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Article Contents

Introduction
Discussion and implications
Academic–practitioner partnership
Acknowledgements
Appendix: Articles serving as study sample (n = 82)
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Police Retention: A Systematic Review of the Research

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Jeremy M Wilson, Clifford A Grammich, Terry Cherry, Anthony Gibson, Police Retention: A Systematic Review of the Research, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice , Volume 17, 2023, paac117, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac117

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Difficulties in recruitment and retention undermine the ability of U.S. police departments to maintain and diversify their workforces, particularly in light changing workloads and performance expectations. The police reform movement and recent increases in crime have highlighted these challenges, but other systemic and acute issues have also made staffing departments difficult. Attention to police staffing has been sporadic and uneven, with much discussion focused on recruitment. Given increasing attrition and that retention is more efficient than recruitment, there is considerable need for systematic examination of staff turnover and the development of strategies to bolster retention. To help fill this need, this manuscript assesses the landscape of retention research. We began by conducting a systematic search of four scholarly databases, which yielded 82 journal articles for investigation. We developed a codebook to isolate research features, which we captured in an SPSS dataset. We analyzed article content to illustrate key characteristics and lessons, including the types and characteristics of scholars and organizations who have produced the research, financial support for research, the characteristics of journals in which the work is published, substantive foci (including on diversity), methodological approaches and types of data, units of analysis, theoretical explanations and the causes and correlates of attrition, effects of turnover, and forms and effectiveness of retention strategies. We illustrate the nature and evolution of this work, identifying key features, strengths, weaknesses, lessons, and gaps in knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for police research and evidence-based workforce planning.

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A better path forward for criminal justice: Police reform

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Rashawn ray and rashawn ray senior fellow - governance studies @sociologistray clark neily clark neily senior vice president - cato institute @conlawwarrior.

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Below is the first chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

Recent incidents centering on the deaths of unarmed Black Americans including George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, William Green, and countless others have continued to apply pressure for wide sweeping police reform. To some, these incidents are the result of a few “bad apples.” 1

To others, they are examples of a system imbued with institutional and cultural failures that expose civilians and police officers to harm. Our article aims to combine perspectives from across the political spectrum on sensible police reform. We focus on short-, medium-, and long-term solutions for reducing officer-involved shootings, racial disparities in use of force, mental health issues among officers, and problematic officers who rotten the tree of law enforcement.

Level Setting

Violent crime has significantly decreased since the early 1990s. However, the number of mass shootings have increased and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security report being worried about domestic terrorism, even within law enforcement. Nonetheless, despite recent increases that some scholars associate with COVID-19 spillovers related to high unemployment and underemployment, violent crime is still much lower than it was three decades ago.

Some scholars attribute crime reductions to increased police presence, while others highlight increases in overall levels of education and employment. In the policy space, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 are often noted. We believe there is some validity to all of these perspectives. For example, SWAT deployment has increased roughly 1,400 percent since 1980. Coinciding with the 1986 Drug Bill, SWAT is often deployed for drug raids and no-knock warrants. 2 The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, is most recently highlighted as an example that demonstrates some of the problems with these tactics. 3

The 1994 Crime Bill ushered the COPS program and an increase in prisons around the country. 4 This legislation also coincided with stop-and-frisk policies and a rise in stand-your-ground laws that disproportionately disadvantaged Black Americans and led to overpolicing. It is an indisputable fact that Black people are more likely to have force used on them. In fact, Black people relative to white people are significantly less likely to be armed or be attacking at the time they are killed by police. This is a historical pattern, including during the 1960s when civil rights leaders were being beaten and killed. However, officer-involved killings, overall, have increased significantly over the past two decades. 5 And, we also know that if drugs were the only culprit, there would be drastically different outcomes for whites. Research shows that while Blacks and whites have similar rates of using drugs, and often times distributing drugs, there are huge disparities in who is arrested, incarcerated, and convicted for drug crimes. However, it is also an indisputable fact that predominately Black communities have higher levels of violent crime. Though some try to attribute higher crime in predominately Black neighborhoods to biology or culture, most scholars agree that inequitable resources related to housing, education, and employment contribute to these statistics. 6 7 8 Research documents that after controlling for segregation and disadvantage, predominately Black and white neighborhoods differ little in violent crime rates. 9

These are complex patterns, and Democrats and Republicans often differ on how America reached these outcomes and what we do about them. As a result, bipartisan police reform has largely stalled. Now, we know that in March 2021 the House of Representatives once again passed The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. States and localities are also presenting and passing a slew of police reforms, such as in Maryland where the state legislature passed the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021. We are not here to debate the merits of these legislations, though we support much of the components, nor are we here to simply highlight low-hanging fruit such as banning no-knock warrants, creating national databases, or requiring body-worn cameras. People across the political aisle largely agree on these reforms. Instead, we aim to provide policy recommendations on larger-scale reforms, which scholars and practitioners across the political aisle agree needs to occur, in order to transform law enforcement in America and take us well into the twenty-first century. Our main themes include accountability, training, and culture.

Accordingly, our recommendations include:

Short-Term Reforms

Reform Qualified Immunity

Create National Standards for Training and De-escalation

Medium-Term Reforms

Restructure Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct

Address officer wellness.

Long-Term Reforms

Restructure Regulations for Fraternal Order of Police Contracts

Change police culture to protect civilians and police, short-term reforms.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that courts invented to make it more difficult to sue police and other government officials who have been plausibly alleged to have violated somebody’s rights. 10 11 We believe this doctrine needs to be removed. 12 13 States also have a role to play here. The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights further doubles down on a lack of accountable for bad apples.

We are not out on a limb here. A recent YouGov and Cato poll found that over 60 percent of Americans support eliminating qualified immunity. 14 Over 80 percent of Americans oppose erasing historical records of officer misconduct. In this regard, most citizens have no interest making it more difficult to sue police officers, but police seem to have a very strong interest in maintaining the policy. However, not only do everyday citizens want it gone, but think tanks including The Brookings Institution and The Cato Institute have asserted the same. It is a highly problematic policy.

Though police chiefs might not say it publicly or directly, we have evidence that a significant number of them are quite frustrated by their inability to get rid of the bad apples, run their departments in ways that align with best practices they learn at Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and National Association of Chiefs of Police, and discipline and terminate officers who deserve to be held accountable and jeopardize not only the public perception of their own department but drag down the social standing of the entire law enforcement profession. As noted above, The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state level needs to be addressed. It further doubles down on qualified immunity and removes accountability for law enforcement.

National Standards for Training and De-escalation

In 2016, Daniel Shaver was fatally shot and killed by officer Philip Brailsford. Brailsford was charged but found not guilty. At the time of the killing, Shaver was unarmed as he lay dead in a hotel hallway. Police experts critiqued Brailsford’s tactics to de-escalate the situation. As he entered the scene, he had both hands on his M4 rifle and eliminated all other tools or de-escalation tactics. Brailsford was fired, tried for murder, and then rehired. He ultimately retired due to PTSD. Highlighting the roles of militarization, mental health, qualified immunity, and other policy-related topics, this incident shows why there is a need for national standards for training and de-escalation. Many officers would have approached this situation differently, suggesting there are a myriad of tactics and strategies being taught.

