Research Summary
A robust body of research findings has established that policing is a dangerous profession. Few scholars, however, have investigated the full picture of the hazards in policing, which includes deaths occurring in both felonious and nonfelonious circumstances. In this study, we examine nearly 50 years of all police officer line‐of‐duty deaths (1970–2016) using data from the Officer Down Memorial Page. We focus on long‐term trends in felonious and nonfelonious deaths annually, as well as on trends in incident‐level characteristics. We also employ interrupted time‐series analysis (ARIMA) to test the “war on cops” thesis post–Ferguson.
Policy Implications
The number of line‐of‐duty deaths has declined dramatically over the last five decades. Policing is a much safer profession now than it was 50 years ago. Despite a 75% drop in deaths, however, there has been remarkable stability in geographic‐, temporal‐, and incident‐level characteristics. Also, several notable changes over time reflect favorably on improved safety in policing, such as declines in deaths resulting from aircraft crashes and accidental gunfire. Other trends are troubling, though, such as the stability in deaths during auto pursuits and a two‐fold increase in deaths from vehicular assaults. Currently, the “war on cops” thesis is not supported by any evidence, and we apply the 50‐year lens in this study to provide important context for understanding recent trends in officer deaths.
Citizens' beliefs that officers are employing unnecessary or excessive levels of force can quickly erode police legitimacy and can lead to severe consequences including loss of life, civil disorder, criminal prosecution, and large civil judgments. Although scholars have devoted more than four decades of research to identifying the correlates of police-citizen violence, relatively little study has focused on the relationship between departmental measures of police professionalism and violent outcomes between citizens and officers. The current study uses data from the 2003 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey to examine the impact of five measures of departmental professionalism-(a) agency commitment to education (associate's degree requirement); (b) the number of hiring or screening standards; (c) the total number of training hours (academy, field training, and inservice); (d) female representation; and (e) agency commitment to community policing-on two indicators of police-citizen violence-(a) citizen complaints alleging excessive use of force and (b) reported assaults on officers-across 526 large municipal law enforcement agencies. Results from ordinary least squares regression analyses show that only departmental commitment to education was related to the police-citizen violence indicators, as agencies that require an associate's degree experienced fewer citizen complaints of use of force and fewer assaults on
This study tests whether violence directed toward American law enforcement has increased in the wake of events in Ferguson, Missouri, in summer 2014. Using monthly data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) reports (2010–2016), we carried out time-series analyses to examine trends in nonfatal assaults on police officers in a sample of 4,921 agencies. Neither injurious nor noninjurious assaults on officers increased following Michael Brown’s death in August 2014. The findings are robust across a variety of model specifications and estimation techniques, providing little evidence of a “War on Cops” through 2016. The study adds empirical rigor to an ongoing national debate based largely on speculation/anecdotes. The impact and potential consequences of the current climate for officers’ perceptions of safety/risk are discussed.
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