circumstances might lead to an attack is one cause of officer cynicism and paranoia. Having the ability to identify which suspects pose the greatest threat of assault would allow officers to take appropriate protective measures. Using data collected from 1,951 domestic assault calls across three cities, the present study compared characteristics and behaviors of the batterers with whether or not the batterers physically assaulted the responding officers. Findings revealed five significant batterer characteristics (employment status, shared residence with abuse victim, alcohol consumption, property damage, and hostile demeanor toward officers) that successfully predicted officer assaults. These risk factors may be incorporated into police safety training in the response to family violence calls.