Nationally, officers receive about 50 hours of firearm training during the police academy. They receive less than 10 hours of de-escalation training. So, when they show up at a scene and pull their weapon, whether it be on teenagers walking down the street after playing a basketball game or someone in a hotel or even a car (like in the killing of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb), poor decisions and bad outcomes should not be surprising.

Police officers regardless of whether they live in Kentucky or Arizona need to have similar training. Among the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, there is wide variation in the amount of training that officers have to complete as well as what type of training they complete. With the amount of travel that Americans engage in domestically, law enforcement has not kept up to speed with ensuring that officers receive the same training. Consequently, police officers may be put in positions to make bad decisions because of a lack of the implementation of federal standards. Funding can be provided to have federally certified trainers who work with localities within states, counties, and cities.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

From 2015–2019, the 20 largest U.S. municipalities spent over $2 billion in civilian payouts for police misconduct. Rather than the police department budget, these funds mostly come from general funds. 15 So, not only is the officer absolved from civil or financial culpability, but the police department often faces little financial liability. Instead, the financial burden falls onto the municipality; thus, taxpayers. This money could be going toward education, work, and infrastructure.

Not only are the financial settlement often expensive, like the $20 million awarded to William Green’s family in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but the associated legal fees and deteriorated community trust are costly. In a place like Chicago, over the past 20 years, it has spent about $700 million on civilian payouts for police misconduct. New York City spent about $300 million in the span of a few years.

We assert that civilian payouts for police misconduct must be restructured. Indemnification will be eliminated, making the officer responsible, and requiring them to purchase professional liability insurance the exact same way that other occupations such as doctors and lawyers do. This would give insurance companies a strong incentive to identify the problem officers early, to raise their rates just the way that insurance companies raise the rates on a bad driver or a doctor who engages in malpractice. In this regard, the cost of the insurance policy would increase the more misconduct an officer engaged in. Eventually, the worst officers would become uninsurable, and therefore unemployable. This would help to increase accountability. Instead of police chiefs having difficulties removing bad officers through pushback from the Fraternal Order of Police Union, bad officers would simply be unemployable by virtue of the fact that they cannot secure professional liability insurance.

Bottom line, police almost never suffer any financial consequences for their own misconduct.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure. Police are almost always indemnified for that misconduct when there is a payout. And, what that means is simply that their department or the city, which is to say us, the taxpayers, end up paying those damages claims. That is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

Most proposals for restructuring civilian payouts for police misconduct have included some form of liability insurance for police departments and/or individual officers. This means shifting the burden from taxpayer dollars to police department insurance policies. If a departmental policy, the municipality should pay for that policy, but the money should come from the police department budget. Police department budget increases should take settlement costs into account and now simply allow for increased budgets to cover premium increases. This is a similar approach to healthcare providers working in a hospital. If individual officers have liability insurance, they fall right in line with other occupations that have professional liability insurance.

Congress could approve a pilot program for municipalities to explore the potential impacts of police department insurance policies versus individual officer liability insurance, and even some areas that use both policies simultaneously. Regardless, it is clear that the structure of civilian payouts for police misconduct needs to change. We believe not only will the change provide more funding for education, work, and infrastructure, but it will increase accountability and give police chiefs and municipalities the ability to rid departments of bad apples that dampen an equitable and transparent cultural environment.

Mental Health Counseling

In this broader discussion of policing, missing is not only the voices of law enforcement themselves, but also what is happening in their own minds and in their own bodies. Recent research has highlighted that about 80 percent of officers suffer from chronic stress. They suffer from depression, anxiety. They have relationship problems, and they get angered easily. One out of six report being suicidal. Another one out of six report substance abuse problems. Most sobering, 90 percent of them never seek help. 16 We propose that officers should have mandatory mental health counseling on a quarterly basis. Normalizing mental health counseling will reduce the stigma associated with it.

It is also important for law enforcement to take a serious look into the role of far-right extremism on officer attitudes and behaviors. There is ample evidence from The Department of Homeland Security showing the pervasive ways that far-right extremists target law enforcement. 17 Academic research examining social dominance ideation among police officers may be a key way to root out extremism during background checks and psychological evaluations. Social dominance can be assessed through survey items and decision-making simulations, such as the virtual reality simulations conducted at the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland.

Community Policing

Community police is defined in a multitude of ways. One simple way we think about community policing is whether officers experience the community in everyday life, often when they are not on duty. Do they live in the community, send their children to local schools, exercise at the neighborhood gym, and shop at the main grocery store? Often times, police officers engage in this type of community policing in predominately white and affluent neighborhoods but less in predominately Black or Latino neighborhoods, even when they have higher household income levels. Police officers also live farther away from the areas where they work. While this may be a choice for some, others simply cannot afford to live there, particularly in major cities and more expensive areas of the country. Many police officers are also working massive amounts of over time to make ends meet, provide for their families, and send children to college.

Altogether, community policing requires a set of incentives. We propose increasing the required level of education, which can justify wage increases. This can help to reduce the likelihood of police officers working a lot of hours and making poor decisions because of lack of sleep or stress. We also propose requiring that officers live within or near the municipalities where they work. Living locally can increase police-community relations and improve trust. Officers should receive rent subsidies or down payment assistance to enhance this process.

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Unions are important. However, the Fraternity Order of Police Union has become so deeply embedded in law enforcement that it obstructs the ability for equitable and transparent policing, even when interacting with police chiefs. Police union contracts need to be evaluated to ensure they do not obstruct the ability for officers who engage in misconduct to be held accountable. Making changes to the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state helps with this, but the Congress should provide more regulations to help local municipalities with this process.

Police have to be of the people and for the people. Often times, police officers talk about themselves as if they are detached from the community. Officers often view themselves as warriors at war with the people in the communities they serve. Police officers embody an “us versus them” perspective, rather than viewing themselves to be part of the community. 18

It must be a change to police culture regarding how police officers view themselves and view others. Part of changing culture deals with transforming how productivity and awards are allocated. Police officers overwhelmingly need to make forfeitures in the form of arrests, citations, and tickets to demonstrate leadership and productivity. Police officers rarely get credit for the everyday, mundane things they do to make their communities safe and protect and serve. We believe there must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out. Policing can be about respecting individuals and not using force. It is an ethical approach to policing that requires incentives positive outcomes rather than deficits that rewards citations and force.

T here must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out.

Recommendations for Future Research

First, research needs to examine how community policing and officer wellness programs can simultaneously improve outcomes for the community and law enforcement. The either/or model simply does not work any longer. Instead, research should determine what is best for local communities and improves the health and well-being of law enforcement. Second, future research on policing needs to examine the role that protests against police brutality, particularly related to Black Lives Matter protests, are having on reform at the local, state, and federal levels. It is important for policymakers to readily understand the demands of their constituents and ways to create peace and civility.

Finally, research needs to fully examine legislation to reallocate and shift funding away from and within police department budgets. 19 By taking a market-driven, evidence-based approach to police funding, the same methodology can be used that will lead to different results depending on the municipality. Police department budgets should be fiscally responsible and shift funding to focusing on solving violent crime, while simultaneously reducing use of force on low-income and racial/ethnic minority communities. It is a tall order, but federal funding could be allocated to examine all of these important research endeavors. It is a must if the United States is to stay as a world leader in this space. It is clear our country is falling short at this time.

