Tag: police
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Force and Fallout: Experimental Evidence from a National Test of the Community Expectations Standard
A persistent “reasonableness divide” exists between the legal standards governing police use of force and the public’s expectations, producing “lawful but awful” uses of force. This study empirically tests the “Community Expectations Standard” (CES), a model that identifies five criteria the public uses to evaluate force: underlying governmental interest, avoidability, officer motivation, subject resistance, and…
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Assessing the Effect of Gender and Diversity on the Traditional Police Culture
Abstract: Women remain underrepresented in policing, and their effect on the traditional police culture remains understudied. The current study combines survey data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) and National Police Platform to examine differences between the cultural attitudes of women and men, and whether larger proportions of women within law enforcement…
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Traffic Enforcement Dwindled in the Pandemic. In Many Places, It Hasn’t Come Back.
In the early days of the pandemic in 2020, traffic stops by the police plummeted around the country, as fewer cars were on the road and as agencies instructed officers to avoid nonessential contact with the public. But in the months and years that followed, a distinct pattern formed in many cities: The cars came…
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Police Use-of-Force Self-efficacy: An Antidote to the Ferguson Effect?
Abstract Research has consistently shown that officers’ perceptions of deteriorated relationships with the public are associated with physical and emotional disengagement with their work. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this “Ferguson Effect” has also contributed to reluctance to use necessary physical force in the course of their duties, leading to compromises for officer safety and public…
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Justifiability and culpability in lethal self-defense: Police officers vs. civilians
Purpose Some critics argue that legal standards, even when and where equivalent, are differentially applied to officers and civilians. This study examined evaluations of justifiability and culpability for police officers versus civilians, as well as White shooters versus Black shooters, in a 2✕2 factorial experiment. It also explored how personal attitudes and characteristics correspond to…
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What Really Happened in Ferguson, and What the Country Can Learn from It
The United States found itself in the center of a heated national debate on race, policing, and justice in 2014. The shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, by a white police officer sparked outrage and protests, shedding the spotlight on Ferguson. Policing Ferguson, Policing America dives into the heart of this time, offering…
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Racial Threat and Punitive Police Attitudes
Racial Threat Theory posits that punitive attitudes are produced when Whites are alarmed by large or growing Black populations. While research has identified a relationship between Black composition and support from community members for more punitive criminal justice policy, no research has examined whether racial composition influences punitive attitudes among criminal justice personnel—even though they…
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‘Send everybody’: Video shows ambush that killed Fargo officer, wounded 2 others
Dramatic body camera footage of a shooting ambush last month in Fargo shows the surprise nature of the chaotic attack along a busy street that left one police officer dead and others wounded, as the only officer left standing called for help and engaged the heavily armed shooter. North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley and…
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LAPD using AI in body camera study; Recordings will be reviewed for officers’ language and tone during traffic stops.
Researchers will use artificial intelligence to analyze the tone and word choice that LAPD officers use during traffic stops, the department announced Tuesday, part of a broader study of whether police language sometimes unnecessarily escalates public encounters. Findings from the study, conducted by researchers from USC and elsewhere, will be used to help train officers…
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Flash mobs invade luxury L.A. retailers with brute force – Los Angeles Times
Overall crime rates in Los Angeles are down from last year, and a recent surge in smash-and-grab robberies makes up little of the overall problem of retail thefts. Still, the audacious daytime incidents over the last few weeks have cast a long shadow, leaving people who shop and work at malls unsettled… Full story: Flash…