Transitioning from pandemic to normalcy: what police departments can learn from the rank-and-file

PurposeAfter more than 18 months of life during a pandemic, much of the world is beginning to transition back to some semblance of normalcy. As that happens, institutions – including policing – need to acknowledge changes that had been made during the pandemic and decide what modifications and innovations, if any, to continue moving forward.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use semi-structured interviews and focus groups of police personnel in the United States (US) and Canada. The sample includes police officers and frontline supervisors (n = 20). The authors conduct qualitative analysis using deductive and inductive coding schemes.FindingsThe sample identified four areas of adaptation during the pandemic: 1) safety measures, 2) personnel reallocation, 3) impacts on training and 4) innovation and role adjustments. These areas of adaptation prompted several recommendations for transitioning police agencies out of the pandemic.Originality/valueA growing number of studies are addressing police responses to the pandemic. Virtually all are quantitative in nature, including all studies investigating the perceptions of police personnel. The body of perceptual studies is extraordinarily small and primarily focuses on police executives, ignoring the views of the rank-and-file who are doing the work of street-level police business. This is the first study to delve into the perceptions of this group, and does so using a qualitative approach that permits a richer understanding of the nuances of perception.

GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF TRAINING AND IMPROVEMENT OF MANAGERIAL STAFF IN THE POLISH POLICE

The article presents the establishment of the training as well as the professional development of the Polish police managerial staff in the early 1990s. It was closely related to the transformation of police services, which consisted, among other things, in a thorough personnel exchange, especially of the managerial staff. The subsequent stages of shaping the model of training police executives in the second half of the 1990s, which was associated with the creation of a personnel reserve, were then characterised. The 1998 reform of the territorial administration system also had a signifi cant impact on human resources and the training policy.

Cops and COVID: an examination of California officers' perceptions and experiences while policing during a pandemic

PurposeUsing online survey data from a sample of 440 police officers in California throughout May 2020, the current study collected time-sensitive information on officers' perceptions and departmental experiences in the wake of the pandemic. It examined officers' perceptions of agency responsivity as well as their perceptions of morale, stress and risk following agency responses and changes in policy patterns, service delivery innovations and other administrative challenges.Design/methodology/approachCOVID-19 had a tremendous impact on the law enforcement community, who continued to work and adapt in order to provide public safety. During the first few months of the pandemic, a number of national data collection efforts set out to understand what police agencies, at the organizational-level, were doing to address the crisis. Largely missing from these initial discussions were the perspectives of individual officers, particularly how they felt about their respective departments ensuring safety and balancing risk.FindingsResults from ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions found that the number of departmental changes made in the wake of COVID-19 that reduced police–public contact was associated with (1) increased levels of perceived agency responsivity to officer needs (i.e. balancing officer safety, taking active steps to maintain officers' mental health) and (2) reduced levels of perceived negative outlook (e.g. stress, low morale, danger/risk). Policy implications and the importance of police executives' decisions during crisis are discussed.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to examine perceptions of policing during the pandemic from an individual officer point of view rather than an organizational standpoint.

Assessing the Utility of Body-Worn Cameras for Collegiate Police Agencies

Nearly all scholarship on body-worn cameras (BWCs) has focused on municipal police departments, as they comprise a majority of sworn agencies. Given the unique environment of collegiate law enforcement agencies, however, it is possible that their paths to BWCs—and the benefits and challenges they experience—vary from that of more traditional agencies. Using a survey of 126 collegiate police departments and in-depth interviews with 15 collegiate police executives, this study describes their goals, challenges, and benefits related to BWCs. Importantly, it also describes the decision-making of agencies that chose not to implement BWCs, giving voice to an understudied population and providing guidance to special agencies in making the decision to adopt BWCs. The most notable benefits and challenges interrelate with their placement as part of institutions of higher education, such as the impact of collegiate privacy concerns (e.g., FERPA) and the utility of BWC footage in both law enforcement and educational processes.