We have aimed to take a deep dive into large policy changes needed for police reform that centers around accountability, finances, culture, and communities. Though there is much discussion about reallocating police funding, we believe there should be an evidence-based, market-driven approach. While some areas may need to reallocate funding, others may need to shift funding within the department, or even take both approaches. Again, with roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies, there is wide variation in funds provided for policing and how those funds are spent. This is why it is imperative that standards be set at the federal level to help municipalities grapple with this important issue and the others we highlight in this report.

Policing Directions: a Systematic Review on the Effectiveness of Police Presence

Published: 12 November 2021
Volume 29 , pages 191–225, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

Philipp M. Dau ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6739-9878 1 ,
Christophe Vandeviver ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9714-7006 1 , 2 ,
Maite Dewinter ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7430-462X 3 ,
Frank Witlox ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8966-6823 3 , 4 , 5 &
Tom Vander Beken ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1596-5070 1

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We systematically review the effectiveness of police presence. In doing so, we investigate concepts of police presence and differences between reported effects. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and protocols, we systematically identify and review eligible studies on police presence. Further, quality assessment and findings synthesis are used to map limitations of current research as well as grounds for future avenues. The systematic search strategies yielded 49 studies focusing on testing the effects of police presence or evaluating its measurement. We find evidence that police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour. Police presence focused on specific areas, times and types of crime achieves maximum effectiveness. The reviewed studies show a high degree of heterogeneity in reporting which limits comparability of findings across studies. Research on police presence presents evidence for significant crime preventative effects of focused police actions and shows strongest effects when focused on certain areas, times, or types of crimes. We encourage future research to focus on police presence en route and its effects, including crime prevention, traffic regulation and fear of crime.

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Hot spots policing and crime reduction: an update of an ongoing systematic review and meta-analysis

Anthony A. Braga, Brandon S. Turchan, … David M. Hureau

What and How of Effective Police Enforcement

Availability of Data and Material

Not applicable.

Code Availability

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This work was supported in part by the Ghent University Research Council (UGent-BOF) Interdisciplinary Research Project funding scheme [BOF18/IOP/001 to C.V., T.V.B., F.W.]. Christophe Vandeviver’s contribution was supported in part by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Postdoctoral Fellowship funding scheme [12CO619N to C.V.]. Frank Witlox’s contribution was supported by the Estonian Research Council [PUT PRG306 501 to F.W.].

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Maite Dewinter & Frank Witlox

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PMD: conceptualization, data curation, investigation, methodology, visualization, writing—original draft. CV: conceptualization, methodology, validation, supervision, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition. MD: writing—review. FW: supervision, funding acquisition. TVB: supervision, writing–review and editing, funding acquisition.

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Dau, P.M., Vandeviver, C., Dewinter, M. et al. Policing Directions: a Systematic Review on the Effectiveness of Police Presence. Eur J Crim Policy Res 29 , 191–225 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8

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April 2, 2024

Policing Works when It Is Done Right

The COVID pandemic and the police murder of George Floyd polarized views on policing. Rather than abolishing policing or maintaining its status quo, we need to make it better and more focused

By Justin Nix , Jessica Huff , Scott Wolfe , David Pyrooz & Scott Mourtgos

A defocused police car sits behind crime scene tape with flashing lights at night

Ajax9/Getty Images

Decades of research show that—when done strategically and fairly —policing reduces crime. That means we need evidence-based policing, not simply more or less policing. The best way to reduce violent crime requires focusing policing efforts on specific problems , places and people who commit repeat offenses .

Efforts to defund or abolish the police gained serious momentum in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. According to a recent national survey , police chiefs in roughly one in eight jurisdictions say they have seen attempts to defund their department. In Denver, for example, a city council member motivated by a desire to end police violence against people of color proposed an amendment to replace the local police department with an unarmed Department of Peacekeeping Services. In Austin , citing similar concerns, city leaders raced to slash their police budget. And in Seattle, facing pressure to halve police spending, city leaders reached an “ uneasy truce ” with protesters by reallocating 20 percent of the police budget to “community alternatives” and the “ Equitable Communities Initiative ,” among other things.

On the ground, policing has changed. In 2020 in Denver, the site of our recent study , police made 50 percent fewer pedestrian stops, 40 percent fewer vehicle stops, 60 percent fewer drug arrests and 25 percent fewer disorder arrests than they had been making on average during the four years prior.

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This occurred against the backdrop of a national, years-long trend of declining stops and arrests , a phenomenon that was further accelerated by both the COVID pandemic and the George Floyd protests. Enduring staffing shortages have further impaired operational capabilities , cutting into these practices while diminishing morale among officers .

The reality is that some baseline level of policing is necessary to ensure public safety. Some amount of proactive policing over and above that baseline likely ensures greater security. But too much policing can be harmful, undermining public confidence and safety .

Our own study in Denver showed that de-policing led to more crimes in the city’s streets, adding to the existing evidence on how the pandemic affected crime and, more generally, on when policing “ works .”

Such evidence does not square nicely with desires to reduce or eliminate policing. Moreover, defunding the police is at odds with most Americans’ preferences , as well as with research that shows that reductions in proactive policing can disproportionately harm minority communities that are most negatively impacted by pullbacks in high-quality, fair policing.

At the same time, similar work in other cities such as Austin and Seattle found that “ public safety was not clearly impacted ” by de-policing. We believe this is evidence that context matters: not all police activities yield the crime control benefits we would like.

On the other hand, those who suggest we should simply “Back the Blue” and avoid seeking out safer alternatives to policing are also making an unsupported argument. Our Denver study and others have shown that crime does not always spike when police make fewer stops and arrests . Pullbacks in certain types of police behavior—for example, arrests for public disorder offenses—may be advantageous. Such changes may improve community relations because these arrests are often viewed as racially motivated by minority community members. Reducing the frequency of pretextual stops —that is, stops for minor traffic infractions that are merely used as a pretext to search for contraband in hopes of making an arrest—may also lead to better quality policing and more trust from the community.

We must weigh the crime control benefits of policing against the harm it can cause. Few studies attempt to carry out this thorny math. One team of researchers, however, recently estimated that each additional 10 officers employed by a jurisdiction prevent one homicide, with the trade-off that larger departments make more low-level, “quality of life” arrests, which disproportionately impact Black Americans.

Getting policing right means striking a balance between the excesses of police activity and a lack of safety that simultaneously and disproportionately burden disadvantaged groups in our country. While pulling back on police activity may reduce some harms (e.g., racial disparities and excessive force), going too far will offset many of those benefits by increasing violent victimization.

Policing matters when it deliberately focuses on specific local problems and ensures the protection of civil rights. Reform should focus on balancing these demands rather than on either heeding calls to abolish the police or recklessly supporting the police at every turn, losing sight of very real dangers behind both choices.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American or the authors’ institutions .

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Expert Commentary

‘Defund the police’: What it means and what the research says on whether more police presence reduces crime

We explore what “defund the police” means to criminologists, activists and legal scholars, recent research and what the future of policing in America might look like.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Clark Merrefield, The Journalist's Resource June 29, 2021

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/criminal-justice/defund-the-police/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Last June, video of white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd, a Black man, went viral on social media. Uprisings took hold across hundreds of U.S. cities, and activist calls to “defund the police” went mainstream.

