The nature of police involvement in mental health transfers

During the course of their duties, police regularly have contact with mentally ill persons who are experiencing psychiatric crisis and require some form of mental health transfer. This study examined 2611 unique mental health transfers completed by police in the Australian state of Victoria over an eight-month period in 2009–2010. The overwhelming majority of mental health transfers performed by police during this period were the result of unplanned calls for assistance. Although police frequently requested assistance from other services, these were often not available. The study findings support a substantial body of anecdotal evidence from police citing lengthy involvement with people experiencing mentally illness, with the average mental health transfer consuming 2.5?h of police time. The frontline responses of police to people in psychiatric crisis need to be more formally acknowledged and creative solutions need to be sought with health and welfare services to better meet the needs of those who are falling between the cracks of community mental health care services.     

The effects of physical effort on police officers' perception and aggression in simulated shooting incidents

Abstract

In the present experiment the effects of physical effort on police officers' aggression and perception in simulates shooting incidents were investigated. Based upon Kahneman's (1973) variable-allocation capacity model it was hypothesized that physical effort will result in a decease in aggression towards aggressive offenders. Based upon Kahneman's model and Easterbrook's (1959) Cue-Utilization-Hypothesis it was further expected that this decrease in aggression will be caused by an incorrect judgement of the aggression of aggressive offenders (and not by an impaired perception). The findings confirmed these hypotheses.     

The coping strategies and responses of African youth in New Zealand to their encounters with the police

This article looks at the coping behaviors used by African youth in Aoteaora New Zealand during their encounters with the police. African youth are one of New Zealand's newest and youngest populations yet report disturbing accounts of racial provocation and abuse by the New Zealand police. In a research study carried out with African youth about their experiences with the police, qualitative interviews with the youth and African community leaders revealed that the youth responded to the discriminatory behaviors of the police in a number of ways. These responses included being obstructive, demonstrating vigilance of police practices, and avoiding subsequent encounters with the police, and indicate that the youth are prepared to challenge the perceived racism of the police.     

Evaluating the relative impact of positive and negative encounters with police: a randomized experiment

Objectives

Examines the influence of positive, negative, and neutral police behavior during traffic stops on citizen perceptions of police.

Methods

Participants were randomly assigned to view a video clip of a simulated traffic stop in which the officer communicates with the driver in a positive (procedurally just), negative (procedurally unjust), or neutral manner. After viewing the video, participants completed a survey about their perceptions of police, including their level of trust in police, obligation to obey police orders, and willingness to cooperate with police.

Results

Observing positive interactions with police enhanced people’s self-reported willingness to cooperate with police, obligation to obey police and the law, and trust and confidence in police, whereas observing negative interactions undermined these outcomes. The effects of these interactions were much stronger for encounter-specific outcomes than for more general outcomes.

Conclusions

The results from this randomized experiment confirm that procedural justice can enhance people’s prosocial attitudes toward police, whereas procedural injustice can undermine these attitudes. While positive (procedurally just) interactions tend to have weaker effects than negative (procedurally unjust) interactions, this study finds little support for the notion that only negative experiences shape people’s views about the police.

     

The inchoate nature of community policing: Differences between community policing and traditional police officers

Over the past 20 years, police departments across America have adopted a community—or problem-oriented—policing philosophy. Community policing has not been implemented wholesale, however. Most departments have assigned some officers to community policing roles but kept the majority in traditional motorized patrol assignments. Pertinent literature suggests that these two groups do not see eye to eye on their respective roles and duties. In this study, work-redesign theory is used as a conceptual framework to explain officer functioning in both community policing and traditional motorized policing settings. Findings indicate key similarities between community policing officers and officers assigned to traditional motorized patrol, despite differences in job satisfaction, perception of impact, and policing style.     

The influence of neighborhood characteristics on police officers' encounters with persons suspected to have a serious mental illness

