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We explore the relationship between urbanicity and police officers’ perceptions of changes in their reactive and proactive work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using the 2021 survey of 1,262 Croatian police offices (436 police officers from a large urban community, 471 police officers from small towns and 155 from rural communities), we examine the perceived changes in their reactive activities (e.g. responses to the calls for service, arrests for minor crimes) and proactive activities (e.g. community policing activities, directed patrols) during the peak month of the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

The majority of police officers in the study, regardless of the size of the community where they lived, reported no changes before and during the pandemic in reactive and proactive activities. Police officers from urban communities and small towns were more likely to note an increase in domestic violence calls for service. Police officers from urban communities were also more likely than the respondents from small towns and rural communities to report an increase in the responses to the disturbances of public order. Finally, police officers from small communities were most likely to observe a change in the frequency of traffic stops during the pandemic.

This study is the first one to explore the differences in perceptions of COVID-19-related changes in reactive and proactive police activities in a centralized police system.

This study examined the effects of organizational justice and citizen respect to support for democratic policing through self-legitimacy among South Korean police officers.

The authors used survey data from 467 South Korean police officers in 2022. Structural equation model analysis was used to examine relationships between each variable.

This study found a positive relationship between organizational justice and self-assessed legitimacy. Also, citizen respect had a positive relationship with both police officers' self-assessed legitimacy and audience legitimacy. Self-assessed legitimacy had a significant effect on support for democratic policing, while perceived-audience legitimacy did not have a significant effect on support for democratic policing.

The current study provides evidence that self-legitimacy affects supporting democratic policing in a non-Western democracy. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the role of police self-legitimacy as a link between organizational justice and citizen respect and the intended behaviors of police officers toward citizens.

Recently, the interest of scholars studying procedural justice in policing has shifted from the relationship between procedural justice and citizen compliance to trust in police officers’ perceptions of who exercises it. This study explores the relationship between organizational justice and the perception of procedural justice from the perspective of police officers. Furthermore, it investigates the mediating roles of discretion and responsiveness.

Using 441 survey responses from South Korean police officers, a mediation model is outlined and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that police officers’ perceptions of organizational justice had indirect effects on the perceived importance of procedural justice. Moreover, discretion and responsiveness mediate the relationship between organizational justice and perceived procedural justice.

Officers who perceive police fairness are more likely to have a positive perception of procedural justice toward citizens when they have a higher level of discretion and responsiveness. However, police officers’ perceptions of organizational justice are not directly linked to their perceptions of procedural justice.

This study contributes to the generalization of knowledge by empirically testing Van Craen’s theoretical model of the Korean police. It also expands the existing theoretical model by investigating the influence of overall organizational justice and its possible mediators on procedural justice.

Active shooter incidents have risen considerably in recent years, elevating public and law enforcement focus on improving response to these incidents. The contemporary policy for reacting to an active shooter event is for the officers who first arrive on the scene to move quickly to engage and neutralize a shooter, prioritizing victim safety and minimizing loss of life. This study provides a preliminary understanding of the police view regarding their role in active shooter events and their experiences with active shooter training.

We conducted a survey of 413 sworn personnel across three US cities. Analyses examine differences in officers’ training experiences across the agencies and predictors of a sense of duty to prioritize victims’ lives over that of officers.

Officers’ training experiences differed by agency, yet most officers supported a duty to sacrifice their lives to prioritize victims’ safety during active shooter incidents. Officers with more years of experience have lower odds of supporting a duty to sacrifice their lives to save victims during an active shooter situation relative to less experienced officers. Respondents who recall officer safety among the top three most memorable topics from their recent active shooter training also have lower odds of supporting a duty to sacrifice.

The authors add knowledge about police officers’ experiences with active shooter training and officers’ opinions about their role in responding to active shooter incidents. We discuss implications of the findings relative to police culture and training and suggest directions for future research.

This study explored the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on rural municipal police in Pennsylvania.