Policing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploratory Study of the Types of Organizational Changes and Police Activities Across the Globe

The COVID-19 pandemic upended major facets of global society, including policing. This study describes three types of changes that police agencies in counties worldwide made. First, how have various domains of policing changed and how much did they change? Second, were these changes regulated by the official policy? Third, what are the potential consequences of the changes made during the pandemic? Taking a mixed-methods approach, our quantitative survey data from 27 countries, buttressed by qualitative responses, enable us to examine changes in these three areas. Our results suggest there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the degree of change, the use of policy to make the changes, and the perceived effects of the changes. Some changes (i.e., the use of personal protective equipment) are relatively ubiquitous and common sense based on the pandemic. Other organizational changes show a great deal more variation, especially when considering the valence of the change. Finally, the police executives from these countries express a highly optimistic—and potentially overly rosy—view of the potential longer term consequences of the pandemic or the operational changes made because of it. Overall, the results paint a more complicated picture of the responses to the pandemic made by the police organizations included in our sample. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for future research, police practice, and the development of policy.

Leadership Hiring: Does the Promotional Practice and Selection in Public Service Result in Placing Highly Skilled Experts in Our Communities?

Primarily, this technical article intends to address the hiring practices of executive police leadership. The article questions police executives’ capability based upon a significant number of police chiefs exiting their position for several reasons related to the summer of 2020, whereas several societal crises ensued. The article demonstrates how police executives are not hired based on their ability to be capable leaders or, highly skilled experts but are repeatedly hired based upon tenure, deemed as qualified. Subjective measures exclude specific demographics, human and conceptional skills, and the lack of community input from the societies they are appointed to serve are continually used to hire police leaders. Additionally, the subsequent promotional exams allowing aspiring police leaders are subjective, demonstrated by the multiple suits filed from across the country, as is the proper selection or lack of essential training such as entry to the FBI academy law enforcement training. A specific model, the Three Skill Approach, outlines the various skills for selection criteria. The article asserts that other models can be employed, emphasizing that multiple skills within potential leaders are critical. Also strongly suggested in the report is that the community in which police serve must be aware of how police executives are selected and included in that process, allowing for a partnership between the police leadership and the community. Often, unknown to the community is the right to articulate and establish how they are policed, which can only be realized by a leader who has the multiple skills and has developed a genuine relationship with the community, eventually seen as part of the community.

Untangling the role of interactions in police satisfaction: Examining direct and indirect contacts with the police

Effective policing requires the support of the communities being served, a guiding principle that has been adopted by law enforcement across the country and around the world. To this end, scholars and police executives have examined a variety of predictors that can impact upon perceptions of procedural justice and satisfaction with police. Grounded in an Experience with Police theoretical model, this paper examines the impact of procedural justice upon police satisfaction and untangles the influences of direct citizen contact versus indirect contact upon that interaction. Perceptions of procedural justice shaped by both direct and indirect contacts were shown to impact police satisfaction. Further, a secondary analysis indicated that regression weights were stronger for perceptions shaped by indirect contact. Finally, a procedurally just process was found to be a key predictor for satisfaction and equally essential as compared to the results of that encounter. Implications for further research and police policy are also addressed.

US law enforcement’s role in victim compensation dissemination

Victim compensation programs seek to alleviate adverse effects of victimization and repay victim losses. A few studies have concluded that US compensation programs are under-utilized because victims are unaware of such programs and police officers overlook sharing the information. The present study sought to further explore this issue from the perspective of state compensation directors and police executives. Survey respondents were asked their opinions about police officers’ basic knowledge of victims’ compensation programs, reasons for under-utilization of the programs, and the most effective ways to inform victims of their right to compensation. Surveys were administered to 38 state compensation directors and 23 law enforcement executives from across the US. Survey results confirmed the belief that many eligible victims are not receiving compensation and that better training of patrol officers on compensation eligibility and benefits was needed. However, just one in 10 of the state directors implicated police failure to notify victims as a major reason for victims not filing claims. The consensus of both police administrators and state compensation directors was that, while patrol officers should be tasked with providing basic notification of compensation availability, it is important that victim advocates and police detectives follow up with more detailed information in the days following victimization. Policy implications and future directions for research are discussed in light of the findings.