ObjectivePolice officers' decisions and behaviors are impacted by the neighborhood context in which police encounters occur. For example, officers may use greater force and be more likely to make arrests in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We examined whether neighborhood characteristics influence police encounters with individuals suspected to have a serious mental illness, addictive disorder, or developmental disability.MethodWe obtained data on 916 encounters from 166 officers in six jurisdictions in Georgia, USA and abstracted geographical data pertaining to the location of these encounters from United States Decennial Census data. Encounters were nested within 163 census tracts. Officer-reported data covered general encounter characteristics, the officer's perception of the subject's condition, subject demographics, use of force, and disposition of the encounter (e.g., arrest v. referral or transport to treatment services). Geographical data included 17 variables representing population and housing characteristics of the census tracts, from which three indices pertaining to neighborhood income, stability, and immigration status were derived using factor-analytic techniques. We then examined associations of these indices with various encounter-related variables using multi-level analysis.ResultsEncounters taking place in higher-income and higher-stability census tracts were more likely to be dispatch-initiated and take place in a private home compared to those in lower-income and lower-stability neighborhoods. In higher-income neighborhoods, encounters were more likely to involve a subject suspected to have a mental illness (as opposed to an addictive disorder or developmental disability) and less likely to involve a subject suspected to have alcohol problems. The officer's level of force used was not associated with neighborhood factors. Regarding disposition, although the likelihood of arrest was unrelated to neighborhood characteristics, encounters taking place in higher-immigrant neighborhoods were more likely to result in referral or transport to services than those in lower-immigrant neighborhoods.ConclusionNeighborhood characteristics are important to consider in research on police interactions with individuals with serious mental illnesses, addictive disorders, or developmental disabilities. Such research could inform departmental training policies and procedures based on the needs of the jurisdictions served.     

The effects of body-worn cameras on police-citizen encounters and police activity: evaluation of a pilot implementation in Philadelphia,PA

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Examine changes in officer behavior, when wearing body-worn cameras, as revealed by pedestrian stops, vehicle stops, arrests, use of force, and citizen...     

Analyzing the nature of police involvements: A research note concerning the effects of forms of police mobilization

Studies of the police have reported that much of the work patrol persons do is service-oriented. However, many of those researches relied upon citizen-initiated involvements as units of analysis. Here the distinction has been made between reactive and proactive forms of police mobilization. When activity data are analyzed in this fashion, it is found that the police initiate a larger proportion of law enforcement activities than was supposed. The implications for research are discussed.     

Severity of intimate partner violence and occurrence and frequency of police calls

This article evaluates whether female victims of severe physical, psychological, or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) call police more often than other abused women. Abused women (431) reported frequency of contacting police (dependent variable), nature and severity of IPV experienced, and characteristics of themselves and their perpetrator (explanatory variables). A two-part regression model estimated likelihood of police contact among all participants and rate of contact among callers. Women with severe physical or psychological IPV or injury were more likely to call police than were other abused women. Among callers, women made 96% more calls if a weapon was involved, 58% more if they were severely sexually abused, and 40% more if they were severely physically abused. Women with children at home made 32% more calls. These results delineate the level and types of IPV and other characteristics of homes that make single and repeat calls to police.     

Alternative dispute resolution and mediation of complaints against police in Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This study assessed the role of alternative dispute resolution options in the complaints management systems of the eight policing jurisdictions in Australia and the single jurisdiction of New Zealand. The available literature shows that a large proportion of complainants would like to participate in mediation, and that both complainants and police who experience mediation report much higher rates of satisfaction than those experiencing traditional adversarial investigative and adjudicative processes. Experiences with informal dispute resolution or ‘conciliation’ options are more mixed, and they are susceptible to tokenism and misuse as a convenient administrative means of disposing of complaints. Despite this situation, the data obtained from police and oversight agency sources in this study showed that options were limited to informal resolution conducted by senior officers, with an ostensible focus on behavioral improvement but with no meaningful publicly available data on outcomes. The paper concludes by advocating for a best practice complaints management system that includes mediation within a consultative framework focused on behavioral improvement.     

Toward a better understanding of the hierarchical nature of police organizations: Conception and measurement

The present article proposes a reconceptualization of police organizational hierarchy as a multidimensional construct. This notion of a multidimensional police hierarchy was derived from the sociological literature of stratification and the prior management literature of organizational hierarchy. It is proposed here that police employees are stratified based upon the differential allocation of various resources (such as rewards and formal power) and attributes (such as skills). This differential allocation stratifies employees into five different hierarchies. This article describes these five hierarchies and suggests how they might be measured, at both the individual and comparative/organizational levels. Finally, the possible interrelations among these hierarchies is discussed as well as three management issues concerning this multidimensional conception of police hierarchy.     