For some, “defund the police” is a movement, a stepping stone toward abolishing police departments entirely.

For others, the idea of defunding the police is limited to simply restricting money for military-style equipment.

For many, the definition lies in the middle — there should be police, but their role in communities should be limited to crime prevention. The idea goes that service agencies other than police could and should respond to non-violent calls related to mental health, housing and other issues. Berkeley, California has even moved to create a separate department to handle routine traffic violations.

Here, we explore what “defund the police” means to leading criminologists, community organizers and legal scholars; recent academic research on whether more police presence reduces crime; and what the future of policing in America might look like.

The national conversation on ‘defund’ is ongoing

CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Joe Biden whether he supported defunding the police on June 9, 2020.

“No, I don’t support defunding the police,” the then-presidential candidate said . “I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.”

Nearly two dozen cities have since taken steps to reduce police funding or redirect funds toward other services — though the 50 largest U.S. cities slightly increased their law enforcement spending as a percentage of their combined 2021 budgets.

As some cities recalibrate police spending, “defund the police” remains relevant, and contentious, in the national conversation.

Earlier this week on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana why he and other Republicans voted against a COVID-19 relief package that directed billions toward community programs and policing, including hiring more officers.

Wallace asked, “Can’t you make the argument that it’s you and Republicans who are defunding the police?”

Banks replied , “Not at all, Chris.” After some back-and-forth with Wallace, Banks pivoted to political rivals:

“When Rep. [Ilhan] Omar says that policing is rooted in evil and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi compares police officers to Nazi storm troopers, it makes it very difficult for police departments around the country to recruit people to become police officers.”

In July 2020, in response to President Donald Trump sending camouflaged and heavily armed federal law enforcement to Portland, Oregon, to arrest protesters and protect federal property, Pelosi tweeted , “Unidentified storm troopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.”

It’s unclear whether Omar has described a specific law enforcement department or police generally as “evil.”

But she has called the Minneapolis Police Department a “cancer” and “rotten to the root.”

Different interpretations of ‘defund’

“Defund the police” is something of a Rorschach inkblot test — people bring their own interpretations to the phrase.

“‘Defund the police’ means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality,” writes University of Maryland sociologist Rashawn Ray in a June 2020 Brookings Institution blog post. “That’s it. It’s that simple.”

Around the same time as Ray’s writing, activist and educator Mariame Kaba wrote a New York Times opinion essay titled, “ Yes, we mean literally abolish the police .”

“We are not abandoning our communities to violence,” Kaba writes. “We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.”

Criminologist Brooklynn Hitchens , an incoming assistant professor at the University of Maryland, put it like this: “I do feel police are deeply corrupt and troubled and I don’t know how to work within a system that is that corrupt,” she says. “But, at its core, ‘defund’ the police is about reallocation of funds to more social service-based agencies, whether it’s housing or mental health.”

Peter Moskos , a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questions why money for expanding social services should come from police coffers.

“I’m all for funding mental health issues and homeless issues, but the idea that it has to come from the 5% of city budgets that goes to law enforcement is absurd,” he says.

Seth Stoughton , an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina, sees “defund” as shorthand for more social service investment, as well as reexamining what law enforcement means in America.

“Homelessness, poverty, substance abuse — we’ve criminalized a range of human behaviors and we’ve relied on the police to be the social service agency not just of first resort, but sometimes our only social service agency that deals with these issues,” he says. “So what I think when I hear ‘defund the police’ tends to be, ‘Reduce the need for police to respond to some of these social issues by investing in a more robust overarching social service infrastructure.’”

Violent crime is rising

As an array of American voices rose around “defund the police,” so did violent crime . Homicide rates increased 30% in 2020 in 34 large U.S. cities, according to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice , a non-governmental coalition of 14 current and former police chiefs, elected leaders and community advocates.

Criminologists hesitate to point to a single factor to explain rising homicide rates. 2020 was a unique year, considering the pandemic, racial justice protests, more gun purchases , widespread layoffs, school and office closures, and a hotly contested presidential election.

Last week, the White House announced a new strategy to address violent crime. At a news conference, Biden struck a holistic tone, with more, not less, federal funding directed toward policing. Biden stressed the $350 billion pool, part of the American Rescue Plan , available to state and local governments to hire more police.

The White House will also work with 16 cities, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, on community violence intervention programs. Violence intervention programs usually rely on trusted community members to mediate conflicts before they become physical and to connect people to social services. State and local governments can also use the federal money to help young people find summer jobs. Studies published in Science have linked community engagement and summer jobs to reduced violence.

Cities don’t usually bust their budgets on police

Despite calls to defund the police, policing does not usually comprise a huge portion of municipal spending. Since the 1970s, state and local governments combined have spent about 4% of their annual budgets on policing, while overall crime rates have fallen since the 1990s.

Most police funding in big cities goes to compensate officers and other personnel. Local governments spend about 6% of their budgets on police, compared with about 1% of state budgets, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Urban Institute , a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank.

“I’m a tax-and-spend Democrat,” says Moskos, a former Baltimore city police officer. “I want other programs to be funded more. But what does that have to do with policing?”

He notes that city spending on police can vary widely. Typically, according to Moskos, whether a city spends a large percentage of its budget on police is related to whether the city also pays for education. Cities direct a bigger percentage of their budgets to policing if the county or some other entity pays for schools. By far the largest share — 40% — of local spending goes toward education, according to the Urban Institute analysis.

Still, Moskos says, the point remains that police spending often represents a small portion of city budgets and money for social services could be found elsewhere.

“Law enforcement is 3% to 5% of the spending that happens in a city — that’s not including federal money,” he says. “So why not fund those things from the other 95%? Or raise taxes. ‘Defund’ is inherently anti-policing at its core. I don’t understand how that is going to make policing better.”

A range of policing futures

Law professors Stephen Rushin and Roger Michalski , writing in the Florida Law Review in 2020, suggest that widespread defunding of police departments “could increase crime rates, hamper efforts to control officer misconduct, and reduce officer safety.”

Rushin and Michalski take “defund” at face value, meaning police budget cuts. Instead of defunding police departments, they propose states redistribute policing funds equitably to localities, including money for officer training and accountability efforts.

“Just as some state legislatures have passed revenue-sharing initiatives designed to equalize the availability of public goods such as education, so, too, should states act to equalize the funding of local police departments according to need,” they write.

In contrast to a redistributive funding framework, Ohio State University law professor Amna Akbar argues in a December 2020 California Law Review article that scholars need to take seriously activist calls for abolishing the police. Akbar writes:

“Abolitionist demands like ‘defund the police’ remind us that if we are interested in building a more just world, we cannot wage our battles simply on the terrain of rights, litigation, rule of law, or administrative innovation. We must consider the historical, material, and ideological dimensions of our demands and our strategies. We must examine where we invest money and what kind of infrastructure we build for collective life. We must investigate the ideas that motivate and justify things as they are. We must appraise who has what resources, for what end, and why. We have to understand how such profound inequity came to be, why it persists, and what needs to be redressed to create the equitable society we aspire to but have not yet realized. We have to ask: If police and prisons are the stuff of structural violence, what are the elements of structural flourishing, and what are the strategies to build them?”

Some prominent law enforcement professionals have indicated an openness for shifting police responsibilities away from non-criminal situations.

