Policing, 2014

Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 2019

Aims. Little is known about the potential health impact of police encounters despite a ubiquitous police presence in many disadvantaged urban environments. In this paper, we assess whether persistent or aggressive interactions with the police are associated with poor mental health outcomes in a sample of primarily low-income communities of colour in Chicago. Methods. Between March 2015 and September 2016, we surveyed 1543 adults in ten diverse Chicago communities using a multistage probability design. The survey had over 350 questions on health and social factors, including police exposure and mental health status. We use sex-stratified logistic regression to examine associations between persistent police exposure (defined as a high number of lifetime police stops) or aggressive police exposure (defined as threat or use of police force during the respondent's most recent police stop) and the presence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depressive symptoms. Results. Men reporting a high number of lifetime police stops have three times greater odds of current PTSD symptoms compared with men who did not report high lifetime police stops (OR 3.1, 95% CI 1.3-7.6), after adjusting for respondent age, race/ethnicity, education, history of homelessness, prior diagnosis of PTSD and neighbourhood violent crime rate. Women reporting a high number of lifetime police stops have two times greater odds of current PTSD symptoms, although the results are not statistically significant after adjustment (OR 2.0, 95% CI 0.9-4.2). Neither persistent nor aggressive police exposure is significantly associated with current depressive symptoms in our sample. Conclusions. Our findings support existing preliminary evidence of an association between high lifetime police stops and PTSD symptoms. If future research can confirm as causal, these results have considerable public health implications given the frequent interaction between police and residents in disadvantaged communities in large urban areas.

There is limited research conducted on increased militarization of civilian law enforcement and its effect on the social relationship between the police and the community it serves. This study uses qualitative phenomenological research with thematic analysis to better understand the police militarization's effect on the police-community relationship. Since their origin, the police have had military characteristics (Lieblich & Shinar, 2018). Since the 1980s, police militarization has increased in civilian law enforcement agencies (Bickel, 2013). "Peter Kraska, Professor, and Chair of Graduate Studies and Research in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University estimates the increase in SWAT team use from 1980 to 2000 to be about 1,500 percent" (Bickel, 2013). Police officers progressively resemble military units instead of civilian law enforcement (Lieblich & Shinar, 2018). It is becoming commonplace for a militarized police response to occur, which has diminished the public trust of law enforcement (Mummolo, 2018). The war on terrorism and drugs has led policymakers toward a dangerously aggressive style of policing (Balko, 2013). A review of the literature on this topic illustrates that police encounter critical and challenging tasks. The Defense Logistics Agency, 1033 Program through the Department of Defense, provides surplus military equipment and weapons to local police (Defense Logistics Agency (n.d.). This qualitative research investigates the police militarization phenomenon and its effect on the social relationship between the police and the community it serves.

American Journal of Public Health, 2004

Despite growing recognition of violence's health consequences and the World Health Organization's recent classification of police officers' excessive use of force as a form of violence, public health investigators have produced scant research characterizing police-perpetrated abuse.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Concern about the increasing militarization of police has grown in recent years. Much of this concern focuses on the material aspects of militarization: the greater use of military equipment and tactics by police officers. While this development deserves attention, a subtler form of militarization operates on the cultural level. Here, police adopt an adversarial stance toward minority communities, whose members are regarded as presumptive objects of suspicion. The combination of material and cultural militarization in turn has a potential symbolic dimension. It can communicate that members of minority communities are threats to society, just as military enemies are threats to the United States. This conception of racial and ethnic minorities treats them as outside the social contract rather than as fellow citizens. It also conceives of the role of police and the military as comparable, thus blurring in a disturbing way the distinction between law enforcement and national security operations. Demonstrations in recent years following the deaths of African Americans, especially African American men, at the hands of police have raised fundamental issues about race and criminal justice in the United States. Central to these demonstrations is concern about the use of force by the state against its own citizens. 1 One prominent way in which this is expressed is the claim that there is a trend toward the "militarization" of the police in America, in particular, the use of military tactics and equipment by police and the acquisition of such equipment through programs such as the one administered by the Department of Defense. This concern reflects unease about what I call the "material" dimension of militarization. The risk posed by this dimension is physical: that police will use intense violence against individuals and communities to secure order. Police officers should not act like soldiers because soldiers are authorized to use especially destructive means to secure their objectives, means that the police should not be permitted to use. Apprehension about the police becoming more militarized is reflected even more directly in the objection to the use of military forces to respond to public demonstrations, as President Donald Trump has suggested is necessary to quell some of the recent protests 1 By "citizens," I mean to include all persons in the United States who may be subject to the use of force, regardless of their legal status. I use the term both for shorthand convenience and to highlight the issues in political theory that I will be discussing.

