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The purpose of this paper is to develop and describe the implementation of a novel method for creating interval-level metrics for objectively assessing police officer behaviors during an encounter with the public. These behaviors constitute officer performance and affect the probability of desirable encounter outcomes. The metrics measure concrete, micro-level performance in the common types of complex, dynamic, and low-information police-public encounters that often require immediate action using “naturalistic” decision making. Difficulty metrics also were developed to control for situational variability. The utility of measuring what officers do vs probabilistic outcomes is explored with regard to informing policymaking, field practice, and training.

Metric sets were developed separately for three types of police-public encounters: deadly force judgment and decision making, cross-cultural tactical social interaction, and crisis intervention. In each, “reverse concept mapping” was used with a different diverse focus group of “true experts” to authoritatively deconstruct implicit concepts and derive important variables. Variables then were scaled with Thurstone’s method using 198 diverse expert trainers to create interval-level metrics for performance and situational difficulty. Metric utility was explored during two experimental laboratory studies and in response to a problematic police encounter.

Objective, interval-level metric sets were developed for measuring micro-level police performance and encounter difficulty. Validation and further refinement are required.

This novel method provides a practical way to rapidly develop metrics that measure micro-level performance during police-public encounters much more precisely than was previously possible.

The metrics developed provide a foundation for measuring officers’ performance as they exercise discretion, engage people, and affect perceptions of police legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine data from a survey of police officers in a Western US city, showing the factors that shape police officers' satisfaction with their city's system for investigating and resolving citizen complaints alleging officer misconduct. Specifically, it tests whether perceptions of legitimate authority and procedural justice influence overall satisfaction, and how these two theoretical perspectives fare relative to a distributive justice perspective.

This paper uses anonymous mailed surveys to examine the attitudes of a sample of 373 police officer respondents from one large urban police department.

The findings support the importance of both procedural justice and perceived legitimacy by finding that both perspectives shape officers' satisfaction more than the actual outcomes reached on their cases. Attitudes toward oversight were not found to be related to satisfaction with the complaint process.

This paper focuses on only one city and has a relatively small number of respondents.

In this paper the analyses expand these theoretical perspectives by applying them to a unique and important group, the police themselves, whose attitude toward citizen complaints and police accountability has been largely neglected by the prior research.

Policing faces several critical problems, the most immediate of which are arguably public perceptions of racial bias, and widely prevalent officer fatigue related to shift work and long work hours. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the “reverse racism effect” still occurred when officers were extremely fatigued.

Controlled laboratory experiments were conducted during which experienced police patrol officers responded to black and white suspects in deadly force judgment and decision-making simulations on two occasions; once immediately following the last of five consecutive 10:40 hours patrol shifts (fatigued condition) and again 72 hours after completing the last shift in a cycle (rested condition).

Contrary to expectations, the authors found that officer fatigue did not significantly affect shooting behavior. Furthermore, the authors did not find a significant interaction between officer fatigue and suspect race on either reaction time to shoot or the likelihood of shooting an unarmed suspect. Thus, the reverse racism effect was observed both when officers were rested and fatigued.

As policing agencies around the country respond to allegations of racial bias, both the public and police search for empirical evidence about whether negative perceptions are accurate about officers’ motivations in deadly encounters. The research reported here provides insight about how fatigue effects officers’ decisions to shoot black vs white suspects, and directly addresses this high profile and divisive national issue.

This is the first valid experimental test of the impact of fatigue on officer shooting behavior, and the interaction between police fatigue and suspect race on decisions to shoot.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to previous scholarship by providing a framework for a post‐modern policing organization that maximizes the police/community relationship while still controlling discretion.

This paper provides a model of police administration by expanding upon previous work through a discussion on police bureaucracy, organizational governance, and police effectiveness.

Police organizations have the ability to transform themselves into institutions deemed as legitimate legal authorities providing effective service to their recipients through: limiting the arbitrary exercise of power; establishing institutional arrangements for successful social problem solving; and cultivating the appropriate character for those who carry out the institutional responsibilities. Through this process, the police organization can find the right balance between a theory of governance and modern policing.

The community policing philosophy advocates a strong relationship between the police and the community it serves. However, if the police forces do not have the institutional capacity and tools of governance to be deemed a legitimate and effective law enforcement body by the community, this philosophy of policing is sure to fail.

A different perspective that integrates principles of good governance, public administration, and political theory that tie into an effective and efficient relationship between police organizations and those they serve is taken. Further, the traditional concept of community policing that has overlooked some important structural features needed to carry out this philosophy is argued.

Discusses the actual conceptions about policing used by social scientists. Police models are central entities of thoughts and ideas on policing, which include an observable internal coherence. Stresses that there are in fact only four central police models: the military‐bureaucratic model; the lawful policing model; community‐oriented policing (COP); and public‐private divide policing. Precisely in articulating COP against its negative references, the essence becomes clearer. Concludes that each concrete police apparatus can be considered as a combination of police models. The democratization process can be endangered by the growing dominance of a public‐private (divide) police model. That is the main reason why it is important to encourage the search for a more profound theoretical basis for policing the community.