“The police would be very happy to get rid of responsibilities which were forced upon them in the first place,” former New York City police commissioner and former Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton told The Crime Report earlier this month. “We created the homeless problem when we closed down mental institutions back in the 1970s. But there was no [follow-up] funding for the homeless.”

Bratton added: “If you take that responsibility entirely away from the police — who work 24 hours a day — you’re going to have to create a huge budget in other agencies needed to staff these functions 24 hours a day. I would suggest, you know, as we go forward with these efforts, we’re going to find the police are like weaving a garment, that we are going to be a central thread in that garment, no matter who they give the responsibility to.”

University of Arkansas criminologist Jordan Blair Woods , in a forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, suggests redirecting another core function away from police: traffic enforcement.

“A major obstacle to achieving structural police reform in this important moment for policing is the conventional wisdom that a robust police force is needed to enforce traffic laws,” Woods writes. “This obstacle is especially problematic given that traffic policing is a persistent source of race- and class-based injustice.”

A handful of cities in recent years have proposed divesting traffic stops from policing. Last July, lawmakers in Berkeley approved a new traffic enforcement department separate from the police department.

Princeton University sociologist Patrick Sharkey in a June 2020 Washington Post essay recalled traveling to Western Australia in 2017 to observe the work of the Nyoongar Patrol , a government-funded patrol made up of community members:

“I watched them break up a fight between two young people before the police were called. At the end of the night, I saw them make calls to find a safe place to sleep for a woman who was worried that she would be at risk if she went home. I observed from the periphery, and I was still exhausted by the end of the shift. It is hard, stressful work to spend time in public spaces, making sure everyone feels safe. But it works better if those taking on this task are motivated by genuine concern for their neighbors.”

Police presence and crime reduction

No matter what policing looks like in America’s cities and counties in the coming years, there is evidence that more police presence can reduce crime.

A March 2021 paper in The Review of Economics and Statistics examines what happened when patrol cars in Dallas were called away from their usual beats during 2009. The author, Tel Aviv University economist Sarit Weisburd , associates a 10% decrease in Dallas police car patrols away from their beats with a 7% increase in crime.

“While the allocation of officers to beats may be driven by the demands of providing fast response times, in reality, the presence of these cars reduces the probability of crime,” Weisburd writes.

A 2019 meta-analysis published in Campbell Systematic Reviews associates hot-spot policing with lower crime rates. Hot spot policing can take several forms, but generally it means assigning more police to high-crime areas, more community engagement and more traffic enforcement.

The authors did not generally observe results indicating crime spilled into areas around hot spots. There were instances, such as a hot spot program in Mesa, Arizona from August 2008 to March 2009, where crime displacement happened.

Meanwhile, research published in September 2017 in Nature Human Behaviour found that a certain type of proactive policing could increase crime. Specifically, aggressive policing of low-level offenses — the “ broken windows ” method Bratton helped popularize in New York City in the 1990s. “Broken windows” supposes that having police focus on eradicating visible disorder, like panhandling, loitering and broken windows, can reduce major crime.

Amid a labor dispute in 2014 between New York City police unions and Mayor Bill de Blasio, officers held a work slowdown for nearly two months. During the slowdown, “broken-window” policing declined — and so did complaints of major crimes, like burglary, assault and grand larceny, the authors find.

Hitchens, the University of Maryland criminologist, thinks spillover is likely when police flood a neighborhood experiencing high crime.

“The people selling drugs will move to a different block,” she says. “Sometimes [police] will be hyper-focused on getting people off the street corner. But all of those are Band-Aids. It can have a temporary reduction in violent crime but it doesn’t reduce it long term, probably for a lot of reasons. A lot of those efforts are short lived. There’s no stability or long-term plan, and they’re not addressing the root causes.”

Her view is based on her research experience, including interviewing street-identified Black men and women in Wilmington, Delaware on their encounters with law enforcement. Hitchens and her co-authors explain what “street-identified” means in their 2017 Sociological Forum paper drawn from those interviews:

“Criminal involvement as a way of life is a ‘site of resilience’ and form of coping with extreme economic poverty. ‘Street life,’ ‘the streets,’ or a ‘street’ identity is phenomenological language used by persons active in crime as an ideology centered on personal, social, and economic survival.”

Hitchens adds that Black Americans “do want police generally.” One-third of Black respondents from a nationally representative YouGov poll taken in mid-June 2020 expressed no trust in the police as an institution. Black respondents were split on whether there should be “more cops on the street,” while two-thirds indicated racial bias in policing should be addressed “by reforming the existing system.”

A nationally representative USA Today/Ipsos poll of 1,165 adults conducted online in March 2021 found 28% of Black respondents supported “defunding the police” while 37% were against the idea. When asked whether police should be abolished, 51% of Black respondents said no, compared with 22% in support.

“Just like your average middle-class white family, they want their families to be protected and sit out on their porch and drink a cup of coffee without experiencing harassment from police or having someone come up and ask for drugs,” Hitchens says. “They want to feel safe. What they do not want is the abrasive and abusive treatment.”

For Hitchens, who is currently conducting a study of how Black residents in Baltimore view police and the “defund” movement, there is at least one group of people consistently left out of the “defund” conversation: street-identified, formerly incarcerated individuals.

She says, “Any time you bring those people to the table — I have seen time and time again — when they’ve had a chance to voice their thoughts, they not only have fresh ideas, but who is better-versed to work on a problem than those who are most affected?”

The case of Camden, New Jersey

Police budgets sometimes shrink after recessions , as jobs disappear, tax dollars dwindle and federal funding is redirected. The Marshall Project reported in June 2020 that community trust eroded and there were more complaints about officer use of force when police budgets were cut in Memphis and Chicago after the Great Recession.

But, as The Marshall Project notes, there is at least one fundamental difference between recessionary reductions and the “defund” discussion. Local police budget cuts due to waning financial resources seek the survival of the force. Calls to defund the police over the past year are aimed at rethinking policing entirely.

Camden, New Jersey, often comes up as an example of a city that reframed its approach to policing and reduced crime. It also spent more to do so.

Camden disbanded its police force in 2013 after one of the city’s most violent years on record. Camden County took over and in May 2013 formed a new department, the Camden County Police Department , to patrol the city.

CCPD instituted community-based policing tactics along with new technology, such as a video observation platform covering a six-block radius.

Overall crime per 100,000 Camdenites decreased by more than half from 2012 to 2020, according to CCPD data, while the number of shooting homicides fell by 68%.

“Camden got more money,” Moskos says. “More money is not a panacea, but you’re not going to get better for less money. That’s my issue with ‘defund.’ It makes policing worse. It is that simple. The people who generally want to abolish police think police don’t prevent crime.”

Research published in late 2019 in Preventive Medicine Reports also associates the new policing tactics in Camden with lower rates of gunshot patients at a major regional trauma center. On average, there were 34 gunshot patients treated every three months before the policing changes, and 26 quarterly gunshot patients afterward.

“The ways in which police there actively engaged with the community worked,” says Hitchens. “Crime did go down in the city. But Camden is still a very poor and distressed community. So the root causes that increase crime are still there.”

She adds: “As a country, we are very punitive. But if you get at the root causes of crime — poverty, poor schools, poor housing — attacking it from that angle has been demonstrated time and time again as an effective way to reduce crime.”

