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The purpose of this paper is to detail the prevalence and nature of patrol officers' alcohol‐related workload.

A systematic social observation (SSO) methodology was used to collect data pertaining to the alcohol‐related activities and encounters of patrol officers. A fully randomized sampling procedure was used to select the days, times, and geographic areas of observation sessions. Observational data were obtained for 65 separate observations sessions ‐ totaling approximately 650 hours, 480 police‐citizen encounters, with 766 citizens, and 2,009 non‐encounter activities.

Approximately 26 percent of encounters and 10 percent of non‐encounter activities involved citizen alcohol use. Roughly 15 percent of patrol officer time is dedicated to alcohol‐related encounters and their associated activities. Alcohol‐related encounters were of a substantively different type than those in which there was no alcohol involvement. In sum, alcohol‐related encounters were more likely to involve a crime, occur in emotionally volatile situations, elicit a multiple‐officer response, and to take place out of the public sphere.

The paper demonstrates the utility of police‐researcher collaboration. The findings can make a direct contribution to academy and in‐service training.

Unlike previous SSO studies, this research used data obtained from a representative sample of police patrols. The use of a SSO protocol provides a level of detail about the nature of police‐citizen interactions within the context of alcohol‐related encounters not previously seen in the literature.

This paper intends to examine the behaviors autistic individuals display during police encounters, determine if there are differences in those behaviors by age and gender, then examine if any behaviors cluster or frequently co-occur.

Using data from the Survey of Parents and Caregivers of Individuals with autism spectrum disorder and focusing on a subsample of respondents who report that their autistic loved one has had prior police contact, the authors examine the frequency and clustering of behaviors displayed by autistic individuals during police encounters. The authors use chi-square tests of independence to examine age and gender differences and latent class analysis to assess behavioral clustering.

The findings show that many behaviors that autistic individuals display during police encounters are associated with social communication and interaction difficulties, such as failure to maintain eye contact and difficulty answering questions. Many of these overlap with police training on deception, compliance and passive resistance. Moreover, the authors find that there are age differences in two behaviors, fidgeting and not responding to one's name. Lastly, the authors find that many of these behaviors cluster in unexpected ways, adding a layer of complexity to encounters between the police and autistic individuals.

Training police officers, autistic individuals and their loved ones on interactions with the police is critical for positive outcomes. Without details on what occurs inside a police encounter, constructing those trainings is difficult. While this study provides only a small glimpse into police encounters with the autistic community, it is a first step toward understanding these multifaceted interactions better.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a series of hypotheses regarding the use of procedurally just policing during suspect encounters.

Systematic social observation data from police encounters with suspects are used (N=939). Ordinary least-squares regression models are estimated to evaluate the effects of four variable clusters (i.e. suspect self-presentation, situational factors, suspect social characteristics, and officer characteristics) on procedurally just policing practices.

Results from the regression models show that the most salient predictors of police officers exercising authority in a procedurally just manner include the level of self-control displayed by suspects, the number of citizen onlookers, whether the encounter involved a traffic problem, the race/ethnicity of suspects, and suspects’ social status.

This study focused only on police-suspects encounters where compliance requests were made. While the size of the sample is relatively large, the results from this study do not generalize to all types of police encounters with members of the public.

This research adds to an emerging body of research focused on predicting procedurally just practices in police encounters. The findings support increased attention to theories that explain police-citizens interactions, and also indicate that further consideration to the measurement of police behavior is warranted.

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 investigate the effect of encounters on police legitimacy and levels of trust in the police in the Monash Local Government Area in the state of Victoria, Australia. Monash was chosen as it had experienced declining results in the official National Survey of Community Satisfaction with Policing in relation to police legitimacy and trust.

A qualitative case study comprising 18 interviews and six focus groups with community representatives from Monash is employed in the paper.

When procedural justice approaches are applied during encounters between the police and the public, encounters contribute to securing legitimacy for the police. Contact between the police and the public in everyday situations also enhances trust in the police, depending on the way the police conduct themselves during such interactions.

Findings from a qualitative case study are not able to be widely generalised but the conclusions are still useful for informing insights into processes impacting police legitimacy and trust.

Contributes to informing evidence-based police practice around the way police conduct themselves during community interactions; informs policy decisions around allocation of funding for law enforcement with more officers required to carry out community policing; emphasises the importance of prioritising partnerships with communities; demonstrates that positive police/community relations have wider social cohesion implications in a contemporary era of counter-terrorism priorities.

The majority of research in this field to date has been quantitative. A qualitative approach provides fresh insights into the mechanisms of police legitimacy, especially the role of encounters and procedural justice.

The current research seeks to examine whether officer gender influences the decision to arrest, and whether correlates of officer decision making vary across gender.

Data on police‐public encounters were systematically collected by performing social observations of police officers. Multivariate models were estimated to examine the correlates of arrest for all encounters, encounters involving male officers, and encounters involving female officers. Results were compared and contrasted across officer gender.

