Citizens' opinions of police procedures

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to see how citizens' opinions of police work were investigated with the aim of monitoring and evaluating the quality of police procedures conducted in traffic stop encounters and traffic accidents.

Design/methodology/approach

Characteristics of traffic stop encounters were analyzed with data obtained with structured questionnaires gathered from 319 citizens who were stopped for exceeding the speed limit. In the second study, police procedures in traffic accidents were analyzed with data obtained from 285 participants. The methods of descriptive statistics and nonparametric test Chi‐square were used.

Findings

The findings show that police procedures were performed well but not perfectly. In traffic stop encounters, citizens think that officers were polite, fair and understandable, but that they failed to help drivers return to the flow of traffic and also did not inform people of their rights. In the case of traffic accidents, citizens were satisfied with the officers' tidiness and willingness to help. Several faults were found: citizens' satisfaction was lower with the officers' response time, officers frequently fail to inform drivers of their rights and female respondents believed their opinions were not given enough consideration.

Research limitations/implications

The interpretation of the results is limited by a sample anomaly (the poor response of males).

Practical implications

The results show what needs to be changed or improved in future training of police officers.

Originality/value

The paper should be interpreted as a monitoring instrument that gives insight into feasible quality changes of police work, which should help to improve citizens' opinions about the police.

Citation

Areh, I., Dobovšek, B. and Umek, P. (2007), "Citizens' opinions of police procedures", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 637-650. https://doi.org/10.1108/13639510710833910