Warrior or guardian?

One way for communities and police departments to rethink policing in America is to pursue a cultural shift of what it means to be an officer on patrol.

Stoughton, the University of South Carolina law professor, has for years advocated that police should think of themselves first as guardians, not as warriors. He wrote “ Principled Policing: Warrior Cops and Guardian Officers ,” published in October 2016 in the Wake Forest Law Review .

This philosophical shift is perhaps most critical for beat cops, says Stoughton, because beat cops often represent the primary interaction community members have with law enforcement.

Stoughton himself served as a beat cop in Tallahassee for five years in the early 2000s.

It’s about an individual officer’s default mindset, Stoughton explains. Are they a warrior? Or a guardian?

Here’s how he puts it:

“What is their job supposed to be — are they primarily there to kick ass and take names? Or to pull people over and get a bunch of citations written? Or, are they there to improve quality of life? Are they there to advance public safety? In other words, are they there to identify and deal with an enemy, or are they there in service to the community?”

There are two key elements to Stoughton’s questions. The first is that an officer being a warrior or a guardian is not an either-or proposition — it’s not a dichotomy. An officer will have to be a warrior sometimes — in an active shooter situation, for example — while reverting to a guardian mindset day-to-day. Many officers spend the bulk of their time responding to non-criminal calls and traffic violations.

“The point is that officers need to be more than just warriors,” Stoughton says. “If that’s all an officer is capable of, they aren’t going to be a very good officer. Being a warrior is a small part of what officers need to bring to the job. The overarching part of what they need to bring to the job is this approach of guardianship — a service-oriented mentality.”

Recent preliminary research suggests the race and ethnicity of patrol officers could make a difference as to whether they are open to thinking of themselves first as guardians. An online, non-representative pilot survey of 882 patrol officers from around the country, published in January 2021 in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology , finds officers overall receptive to both the guardian and warrior mindset, with Hispanic officers “more supportive of this hybrid style of policing than White officers.”

(Response rates were too low for officers of other races and ethnicities to draw insight on whether they would be open to a guardian-first policing framework.)

The metaphor of guardian versus warrior isn’t just academic — it’s practical too, Stoughton says. Day-to-day policing can be mundane, but situations can change quickly.

“We use metaphor to communicate values,” Stoughton says. “When you don’t have clear guidance as to how to make a decision in a particular circumstance, you fall back on your values and principles.”

Stoughton learned the guardian mentality firsthand while patrolling Tallahassee, even if the word “guardian” wasn’t used at the time, and even if he didn’t yet understand it.

He particularly recalls an arrest warrant issued one evening around 11 p.m. Stoughton’s lieutenant told officers to wait to execute the warrant — it wouldn’t be a good look for the department to arrest a community member in the middle of the night.

“I remember thinking at the time, ‘That’s bullshit. This is a legal process. We should be allowed to do it,’” Stoughton says. “In retrospect, I think the lieutenant was exactly right. We don’t want to give the impression that we exist to knock down people’s doors late at night and tear them away from their families.”

He adds: “When and how we execute an arrest is as important as the fact of doing it.”

About The Author

Clark Merrefield

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Front Psychol

Problems With Police Reports as Data Sources: A Researchers' Perspective

C. dominik güss.

1 Department of Psychology, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, United States

Ma. Teresa Tuason

2 Department of Public Health, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, United States

Alicia Devine

Introduction.

Police officers are at the forefront of dealing with crimes. As one part of their work they are required to write reports, such as crime case reports, traffic collision reports, driving under the influence reports, or death case reports about those crimes. These reports document information regarding an investigation and are often later used as legal documents for law enforcement and outside agencies such as insurance companies. In extreme cases, a police report could even make its way to the Supreme Court. Thus, a police report should be detailed and contain accurate information about an incident or crime (e.g., “factual, accurate, clear, concise, complete, timely,” Sacramento State Police Department, 2014 , p. 3).

One would expect then that police reports would offer a wealth of information that researchers might be able to use for conducting their projects. Yet, there are several problems related to using police reports as potential data source. The following comments are based on the experiences of the authors while they were researching gun violence in the United States (a follow up to a prior study, Tuason and Güss, 2019 ) after contacting over 300 police stations nationwide requesting police reports for specific cases. This was their first project working with police reports as a data source (large-scale multi-jurisdictional approach). Hopefully, our shared experiences will help other researchers when collecting data and utilizing police reports.

Specifically, although our experience was that police departments were professional and helpful, we identified several problems with police reports in the United States of America. Every country has different laws and procedures, so what we mention here might not apply in other countries. In other countries, some of the same challenges may be relevant, others may not apply, and some additional challenges not mentioned here may be encountered.

Police Reports May not Be Released

As naïve researchers we expected police reports to be public records that are accessible under state laws such as Public Records Law (for example Illinois Compiled Statutes ILCS, 5 ILCS 140), Sunshine Law in Florida (Florida Statutes, Title XIX, Chapter 286 and Title X, Chapter 119), Right-to-Know Law in Pennsylvania (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, Act 3 of 2008), similar to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552) which allows the public to seek records from any federal organization. In many cases, however, after contacting police departments, we did not get the reports we asked for. Out of 320 police reports requested so far, we have received only 95 (with responses obtained after varied amounts of time due to different state laws). In some instances, a police department did not return communication requests at all.

One reason—and understandably so—is that a specific case is still pending in court. Therefore, the information cannot be simply shared.

“Your request must be respectfully denied. The records that you requested are exempt from disclosure because they are related to a criminal investigation. Section 708 (b) (16) of the RTKL [Right-to-Know Law] exempts from disclosure a “record of an agency relating to or resulting in a criminal investigation, including…(ii) Investigative materials, notes, correspondence, videos and reports.”” (PA)

Another reason is that each state has its own laws about sharing police reports. Here are some examples of denials we received from police departments in different states:

“…I must deny access to these records on the basis of Public Officers Law Section 87(2) (b) as such information, if disclosed, would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” (NY)
“…The City is only required to provide public records to the citizens of the state of Alabama.” (AL)
“Pursuant to Section 6254 of the Government Code, you must be named as a victim or be an authorized representative of the victim on the report.” (CA)

Obtaining Police Reports is a Tedious Process

Another unpleasant surprise for a researcher is the convoluted process related to acquiring these police reports. The first step is to find the responsible police department; where the crime happened, and which police department has jurisdiction and is responsible for reporting. Depending on the police department, a researcher may need to contact several people or sub-departments even to find out who deals with releasing reports. Not everyone who works for the police department may know their policies on releasing reports. Sometimes email communication is not enough or there may not be an option for email communication. The researcher might have to fill out an online form, or might need to make a phone inquiry first, or might have to send in a request letter by regular mail. For some departments, the researcher might have to pay certain costs related to processing such a request by sending a money order first. Sometimes it is unclear what the costs are because they depend on the number of copies. Then, one has to liaise with the police department to learn about the costs, and make the payment, before the request can be made. In brief, the whole process is more complicated than one might think.

