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The National Police Research Platform provided unprecedented data about police performance, but what did the agency heads think of this research program and the results? How useful were the findings for police practice and what more is needed? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions and explore ways to translate the findings and sustain the Platform in the future.

Chiefs and sheriffs from the 100 participating agencies were invited by e-mail to take an online feedback survey about their experiences with the Platform. Data from 64 agencies were analyzed.

The majority of chief executive officers rated their overall experience with the Platform as positive, found the results useful and reported that the findings caused them to make changes, rethink things, and identify unforeseen issues. Most of them also expressed a willingness to participate in future Platform initiatives, but many felt additional guidance would help with interpreting findings and identifying next steps. This paper discusses how the Platform can respond to feedback and continue advancing the science of policing. Mainly, this can be achieved by engaging key organizations and providing routine feedback and education to participating agencies and the field at large.

This paper addresses previously unanswered questions about the utility and future of the National Police Research Platform from a police management perspective. It includes a preliminary discussion about how to sustain the Platform and ensure that research findings are translated into practice.

There is widespread interest in moving beyond crime statistics to measure police performance in new ways, especially the quality of police-community interactions that influence police legitimacy and public trust. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Police-Community Interaction Survey (PCIS) developed by the National Police Research Platform.

The PCIS collected data from 53 police agencies around the USA in 2013-2014. The psychometric properties of the constructs measured are presented. This study also offers a preliminary test of the effects of an alternatively specified and expanded procedural justice model on willingness to cooperate with the police, mediated through perceptions of officer trustworthiness.

Scales were developed with good reliability and validity that measure various aspects of the police-community interactions. The authors find evidence that empathy is an important addition to the procedural justice model, and that the effects of procedural justice on willingness to cooperate with the police are partially mediated through perceptions of officer trustworthiness.

This is the first attempt to validate the measurement of police-community interactions on a large scale in the USA with policy implications at the local and national levels. The findings can help local police agencies incorporate new performance metrics at the individual, group, and agency levels. Nationally, the science of policing can be advanced by specifying the antecedents and consequences of respectful and empathic actions, including behavior that strengthens police-community relations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dimensions of organizational justice in police organizations and evaluate how they contribute to organizational commitment, job satisfaction and compliance with agency rules.

A survey of 15,236 sworn officers from a national sample of 88 agencies was used, as well as other agency- and community-level variables. Multi-level models assessed how four dimensions of organizational justice affected these outcomes.

More favorable perceptions of organizational justice were strongly related to increased commitment to the organization, job satisfaction and compliance with agency rules. Perceptions of organization-wide justice, leadership justice and diversity justice were especially important in predicting those outcome measures.

While the sample of agencies was broad and diverse, it should not be considered representative of smaller municipal police departments and sheriff’s offices in the USA.

The findings suggest that “buy in” to reforms and police compliance with rules is much more likely when supervisors and leaders are fair, respectful, give officers input, provide growth opportunities and show concern for officers’ welfare. As such, agencies would benefit from leadership and leadership training that values the core principals of organizational justice.

The study provides clarity about how organizational justice is perceived by police officers, including women and officers of color, and provides an unprecedented test of organizational justice theory in diverse police agencies.

Given the central role of supervision in shaping police agency outcomes and the impact of the supervisor-subordinate relationship, the purpose of this paper is to understand subordinates’ ratings of supervisor performance overall and on several distinct dimensions.

Descriptive and explanatory analyses are conducted on subordinate views of supervision based on a survey of officers and detectives (n=7,085) in 89-agencies.

Reporting high ratings of supervisor performance overall, subordinates also view supervisors as fair, supportive and engaged in practices that set expectations. These dimensions are highly correlated with overall satisfaction; other variables, such as age, race and gender demonstrate weak relationships to overall satisfaction and perceptions of fairness, support and direction.

The study is based on subordinates’ perceptions of supervisors and does not address the supervisors’ own perceptions or actual behavior. Future studies should collect identical information from supervisors as well as examine agency-level variation in both subordinate and supervisor outlooks and styles.

The results support modern approaches to police supervision that emphasize not just direction and control but also fair and supportive relationships with subordinates.

The study examines the views of thousands of line-level police across a large number of representative US agencies and explores relationships using a comprehensive set of variables.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlates of job satisfaction among civilian employees of law enforcement agencies, to assess how features of the policing workplace influence employee morale.

The data for this study were drawn from surveys conducted as part of the National Police Research Platform. In total, 472 civilians from 19 police agencies completed the survey.

The findings indicate that contentment with pay and benefits, lower levels of work-related stress, equality in the workplace, and feelings of acceptance were associated with civilian employee satisfaction.

