This study examines the social forces that affect law enforcement participation in hate crime data collection initiatives. Focused interviews were conducted in a stratified sample of police officers from various departments in 2 East Coast states. The findings from these interviews were used to create a survey instrument that was distributed to a sample of police officers and civilian employees in 4 police agencies, 1 from each region of the United States: Northeast, West, South, and Central. The survey findings reduced to 60 interrelated variables identified at the focus groups to 10 common factors (or constructs). These factors are: (a) organizational attitudes/beliefs; (b) utility in community relations; (c) organizational self-preservation; (d) efficacy of police involvement; (e) priority of resource allocations; (f) supportive organizational policies and practices; (g) individual attitudes/beliefs; (h) professional self-preservation; (i) work-related difficulties; and (j) organizational commitment. The results of this study provide valuable insight into ways to improve law enforcement participation in hate crime reporting.
Objective: To describe circumstances surrounding injuries involving nail guns among carpenters, calculate injury rates, identify high risk groups and preventive measures. Methods and setting: Active injury surveillance was used to identify causes of injury among a large cohort of union residential and drywall carpenters. Injured carpenters were interviewed by experienced journeymen; enumeration of workers and hourworked were provided by the union. The combined data allowed definition of a cohort of carpenters, their hours worked, detailed information on the circumstances surrounding injuries, and identification of preventive measures from the perspectives of the injured worker and an experienced investigator. Results: Nail guns were involved in 14% of injuries investigated. Ninety percent of these injuries were the result of the carpenter being struck, most commonly by a nail puncturing a hand or fingers. The injury rate among apprentices was 3.7 per 200 000 hours worked (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.7 to 4.9) compared with a rate of 1.2 among journeymen (95% CI 0.80 to 1.7). While not always the sole contributing factor, a sequential trigger would have likely prevented 65% of the injuries from tools with contact trip triggers. Conclusions: Training, engineering, and policy changes in the workplace and manufacturing arena are all appropriate targets for prevention of these injuries. Use of sequential triggers would likely decrease acute injury rates markedly. Over 70% of injuries among residential carpenters were associated with through nailing tasks (such as nailing studs or blocks, trusses or joists) or toe nailing (angled, corner nailing) as opposed to flat nailing used for sheathing activities; this provides some indication that contact trip tools could be used solely for flat nailing.
Preventive measures should include change to the safer sequential trigger that prevents unintentional firing and early training in safe tool use. Because of the high prevalence of use of tools with contact trip triggers the greatest number of injuries among these apprentices could be prevented with an engineering solution.
Introduction-Nail guns are responsible for a significant injury burden in residential construction. Risk, based on hours of work, is particularly high among apprentice carpenters due in part to more frequent exposure to tool use.
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