Police Reports do not Provide a Complete Data Set

Many police reports are incomplete for at least four reasons. First, some police stations claim that they have two types of reports: one that are for internal use only and is not shared with the public, and another that they could share. Second, when the document is shared, they do not document all the variables in which a researcher might be interested. In the present study, the police reports received ranged from 3 to 182 pages (one file had 589 pages). Obviously, the short reports lack information that might be important for researchers, for example, shooter characteristics such as socio-economic status or marital status. For example, one police report stated, “I did not conduct any interviews with the victims, witnesses, or the suspect in this case.” Or another one that was brief and showed the lack of information, “After canvassing the scene, there were no cooperating witnesses that would provide any information;” What exactly the argument was about was not mentioned. A third reason for the inconsistencies in the report content is related to the fact that data collection practices are often not uniform across the multiple jurisdictions in the nation.

Fourth, if a researcher asks and receives a police report, parts of the report are redacted. Sometimes, the redacted sections consist of only a few sentences, but more often than not, they are whole paragraphs or sometimes whole pages. One reason given for redacted sections is to protect the identity of the victims, especially when children are involved. Another reason might be to protect otherwise potentially sensitive information. The information redacted also varies by state.

Police Reports are not Comparable

As was mentioned above, the length of police reports we received ranged from 3 to 182 pages. Needless to say, information contained in these reports was not comparable. The reports differed between different jurisdictions, and within the same jurisdiction, according to individual writer differences. Individual writer differences may be due to one's experience in conducting police reports, time and resources available, and work stress and the number of cases handled, in addition to their varied writing styles. One will not find all the information one is looking for in all of the reports—although most reports mention demographic characteristics. Consequently, research data are not comprehensive and the data set has a lot of missing values, and thereby limits researchers' ability to acquire the same variables, to aggregate data and compare them with each other.

Obtaining Reports May Be Met With Fees and Charges

As researchers, we expected police reports to be free. We thought we would just contact a police station and ask for a report and we might receive a copy either via email or regular mail. In many cases, the reports were free; in many other cases, the fees were nominal ($2–$6), sometimes the fees were between $10 and $16. There were, however, some police departments that imposed fees of $26 or $30 or $32.50 or $80.02 or $117.00. In most of these instances, the fees involved an hourly rate for services related to producing the report and fees per page. Thus, research involving many police reports can get expensive and may require adequate funding.

The Quality of the Information Might Not Be as Good as Expected

As was previously stated, for research purposes, we needed a police report to be detailed and to contain accurate information about an incident or crime. This was, however, not always the case. In our experience, what we found was that most police reports focused on the scene of the crime, on the victims, and on witnesses and bystanders. Contrary to what we expected, not much information was provided about the suspect.

Some research studies have also shown problems with the quality of information, for example reporting on lying to the police, even in victimization cases or regarding ethical breaches and unlawful police conduct. Research analyzing over 1,000 police reports in Spain with an automated program VeriPol has shown that people sometimes lie to the police—even if it is a felony or a misdemeanor—thus providing inaccurate information (Quijano-Sánchez et al., 2018 ). A meta-analysis including seven studies explored the rate of “confirmed false reports of sexual assault to police” (Ferguson and Malouff, 2016 , p. 1185). The total rate of false reporting in this analysis exceeded 5%.

A survey study in the Netherlands compared information participants shared about victimization with information from their police reports (Averdijk and Elffers, 2012 ). In some cases, what the victims expressed first in the survey, was not found in the later police reports; in other cases, information first gathered in the police reports was not found in the survey responses collected later. Overall, findings showed that data of 18% the survey responses on victimization were not consistent with those in the police reports.

The truthfulness of a police report depends on the ethical behavior of the police officer conducting the interviewing, questioning, or interrogation. Minor mistakes might happen and are unintentional. Some mistakes might, however, be deliberate or may be influenced by how much police officers care about following ethical guidelines and protocol. Support for this argument comes from a study of 5,545 sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested during the years 2005 through 2011. These officers were employed by 2,529 non-federal state and local law enforcement agencies in all 50 States of the United States and the District of Columbia (Stinson et al., 2016 ). They were arrested for five types of crimes: sex-related, alcohol-related, drug-related, violence-related, and profit-motivated crimes. The arrest rate was 0.72 per 1,000 officers or 1.7 officers per 100,000 population nationwide.

The Reports Might Be Biased

Related to the previous point regarding the quality of information is the potential of skewed information in reports due to bias. Perhaps the following quote from a police report illustrates possible bias: “After canvassing the scene, there were no cooperating witnesses that would provide any possible information.” The report did not describe why witnesses did not cooperate. Were they scared of possible retaliation by the perpetrator? Were they in shock? Did they not trust the police officer? Why? We do not know.

What we are presupposing is the context of bias that influences how police officers conduct their jobs, which may consequently impact writing a police report, which is only one part of what they do. Police officers work under a lot of stress, and are confronted with unforeseen situations on a daily basis (Toch, 2002 ). What is surprising is that apparently for police officers, departmental politics, and top-down management practices are far more stressful than the dangers in the streets (Toch, 2002 ).

Research has also shown some biases of police officers, for example in reports related to intimate partner violence (Twis et al., 2018 ). A study conducted in Hong Kong compared the injury grading in police reports with the trauma records of a regional hospital (Tsui et al., 2009 ). Findings showed a discordance, with police reports widely overestimating the injury severity. Of course, no one can expect accurate descriptions of medical injuries by police officers. The point we emphasize is that certain information in police reports—in this case the extent of an injury—should be interpreted with caution by researchers.

Another study showed racial bias by police officers not in relation to reports, but to killing unarmed Americans by the police. The probability that an unarmed black American will be shot by the police in the United States is 3.49 times higher than the probability that an unarmed white American will be shot by the police (Ross, 2015 ).

The goal of this paper was to describe problems related to acquiring police reports and problems related to the quality of police reports as a potential data source for research. We present these problems to alert researchers and to prepare them for using police reports during the research process. Given the problems related to obtaining and analyzing police reports, researchers should explicitly report the response rates of police departments and the number of analyzed reports. That way partial reporting and potential publication bias are made transparent. Moreover, what we have learned too is that police reports may be a valuable source of data, if the data have to do with victim characteristics, descriptions of the scene, witnesses, bystanders, and the details of the shooting incident itself, but not when the data are about the suspect or shooter characteristics.

Having a federal grant supporting such research or having support from the Department of Justice would most likely facilitate the data gathering process. Our experiences when communicating with police departments showed that they were professional and very helpful. That leaves us to surmise that the problem with collecting these data is systematically difficult—that there are institutional procedures in place that keep science or scientific research or other outsiders from meddling into “the way we do things.” For our research purposes, when the data that we gathered from the source (i.e., police reports) were not sufficient, we ended up relying more extensively on other data archives, news outlets, and media coverage.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the UNF Foundation Board Initiative through their grant Mass Shootings: Types, Causes, and Possible Solutions. This research was also supported in part by a grant from the University of North Florida's Delaney Presidential Professorship to CDG.

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The Los Angeles Police Department Program Initiative Research Paper

Introduction: the los angeles police department and public relations.

Productive cooperation and robust engagement with a community that can bear essential fruit are one of the most important goals of the police in the United States. Focusing on the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), one can note that this department has long focused on building trust with residents and providing community security. In this regard, ambitious program initiatives, including the Los Angeles City/County Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) Program, have become part of a relationship with civilians since 1996 (Parks and Papke).