The analyses presented here focusses on factors more unique to policing and did not include all of factors correlated with job satisfaction in past literature. Future research should address this as well as control for the effect of organizational-level factors.

The research identifies key factors in each of those categories that inhibit the effective incorporation of civilians into the workforce. It indicates that reaping the full advantages of civilianization is complex and requires attention to fundamental aspects of police organizations. How administrators deal with this reality will impact the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations in important ways.

To date, much of what has been written about the place of civilians in policing consists of descriptions of their numeric representation and discussions of the presumed advantages of hiring them in larger numbers. Less is known about how well civilians have been integrated into the policing workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether homophily – whereby people are influenced by those perceived as similar to themselves – affects attitudes toward police misconduct. Specifically, whether demographic dissimilarity between police chief executive law enforcement officers (CEOs) and subordinates is related to differences in perceptions of misconduct.

The data for this research are drawn from the National Police Research Platform. Multilevel mixed-effects regression modeling is used to analyze data from 78 randomly selected US police agencies (78 law enforcement CEOs and 10,709 officers from those agencies).

The main finding is that demographic dissimilarity between the CEO and subordinates is associated with differences in attitudes about police deviance, net of other factors.

The results exemplify the need to diversify police agencies at all levels, not just the lower ranks. Because employees were found to be more similar to those one step (up or down) from one another on the organizational hierarchy, diversifying at all levels of the police organizations will help to reduce the social distance between those in closer ranks, which could ameliorate the dissimilarity effect. Likewise, police agencies may need to adopt new management strategies to compensate for a diversifying workforce.

This study builds on previous research and investigates an understudied topic in the policing literature by assessing the extent to which dissimilarity is related to attitudinal congruence about workplace deviance in police organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational cynicism (OC) among new police officers. Specifically, this paper investigates what factors are predictive of baseline levels of OC among police recruits and the growth of cynicism over time in these young officers.

The data for this study are drawn from Phase I of the National Police Research Platform. Latent growth curve modeling is used to analyze data on 760 police recruits across five geographically diverse training academies within three distinct time periods (first day of academy, just before graduation, and six months post-graduation) to assess the development of OC in new police officers.

Several variables, including gender, race, and relations in policing exerted significant effects on a baseline level of OC and on growth in cynicism over time.

OC is an important topic for police administrators. Cynicism among employees can lead to undesirable organizational outcomes such as low job morale and satisfaction. Thus, it is important for police administrators to better understand the development and growth of OC in its personnel, particularly in new police officers.

This study builds on previous research and investigates an understudied topic in the literature by assessing the development and growth of OC among new police officers.

Much of the commentary about police culture treats it as a monolithic and problematic feature of the police occupation that inhibits change and progress. The purpose of this paper is to draw on surveys completed by over 13,000 sworn police to describe officers’ occupational outlooks and explore the extent to which they vary across individuals and police agencies.

This paper draws upon employee survey data from 89 US police and sheriff departments collected in 2014-2015 to examine police culture through officers’ views of the community, police work, and police administration and to explore the extent to which these beliefs and opinions are affected by personal characteristics and organizational affiliation.

Results indicate that officers’ perspectives are more positive than might be expected and do not vary greatly by officer personal characteristics. They differ more substantially across police agencies. This suggests that police culture is to a significant extent an organizational phenomenon, not simply an occupational one.

Examining the views and perspectives of over 13,000 sworn police employed in 89 different police organizations provides a more representative and generalizable picture of police culture than previous studies that typically analyzed officers in only one police department.

Law enforcement agencies have historically used psychological examinations, in addition to other methods, to screen candidates out of the applicant pool. However, agencies could be better served by ensuring recruits are predisposed to the expected behaviors and qualities that are required as part of community-oriented and respectful policing. The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial look into what officer-level characteristics might lead to improved treatment in police-community interactions (PCIs). Characteristics under review include communication styles and personality dimensions.

Data come from the National Police Research Platform’s longitudinal recruit study and its PCI survey. Community members were surveyed about their interactions with officers involved in the study. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze these two-level data.

The findings suggest that certain officer-level characteristics were associated with higher perceptions of procedurally just behavior. Specifically, officers with higher levels of empathy and lower levels of neuroticism scored higher on both the officer’s quality of treatment (QT) and quality of decision making toward the community member. Additional to those dimensions, officers with increased emotional control received higher scores on their QT.

These findings have important implications for identifying and measuring new characteristics to be used in police hiring procedures. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instance where personality dimensions and communications styles have been used to predict law enforcement officers’ procedural justice behaviors in the field.