The paper aims to relocate discussions on police stops and police interactions from the Anglophone world to the particularistic context of the post-colonial state of India. The paper further frames the everyday policing practices in a theoretical dialog between questions of legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities. For that purpose, the author contextualizes the discussion in the post-colonial state of India, in the jurisdictions of two police stations (PSs), in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the State of Kerala.

The author conducted ethnographic studies in one station each in Kerala and Delhi, India, from February to July 2019 and July 2019 to January 2020, respectively. The study mapped everyday power relations as the relations manifested within the site and jurisdiction of the PSs.

Through the research, the author found that to fully understand everyday practices of policing, especially police interactions and police stops, one must contextualize the police force within the administrative power-sharing relations, police force's accountability structures, legal procedures and class dynamics, which mark the terrain in which personnel function. In that terrain, the author found that the dialog between particularistic legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities offered an important framework to interpret the everyday policing practices.

Through the paper, the author seeks to expand the analysis of ethnographic descriptions of policing by contextualizing them in the political economy of the state. In doing so, the author aims to provide a framework through which police interactions in post-colonial India could be understood

The purpose of this paper is to define a systematic management structure that helps police practitioners institutionalize performance management and analysis in more rational‐technical ways.

The design is based on Gold's “complete participant” field researcher method.

The findings suggest a performance management model is more rational than the traditional command‐control model and may increase consistency in police management by systematically collecting and reporting on streams of data to measure performance instead of relying on rote compliance.

The model is limited because it does not account for important intangible qualities of performance (e.g. attitude, initiative, judgment); in the hands of autocratic managers it can be oppressive and cause more problems than it solves; it may constrain officer discretion; it has not been advanced as a learning instrument; and performance indicators are subject to measurement error.

Most police agencies are already capturing the necessary data elements to implement a performance management model. Police executives and policymakers can use this model to definitively measure how well police agencies and individual programs are performing.

The paper represents an opportunity for police practitioners to embrace a new management process intended to improve performance and accountability. The framework is a universal management process that can be applied to any size police agency or any police program.

This paper considers the influences that have shaped local domestic violence policy and how this has affected police practice in one English police force.

The research in this paper is based upon theoretical concepts of central government and local accountability over policing; policy making and implementation; and pressure group influence. Documents issued to local police forces from Central Government were examined and compared to local policy documents to assess their affect over local police policy. Using a structured format, senior managers were interviewed to gain their impressions of these influences. Views of ground level staff were obtained through postal questionnaires.

This paper finds public opinion and pressure from academic research upon Central Government has resulted in a very strong central influence over local police policy and practice. Police officers believe that these influences have had a major affect upon the way that they respond to domestic violence issues at a local level, to the point where both managers and front line police officers believe that their discretion in dealing with these issues has been curtailed, and that top down control over police practice has increased. Police attitudes towards policing domestic violence are more enlightened than they once were.

This paper examines the opinions of both senior local police policy makers and front line policy implementers and will be of value to those interested in the policing of domestic violence issues.

The personalities, style and job demands of top ranking police officers have never before been seriously analysed. Here, by using a management development survey, key personality characteristics and the management and interpersonal styles of top ranking officers are identified. The views of chief officers are discussed, together with an examination of the necessary qualities required. Ways in which senior officers can improve their performance through management training and development and how this can assist their professional growth and development, are emphasised.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the specific institutional arrangements for realizing democratically accountable policing in England & Wales and the Netherlands. It assesses each accountability system against a set of “democratic criteria” and considers the implications for democratic policing of the current reform trajectories in both jurisdictions.

The paper adopts a cross‐national approach exploring the relationship between policing and democratic institutions by comparing the democratic credentials of the police governance systems in England & Wales and the Netherlands.

Current reforms to the police governance system in England & Wales aim to increase local elected influence over policing. By contrast, the Dutch system deliberately limits the degree of local electoral control over policing. The paper argues that there is a range of elements to democratic policing, and that “democratic accountability” should not be conflated with control of policing by elected bodies. Whilst the trajectories of reform in England & Wales and the Netherlands are going in opposite directions, each raises a number of “democratic” concerns.

The research is limited to only two developed European parliamentary democracies in the European Union. Further comparative research on democratic policing is required to expand the analysis to a wider variety of democratic contexts.

To date, there has been little attention paid by policy makers or by academics to the form and nature of police governance in continental European countries. By drawing comparisons between England & Wales and the Netherlands, the paper aims to provide a democratic assessment of the two police accountability systems (and their current reform trajectories) and discuss some broad policy implications for police governance in each jurisdiction.

Comparative analysis of police accountability in both England and Wales and the Netherlands provides potential for policy learning in each jurisdiction. The analysis suggests that both systems, in different ways, are currently at risk of over‐emphasizing particular democratic criteria (such as electoral participation, or delivery of service) to the exclusion of others (such as concerns with equitable and fair policing and the protection of minority rights).