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Reform efforts in many police departments have diversified the workforce, especially with regard to race, sex, and sexual orientation. Research, however, has demonstrated that the assimilation of these officers has not been problem-free. Using data collected from a large, municipal police department, this article examines the workplace experiences of patrol officers and a potential consequence of those experiences: stress. We find that being female and being a racial/ethnic minority brings with it substantially different experiences on the job compared to male and White officers. Our findings also confirm previous research that workplace climate has an effect on workplace stress.

States that proponents of community policing contend that implementation of this strategy should substantially change the nature of police work. Unfortunately, there remains only limited knowledge about what community policing officers actually do, and in fact, many researchers suggest that community policing is merely a new name for traditional forms of policing. Using observational data collected in a medium sized municipal police department, examines the work of community officers and compares it to the work of traditional “beat” officers. Discusses the activities of community officers in light of existing literature which has examined the workload of police officers.

According to tokenism theory, "tokens" (those who comprise less than 15% of a group's total) are expected to experience a variety of hardships in the workplace, such as feelings of heightened visibility, isolation, and limited opportunities for advancement. In the policing literature, most previous studies have defined tokenism narrowly in terms of gender. The current research extends prior research by examining tokenism as a function of gender and race, with an examination of racial/ethnic subgroups. Particular attention is paid to Latino officers as this study represents the first known study of tokenism and Latino police officers. Quantitative analyses reveal that, for the most part, token police officers do experience the effects of tokenism as predicted by tokenism theory. Although all minorities experienced some level of tokenism, Black males and Black females experienced greater levels of tokenism than Latino officers, suggesting that race is a stronger predictor of tokenism than gender.

This study examines the extent to which injuries to police officers have changed from 1996-1998 to 2006-2008. Data were obtained from injury reports filed by sworn officers of the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Police Department. Results indicated that the frequency and rate (injury incidents per officer) of officer assaults, other suspect-related injuries, and accidents declined during the study period. While the specification of the reasons for these changes remains a topic for future research, the decline in assaults and suspect-related injuries may well be a function of the increased availability and more routine use of less lethal technology, enhanced training, and the more common use of protective equipment.

Most of the existing research on the hazards of police work concludes that policing is a dangerous occupation. The operationalization of dangerousness used by most researchers, however, fails to account for injuries and deaths that occur as a result of accidents, relying instead on the analysis of assaults and homicides. Defining dangerousness in this manner not only provides an incomplete picture of the dangers associated with the job but also precludes the comparison of policing to other occupations. Using injury report data from a police department and fire department in a large Midwestern city, this study contributes to knowledge in this area by (a) expanding the conceptualization of dangerousness to include injuries that occur as a result of accidents, (b) comparing accidental injuries to those that result from felonious acts, and (c) comparing injury incidents of varying natures and causes across occupations.

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