From coercion to deception: the changing nature of police interrogation in America

Our police, with no legal sanction whatever, employ duress, threat, bullying, a vast amount of moderate physical abuse and a certain degree of outright torture; and their inquisitions customarily begin with the demand: If you know what's good for you, you'll confess. (Ernest Jerome Hopkins, 1931)¹ Today, Ness Said, interrogation is not a matter of forcing suspects to confess but of conning them. Really, what we do is just to bullshit them (William Hart, 1981)² There is an interesting irony at work here: restrict police use of coercion, and the use of deception increases. (Gary Marx, 1988)³ In both popular discourse and academic scholarship one continually encounters references to the tradition-bound police who are resistant to change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of the American police over the past 100 years is the history of drastic, if not radical, change. (Samuel Walker, 1977)⁴ A longer version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November, 1991.     

“Drop the clipboard and help me!”: The determinants of observer behavior in police encounters with suspects

Much of the knowledge about police behavior on the streets is based on observational research. Little research, however, had examined the impact of reactivity in police observational data. One theme in the field research literature was that observer behavior could act as a source of bias in observational data. This article uses data from a large-scale observational study of police to predict this form of reactivity during encounters with suspects. In other words, “Are observer effects triggered by situational factors (i.e., dangerous suspects or situations) or a function of observer characteristics?” Results from a two-level hierarchical logistic model indicated that observers with higher academic rank (e.g., advanced graduate students), lower grade point averages, and more conservative attitudes toward criminality were less likely to get involved in police work during encounters with suspects. The implications of these findings for recruiting and training police researchers are discussed.     

Variation of the chemical contents and morphology of gunshot residue in the surroundings of the shooting pistol as a potential contribution to a shooting incidence reconstruction

A study of the chemical contents and sizes of gunshot residue originating from 9×18mm PM ammunition, depositing in the vicinity of the shooting person was performed by means of scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. Samples of the residue were collected from targets placed at various distances in the range 0-100cm as well as from hands and clothing of the shooting person. Targets were covered by fragments of white cotton fabric or black bovine leather. In the case of cotton targets microtraces were collected from circles of 5 and 10cm in radius. Results of the examinations in the form of numbers of particles, proportions of their chemical classes and dimensions revealed a dependence on the distance from the gun muzzle, both in the direction of shooting and in the opposite one, i.e., on the shooting person. The parameters describing gunshot residue differed also depending on the kind of the target substrate. The kind of obtained information gives rise to understanding the general rules of the dispersion of gunshot residue in the surroundings of the shooting gun. Thus, it may be utilised in the reconstruction of shooting incidences, especially in establishing the mutual positions of the shooter and other participants of the incident.     

Procedural justice, routine encounters and citizen perceptions of police: main findings from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET)

Objectives

To test, under randomized field trial conditions, the impact of police using the principles of procedural justice during routine encounters with citizens on attitudes towards drink-driving, perceptions of compliance, and their satisfaction with the police.

Methods

We conducted the first randomized field trial??the ??Queensland Community Engagement Trial?? (QCET)??to test the impact of police engaging with citizens by operationalizing the key ingredients of procedural justice (neutrality, citizen participation, respect, and trustworthy motives) in a short, high-volume police?Ccitizen encounter. We randomly allocated 60 roadside Random Breath Testing (RBT) operations to control (business-as-usual) and experimental (procedural justice) conditions. Driver surveys were used to measure the key outcomes: attitudes towards drinking and driving, satisfaction with police and perceptions of compliance.

Results

Citizen perceptions of the encounter revealed that the experimental treatment was delivered as planned. We also found significant differences between the experimental and control groups on all key outcome measures: drivers who received the experimental RBT encounter were 1.24 times more likely to report that their views on drinking and driving had changed than the control group; experimental respondents reported small but higher levels of compliance (d?=?.07) and satisfaction (d?=?.18) with police during the encounter than did their control group counterparts.

Conclusions

Our results show that the way citizens perceive the police can be influenced by the way in which police interact with citizens during routine encounters, and demonstrate the positive benefits of police using the principles of procedural justice. Our study was limited by the use of paper-only surveys and low response rate. We also recognize that the experiment setting (RBT road blocks) is limiting and non-reflective of the wider set of routine police?Ccitizen encounters. Future research should be undertaken, using experimental methods, to replicate our field operationalization of procedural justice in different types of police?Ccitizen encounters.     

Police shooting and criminal homicide: The temporal relationship

This study examines the temporal relationship between the incidence of police shooting and the incidence of criminal homicide for New York City between 1971 and 1975. The research finds that there is no temporal relation between the incidence of police shooting and the incidence of criminal homicide and concludes that the very strong and widely supported cross-sectional correlation between police shooting and criminal homicide is spurious, not causal.