Long-term work on program initiatives aimed at combating gangs and ensuring the safety of youth and the members of the community as a whole reflects the success of the department intentions. Therefore, the focus on the strategy of interaction with the city network and the successful implementation of initiatives, as well as the future strengthening of ties with residents, characterize the Los Angeles Police Department.

Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR): Program Initiative Primary Objectives

Striving to establish trust with residents, as well as effectively improving community security, is a vital objective of the Los Angeles Police Department’s initiative programs. The result of this aspiration was the Community Law Enforcement And Recovery (CLEAR) program, as a response to the brutal murder of a three-year-old girl committed by a gang in 1995 (Parks and Papke). This event marked the beginning of the department’s policy aimed at strengthening ties with the community and protecting it from the activities of gangs in the city.

The department aggregated five different Los Angeles institutions for collaboration and also drew the city membership as part of the Community Impact Team (CIT) to enhance the program’s capabilities (Parks and Papke). Hence, close contact with Los Angeles residents and the desire to solve community problems is a priority for the department’s program.

Approaches to Successful Implementation of the LAPD Program and Community Engagement

It is necessary to note that the Los Angeles Police Management Strategy includes a variety of methods and directions to achieve useful results for the anti-gang program. For example, intelligence gathering, patrolling of six main target areas, investigations, and collaboration with various anti-gang organizations, a prosecutor, and engaging members of the probation service in joint activities reflect the Department’s comprehensive approach (Parks and Papke).

The CIT’s multipurpose actions are of particular importance to residents of the city. Its priorities are identifying and solving the city network problems, educating the community, and improving the quality of life of people living in Los Angeles (Parks and Papke). Thereupon, the all-around work of LAPD in the framework of the program under discussion underlines the extensive experience of the department’s staff acquired over the decades of work, as well as tangible support for the public.

Additional Public Relations Strengthening Programs in CLEAR

Considering the various management strategies of the Los Angeles Police Department, it becomes apparent that other measures involve the community and enhance the effectiveness of the discussed initiative. In this regard, plans for the prevention of gang activity and the involvement of children and young people in the program deserve particular interest. Gang Resistance Education And Training is a program that aims to train children of all ages, which police officers pursue to increase the awareness of the younger generation (The Los Angeles Police Department (a)).

This approach can help to understand the dangers of gang activity and to minimize and prevent the involvement of children in gangs, and also to reduce probable violence. Another important initiative is the LAPD Jeopardy Program, which seeks to assist adolescents at risk and includes schools, parents, and other external assistance since 1988 (The Los Angeles Police Department (a)). In general, it becomes clear that the police department strives to implement CLEAR at all levels, paying particular attention to the safety of children and young people and discourage possible criminal activity.

Historical Context, Achievements and Evaluation of the LAPD Initiative Program

The multi-year work of LAPD makes it possible to evaluate the results of the CLEAR initiative program and determine the impact of the department’s activities on the community. Thus, the first victory of the program, which emphasized the effectiveness of LAPD, was the successful arrest of gang members who killed a child in 1995 (Parks and Papke). It is possible to assume that such an outcome could inspire residents of the city and increase their confidence in the police. Moreover, as early as 1999, the program reduced gang crime by 40%, removed more than fifty weapons and condemned many (Parks and Papke).

The productiveness of the initiative program not only indicates the fruitful work of the Los Angeles Police Department but also emphasizes the importance of police collaboration with citizens. Therefore, the success of the initiative is difficult to overestimate.

There is no doubt that the achievements of the Los Angeles Police Department support the realization of the program today. However, the real success of LAPD must reflect the impact that the program has on the community (Bracy). Thus, the strategy described above indicates that the police are striving to involve the residents of the city as much as possible in the general struggle against gangs, which the community cannot approve. Using the power of activists, community organizations, and even teachers makes residents closer to LAPD activities. In turn, such close cooperation should increase the awareness of citizens and their trust in the department.

The fact that LAPD created The Community Relationship Division (CRD) in 2015 confirms its intention to increase interaction with the residents of Los Angeles (The Los Angeles Police Department (b)). Likewise, a significant bias in working with children and adolescents, support for young people who are inclined to engage in gangs, close cooperation with schools and a joint search for positive alternatives for children is impressive. Given that children are at risk, as well as the future of the nation, support for the initiative among the community is evident.

The department’s efforts are significant taking into account the scale of the initiative program, as well as additional programs designed to establish close contact with residents and ensure the safety of people. The involvement citizens by CRD, assistance and the adaptation of a variety of ways to communicate with the residents, including the approach of the use of media, indicate the primary need for trusting relationships. At the same time, an excerpt from Special Order 33 (LAPD) states that the department strives “to secure for this Department the confidence, respect, and approbation of the public” that confirms this intention (The Los Angeles Police Department (b)).

Given the long-term existence of the program of initiatives, as well as its continuous development and supplementing it with new programs and teams, the continued participation of civilians reflects its success. Thereunto, the active involvement of residents in the activities of the police, aimed at combating gangs and preserving children from crime, emphasizes the interest of people living in target areas.

The high performance of LAPD and the efforts of city residents not only strengthen the department’s communication with the public but also open up new opportunities for achieving security and trust. Despite the results obtained and the proven suitability of the strategy that the police department has developed, it does not dwell on the actual outcomes. Thus, LAPD has created a future strategy for 2020, in which achieving high community confidence occupies a crucial place along with other security and community support plans (“LAPD in 2020: Community Focused. Data Driven” 1).

The plan to establish this task shows that the police department is aware of the importance of interaction with civilians and intends to strengthen the collaboration that has been formed. It is also important that LAPD focuses on developing new initiatives and reducing crime in Los Angeles as in one of the five safest cities in the United States (“LAPD in 2020: Community Focused. Data Driven” 13). Therefore, the development of new tasks necessary for successful future work of the police is designed to strengthen the existing relationship with people and achieve a new level of security.

Analyzing the strategy of the Los Angeles Police Department, it is possible to draw conclusions about its high efficiency and to assess its potential in the context of influence on the public. I believe that the initiative includes all the necessary options for cooperation and communication with citizens, as well as provides them with the opportunity to participate in the fight against gangs. Moreover, the program has a significant impact on children and young people, minimizing the risks associated with involvement in the crime.

Such an approach can significantly improve the quality of life of Los Angeles residents, reduce concerns about gang activity and eliminate people’s fear through police responsibility and credibility. Generally, the department has managed to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership with residents, which has formed a steady practice of fighting the crime of gangs.

Works Cited

“ LAPD in 2020: Community Focused. Data Driven. ” LAPD. Web.

Bracy, Nicole. “ Evaluation as a Tool to Improve Police-Community Relationships. ” Harder+Company Community Research . 2016. Web.

Parks, B.C. and Papke, R. Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) . Web.

The Los Angeles Police Department (a). Keeping Kids out of Gangs . Web.

The Los Angeles Police Department (b). Community Relationship Division . Web.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, July 9). The Los Angeles Police Department Program Initiative. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-los-angeles-police-department-program-initiative/

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IvyPanda . 2021. "The Los Angeles Police Department Program Initiative." July 9, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-los-angeles-police-department-program-initiative/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Los Angeles Police Department Program Initiative." July 9, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-los-angeles-police-department-program-initiative/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Los Angeles Police Department Program Initiative." July 9, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-los-angeles-police-department-program-initiative/.

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