New Perspectives in Policing, Harvard Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety, 2015

In a report released by Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety, the case is made for addressing both the internal and external culture of police agencies in order to create a culture that supports a guardian mindset. “The old adage ‘So the station…so the street’ describes how the values demonstrated inside the organization have a powerful influence on police behavior in the community,” the authors argue. “The way leaders exercise their power inside the organization signals to officers how they are expected to use their power on the street. Strict military structure and protocols in many police agencies and training academies are at odds with the concept of internal procedural justice.” The report, titled “From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals,” is authored by Sue Rahr and Stephen K. Rice, and was funded by the OJP National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Rahr and Rice offer concrete ideas and outline a specific example of transforming the organizational culture of a police academy from a military ‘boot camp’ model designed to ensure strict compliance with rules and orders, to a culture based on developing critical-thinking leaders and institutionalizing procedurally just values – toward the mindset of a leader as a guardian. “The authors’ call for a shift in the police mindset from warriors to guardians of democracy is important and timely,” writes Tracey Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School. “Public trust is the cornerstone of public safety, and this brief provides a needed roadmap for agencies seeking to change.” Charles Beck, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department comments that, “America's focus is on the legitimacy and efficacy of its police departments. This paper provides clarity to that focus as well as a path forward. I strongly recommend it as required reading for the police professional.”

Policing & Society, 2006

This article examines the impact of personal experience on popular assessments of the quality of police service. Following past research, it addresses the influences of personal and neighbourhood factors on confidence in the police. It then focuses on the additional impact of positive and negative personal experiences with the police. Several studies of police encounters with the public have noted that the relationship between how people recall being treated and their general confidence in the police may be asymmetrical. At its worst, the police may get essentially no credit for delivering professional service, while bad experiences can deeply influence peoples' views of their performance and even legitimacy. This proposition is tested using survey data on police-initiated and citizeninitiated contacts with police in Chicago. The findings indicate that the impact of having a bad experience is four to fourteen times as great as that of having a positive experience, and the coefficients associated with having a good experience*/including being treated fairly and politely, and receiving service that was prompt and helpful*/were not statistically different from zero. Another section of the article replicates this finding using surveys of residents of seven other urban areas located in three different countries. The article concludes that this is bad news indeed for police administrators intent on solidifying their support among voters, taxpayers and the consumers of police services.

Washington and Lee Law Review Online, 2015

We are at the dawn of a new era of policing in the United States. In recent months, images of armed police officers patrolling the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and of a toddler burned by a Georgia SWAT team's grenade have been indelibly branded into America's social consciousness. There is a unique bipartisan outcry from Washington in a time otherwise marked by bitter political divides. Politicians and journalists alike are questioning the efficacy of a militaristic police force and the path that led to this shift in the paradigm of policing. This Essay examines the how and why of police militarization in the United States; it details some of the most egregious instances of police overreach, mission creep, and proliferation of military-style police units treating citizens as an enemy population. It seems all is quiet in Congress after a few seemingly futile hearings on militarization. The Executive Branch has released suggestions that are expected to manifest in an executive order any day. Unfortunately, all of these solutions are too little, too late. The streets of America are much more akin to a war zone than the democratic nation that our Founders envisioned, and it is up to the people, at a local level, to reclaim what was intended.

British Journal of Criminology, 2005

This article develops Bittner's (1974) theory of the police by considering the effect of police encounters over time. It argues that the expectation that the police will intervene whenever called establishes the 'idea of police' in the public, and how this makes the idea of police a pre-eminent factor in the preservation of law and order in democratic societies. The 'idea of police' is then applied exploratorily to the results of the Kansas City and Newark Patrol Experiments and for the 'quasi-experimental' dynamics of Brazil's 1997 police strike, demonstrating its explanatory value. In conclusion, this article argues that the preservation of the idea of police is the paramount concern for police policy and management.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines police as a body of officers that represent the authority of government. The functions performed by police officers are known as policing. Some of the functions include enforcing the law, maintaining public order and safety, preventing and detecting crimes. This paper is a descriptive and assessment survey of American policing. It is an attempt to contribute to scholarship in the areas of the history of policing in America and in the areas of assessing the impacts of policing on the American communities.