No abstract

In a unique exploration of line of duty police deaths, Kachurik and colleagues (Kachurik, S., Ruiz, J., & Staub, M. (2013). Police officers killed on duty: a different view. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 15(2), 1–11.) found that officers with greater social investment (ie, officers who were married and had children) were less likely to be feloniously killed than were single officers. Here, the analyses are replicated in a specific city over several periods to confirm this relationship. Focusing on Baltimore Police Department officers killed in the line of duty between 1808 and 2006, Kachurik and colleagues' findings that greater social investment did indeed decrease the likelihood of felonious death on the job — are replicated here. However, whereas the previous authors found children, but not marriage, to be significantly related to manner of death, the current study finds the opposite — marriage, but not the number of children an officer has, was significantly associated with officer homicide. Contrary to Kachurik et al., officers with less experience were significantly more likely to die feloniously than were their more tenured counterparts. In addition, the study finds that officers were more likely to die feloniously in certain districts.

Few topics are more sensitive to police and minority ethnic groups than racial profiling. Because this is a relatively new area of inquiry, researchers lack a comprehensive methodology for conducting inquiries into allegations of racial profiling. To date, most studies of profiling focus on alleged disparities between policing activities and aggregate population statistics. However, as a vast majority of this research cannot account for possible differences in group behaviour, it is impossible to conclude definitively that officers actually target minorities. By contrast, this study examines accusations of racial and demographic profiling by comparing arrest statistics between two overlapping police forces patrolling the same stretch of highway, during the same period of time. We theorise that the Louisiana State Police Criminal Patrol Unit (LSP-CPU) and certain deputies of the St Martin Parish Sheriff's Office (SMSO) conducted focused traffic stops on suspect populations in an effort to interdict drug trafficking along Interstate 10. Indeed, an examination of the arrest statistics between the CPU/SMSO and our baseline (Louisiana State Police Traffic Patrol) reveals dramatic discrepancies which are logically consistent with racial and demographic profiling on the part of the CPU/SMSO. Beyond its specific findings, the study provides a more reliable method by which researchers can assess accusations of profiling by other law enforcement agencies.

Current policing literature indicates that the retention rate of patrol officers is in steady decline. On the whole, various policing factors that include fatigue, stress and workload appear to be major reasons for high turnover rates. In order to substantiate patrol officers' views of contemporary policing, we examined their perceptions of issues related to overall job satisfaction and correlating factors. Municipal police officers from 14 south central Pennsylvania police departments located in one mid-size county were surveyed to determine if there were any significant differences or correlations between perceptions of overall job satisfaction and previous research related to satisfaction with administration, shift work, equipment, community support, department morale and policies and procedures. Results indicate that there is an apparent connection between stress and overall job satisfaction. Most notably, higher stress levels, faster rotating shifts and officers' perceptions of department morale were shown to impact the levels of overall job satisfaction.

Most organizational theories assume that agency partnerships within a system are seamless and tightly fit. Through qualitative interviews with program personnel, this study measured the extent to which juvenile probation and police partnerships were characterized as a ''loosely coupled system.'' Loosely coupled systems were measured by each agency's willingness to share information, willingness to share power, flexibility in decision making, open communication without fear of reprisal, valuing diverse backgrounds of outside agencies, and degree of mutual commitment toward a common goal. Evidence to support the existence of a loosely coupled system was the willingness of officers to expand and broaden their traditional roles and appropriately share power, such that there was no mission distortion and role confusion observed. Information sharing efforts had a significant impact on dissolving old ways of thinking about traditional roles and instead built a new sense of trust, improved morale, and greater access to information.