Gender has little direct impact on the arrest decision; however, some variation exists depending on citizens' race, gender and demeanor. The most noteworthy differences were observed based upon whether officer actions are conducted in the presence of other members of the organization, and where these other members are in the organizational hierarchy. Female officers were significantly more likely to arrest when observed by supervisors, yet less likely to arrest in the presence of peers. The visibility to other organizational members conditions the decision to arrest differently for female officers.

The current research is limited to examining only the decision to arrest. Other discretionary choices made during police‐public encounters are not explored.

Results have implications for the examination of how social control is exercised across gender, and has implications for how organizations evaluate officer performance.

This research expands the understanding of the influence of officer gender on arrest decision.

To provide an empirical analysis of what influences police use of field citations (tickets) against citizens in nontraffic and traffic encounters.

The research was conducted using systematic social observations of police‐citizen encounters in Cincinnati, Ohio, from April 1997 to 1998. Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of legal and extralegal factors on the dependant variable (receipt of a citation) versus an officer doing nothing or arresting a citizen in nontraffic and traffic encounters.

Officers appear to be more likely to issue citations, as opposed to doing nothing formal or making an arrest, in traffic encounters. The extant literature's focus on citation issuance being more relevant to police behavior in traffic encounters as opposed to other routine encounters may be appropriate. When the decision rests between issuing a citation or making a full‐custody arrest in traffic encounters, white officers are more likely to arrest than their black counterparts, and black suspects were significantly more likely than Caucasians to be arrested than cited. Race of the officer or the suspect exhibited no significant effect in any of the other models estimated.

The study utilized data collected on police‐citizen interactions from one police agency in one jurisdiction, and the data do not come from a study designed primarily to examine citation outcomes or traffic encounters.

This study would be useful to researchers examining police use of citations, officer behavior in traffic and nontraffic encounters, quantifying law in police‐citizen encounters, and race‐based policing.

This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature, and an empirical analysis, regarding officer decision making as it pertains to the issuing of tickets relative to other police actions (i.e. arrest) in traffic and nontraffic situations.

This study tests the expectancy disconfirmation model using survey data from citizens who recently had police encounters. We find support for the expectancy disconfirmation model’s primary hypothesis that increased disparity between expectations of police performance and actual service inversely affects citizen satisfaction with the way the police handle encounters. This finding persists for both voluntary (e.g. breaking and entering victims) and involuntary (e.g. traffic citations) police encounters. Our results also suggest that the scope of the expectancy disconfirmation model is limited. For example, the disparity between expectations and actual service is not correlated with citizen satisfaction with the police in general. Overall, the results show that the expectancy disconfirmation model is useful in that it provides conceptual guidance in an area of research that has been relatively void of theory, and can also help identify needed changes in police practices.

The purpose of this paper is to assess perceptions of body-worn cameras (BWCs) among citizens who had BWC-recorded police encounters, and to explore the potential for a civilizing effect on citizen behavior.

From June to November 2015, the authors conducted telephone interviews with 249 citizens in Spokane (WA) who had a recent BWC-recorded police encounter.

Respondents were satisfied with how they were treated during the police encounter and, overall, had positive attitudes about BWCs. However, only 28 percent of respondents were actually aware of the BWC during their own encounter. The authors also found little evidence of a civilizing effect but did document a significant, positive connection between awareness of the BWC and enhanced perceptions of procedural justice.

Authors only interviewed citizens who had encounters with officers wearing BWCs. However, variation in BWC awareness among citizens allowed the authors to construct a proxy “non-BWC condition” for comparison.

The pre-conditions necessary to produce a civilizing effect among citizens are complex and difficult to achieve. The intriguing relationship between BWC awareness and procedural justice suggests the technology may have the potential to improve police legitimacy.

The study is among the first to explore attitudes about BWCs among those who have their police encounters recorded, and results demonstrate high levels of support among this population. Findings bode well for continued adoption of BWCs in policing.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that influence officer behavior when encountering suspects of crime who are perceived to have a mental disorder.

This paper utilizes data collected from systematic social observations of street officers during 617 encounters with suspects, including 49 that were perceived to have a mental disorder. Multivariate models are estimated to determine the relative influence mental disorder has on officer decision making.

The paper finds mentally disordered suspects are more likely to demonstrate disrespectful or hostile behavior. The paper also finds that disrespect and hostility increases the likelihood of arrests. However, results also demonstrate that despite behavioral differences, persons with mental disorders are significantly less likely to be arrested by officers. Results support the contention that officers view mental status as a mitigating factor during encounters, and further calls in to question the criminalization hypothesis.

It is not clear what extent informal actions were taken by officers during encounters with mentally disordered suspects. Future research can also examine the interaction process that occurs between police and citizens who are mentally disordered, and consider evaluating the effectiveness of various responses to mentally disordered suspects.

This paper has value for both practitioners interested in understanding the dynamics of the police‐citizen encounter, as well as academics who are involved with theorizing the nature of social control by police officers.