The authors surveyed rural police chiefs and sworn officers to inquire about their intra-department organizational capabilities, police-community relations, well-being practices, and how these strategies may have developed since March 2020.

The pandemic affected rural police officers and rural policing strategies in many ways. Moreover, existing challenges to limited rural police budgets were exacerbated suggesting a need for more flexible budgetary capacities, access to wellness resources were limited suggesting better access to these resources and preparation for responding to public health emergencies was limited suggesting more complete training is warranted.

This study draws attention to the unique experiences of rural municipal police across one state by capturing specific areas of concern throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

Purpose: A psychiatric illness called burnout is caused by emotional tiredness, cynicism, and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment. For police officers to handle and adjust to difficult, stressful, and sometimes traumatic events, resilience or recovery during downtime are considered critical capacities. The study aims to investigate the association between resilience or recovery experiences and job burnout among police officers and to ascertain if recovery experiences during off-job time can lessen the harmful impacts of burnout.

Design/methodology: The data were gathered from police officers in the South zone of Kerala state using a structured questionnaire. The police force may have favourable effects on economic development if it embraces resilience-building concepts and develops into a more resilient enterprise. The study used convenience sampling, and the researchers received 300 responses. Karl Pearson correlation and simple regression analysis are used to test hypotheses.

Findings: Findings suggest an association between burnout and resilience or recovery experience measures during off-job time among police officers in Kerala. It is found that recovery experiences can buffer the adverse effects of job stress and burnout.

Practical implications: The results of this study could guide the design of initiatives and programmes that enhance police officers’ performance and satisfaction while also encouraging their general well-being. To further reduce police burnout, implement a programme that aims to improve occupational stress recovery at the organisational level.

Originality/value: It is crucial to evaluate police officers’ burnout and its relationship to resiliency or recovery in their spare time. This study offers unique insights into certain off-the-job behaviours or activities that link to lower levels of burnout; this information could guide programmes or interventions intended to help police personnel.

We present the results of one of the only in-depth studies of a police agency’s internal and external response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (COVID-19). This study emphasizes the importance of law enforcement agencies conducting comprehensive case studies and after-action assessments to prepare, prevent and respond to prolonged public health crises and showcases the profound (and lingering) effects of COVID-19 on police organizations.

This multi-method case study combines document analysis, a workforce survey, a community survey, interviews and analysis of administrative data to detail and assess the agency’s internal and operational responses to the pandemic and the reactions of employees and community members to those responses.

Despite agency strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s effects, employees cited very high stress levels one year after the pandemic and a third of sworn officers considered leaving the policing profession altogether during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several policies intended by the agency to protect employee health and maintain staffing needs kept workforce levels steady but may have increased feelings of organizational injustice in both sworn and non-sworn individuals, with variation across racial and gender groups. A jurisdiction-wide community survey indicated general support for the police department’s responses but a preference for in-person rather than telephone-based responses to service calls. Officers, however, preferred continuing remote responses even after the pandemic subsided.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the only in-depth case studies that examine a police agency’s internal and external responses to COVID-19 and the sworn, non-sworn and community reactions to those responses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Asian Americans' perceptions of the police, specifically how they construct support. Although such literature has been growing in recent years, research on Asian American interactions with the police remains limited. Additionally, this paper is situated within the theoretical framework of system justification theory to account for Asian Americans' views of the police.

This study relies on interview data collected from 20 Asian Americans residing in mid-Atlantic states. Participants were either recruited directly by the researchers or through the snowball-sampling method.

Police support is influenced by perception of neighborhood safety, personal police contact and empathetic feelings toward the police. Specifically, regarding the latter component, humanizing or empathizing with police officers is a form of rationalizing individual police misconduct that reinforced police legitimacy. Most participants had similar characteristics and displayed police justification. Additional research is needed regarding what characteristics or patterns are likely to lead to lower levels of police justification.

This article's findings improve our understanding of system justification among Asian Americans, particularly as it relates to policing.