Police Quarterly

This study examines consensus and conflict approaches to explaining police stop and search rates in 94 neighborhoods. Police deployment, racial threat, race-out-of-place, and social conditioning perspectives were analyzed. Models were based on 206,083 stops and 38,493 searches controlling for racial/ethnic makeup, citizen calls for service, disadvantage, prior violent crime suspect rates, time of day, and spatial autocorrelation. The results supported both police deployment and race out of place arguments. Policy implications focus on the need for police and community to fully understand and mutually agree on the relevance of both consensus and conflict perspectives.

Consistent with the current models of governance in public sector organizations, there have been an increasing number of advocates within the law enforcement community calling for agencies to participate in partnerships with researchers. Despite this support, little is known about the prevalence of police practitioner–researcher partnerships, nor has there been any examination into which agencies participate in partnerships with researchers or the reasons why agencies do not participate. The present study addresses these gaps in knowledge by reporting on findings from a national survey of law enforcement agencies on research partnership participation. The results reveal nearly one third of responding agencies reported they had participated in a research partnership within the last 5 years. The most common reason provided for not participating in these relationships was a lack of funding resources. Discussion on the future expansion of police practitioner–researcher partnerships in light of these findings is provided

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

Research has long focused on the size of police agencies, giving little attention to the composition of the workforce itself. Literature in fields such as the military, healthcare, organizational psychology, and business, highlights the importance of workforce structures in meeting both organizational and staff needs. Using data from a national survey, we examine personnel cohorts (i.e., distribution of junior, midlevel, and senior sworn staff) as an element of workforce structure in the largest, U.S. municipal police organizations. We describe the importance of cohort structures for enhancing performance (meeting both organizational and individual needs) and assess variation in cohort structures. We discuss the cohorts in light of their effects on personnel management, and highlight the importance of existing cohort structures when considering major personnel decisions such as hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and buyouts. We summarize future research that could advance theory and policy regarding workforce structures in police and other criminal justice organizations.

The need for rapid response has been a perennial issue in policing. Although several studies have examined the effect of response time on apprehension probability, little attention has been given to the relationship between police response time and community characteristics. Using 2007 call for service data from the Houston Police Department and 2000 census statistics, the current study examines the relationship between police response time to in-progress burglary calls and neighborhood characteristics. In addition, the effects of incident characteristics on the likelihood of arrest are examined. The results suggest that disadvantaged neighborhoods enjoy a shorter police response whereas rapid response increases the probability of in-progress burglary apprehension.