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The purpose of this paper is to assess if in viewing tense, potentially stigmatizing, police-civilian interactions, people bring their own gendered and racial biases, as they form perceptions of officers' use of identity management (IM) strategies, as they relate to officers' competence, warmth and appropriateness of actions.

In two experimental studies, the authors investigate how the IM strategies used by female and racial minority officers impact officers' ratings of competence, warmth and appropriateness of actions. Utilizing a 2x2x4 design, the authors manipulate officer gender (race), civilian gender (race) and IM strategy used by the officer in a news article describing a police-civilian interaction.

Not all IM strategies established positive perceptions of officers. Gender and race effects were observed in how officers were seen when they were involved in a tense interaction with a civilian. Female officers were perceived as more appropriate in their actions than male officers. However, Black, female officers were rated as both less warm and appropriate in their actions than White, female officers.

Although policing is seen as a tainted profession, officers' use of IM strategies is understudied. By taking a novel lens of stigmatization and IM strategies as they relate to policing, the authors contribute to how officers may manage their identities as they cope with the stigmatized views of their occupation. Findings have implications for the diversification of law enforcement personnel, as well as building trust and legitimacy between officers and the communities they serve.

American police agencies' swift adoption of body-worn camera (BWC) technology, coupled with the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, has led to a “new visibility” of policing. Video recordings are often touted as objective evidentiary accounts of police-civilian interactions. Yet even these recordings are rarely seen in a vacuum, but instead accompanied by headlines and accounts.

Using a diverse sample of young American adults (N = 943) and an experimental design incorporating a short poorly recorded BWC video embedded within a survey, this study investigates perceptions of the appropriateness of police behavior in an ambiguous situation where officers used deadly force on a Black civilian. All respondents viewed the same video, but were randomly assigned to one of four ultimate outcomes.

Respondents overwhelmingly reported the BWC video was personally important and significant for a subsequent investigation and public opinion. The experimental manipulation, along with background factors, exerted a substantial effect on perceptions of the officers' actions. Respondents found the officers' actions more appropriate when told the civilian held a weapon.

Americans are divided on the role of police in a democratic society. Objective accounts like video recordings may be used to build consensus, but our results, derived from a novel method and dataset, suggest deeper cognitive biases must also be overcome.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit classic theoretical arguments regarding the broad effects of civilian demeanor on policing and extend associated findings.

The theoretical framework draws on insights from the literatures on police culture, the group engagement model and fairness heuristic theory. The authors argue that demeanor is best conceptualized as the degree of procedural justice exhibited by civilians toward police. Theoretically, procedurally just cooperation should influence officers’ adherence to police culture by affecting their social identification and assessments of civilians’ motives and moral deservingness. To test the hypotheses, the authors surveyed sworn officers from a large metropolitan police department in the southeastern USA in the Fall of 2016.

Results reveal that officers use their procedural justice judgments as heuristics to assess civilians’ trustworthiness, dangerousness, and moral deservingness, and these judgments influence their policing style. Officers who perceive greater procedurally just cooperation by civilians feel less threatened by the public, are more willing to use procedural justice themselves, and are less supportive of a “tough cop” policing style.

The authors propose that: civilian demeanor is best conceptualized as the extent to which civilians exhibit procedural fairness toward the police; and in order for meaningful police reform to occur, it is important to acknowledge the role of civilian demeanor in shaping officers’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

The police often respond to persons who are not in direct violation of the law, but are rather undergoing behavioral crises due to mental illness or substance abuse disorders. The purpose of this study is to examine how police behavior influences civilian bystanders' emotional responses and perceptions of procedural justice (PPJ) when officers interact with these populations, which traditionally have been stigmatized in American culture.

Using a factorial vignette approach, the authors investigate whether perceived public stigma moderates the relationship between police behaviors (i.e. CIT tactics, use of force) and PPJ. The authors also investigate whether emotional reactions mediate the relationship between police behaviors and PPJ.

Regardless of suspect population (mental illness, substance use), use of force decreased participants' PPJ, and use of CIT tactics increased PPJ. These effects were consistently mediated by anger, but not by fear. Interactive effects of police behavior and perceived public stigma on PPJ were mixed.

Fear and anger may operate differently as antecedents to PPJ. Officers should note using force on persons in behavioral crisis, even if legally justifiable, seems to decrease PPJ. They should weigh this cost pragmatically, alongside other circumstances, when making discretionary decisions about physically engaging with a person in crisis.

Community-police relations have gained increasing public attention during the past decade. The purpose of the present study was to better understand the relationship between perceived community support and police officer burnout and engagement.

Data were gathered via online survey from 117 officers from a city police department in the Southeastern United States.

Community support was negatively correlated with burnout and positively correlated with engagement. Moreover, multiple regression analyses showed that community support explained significant incremental variance in most dimensions of burnout and engagement, above and beyond demographic factors and community stressors. Qualitative results showed that police officers had mixed perceptions of how they were viewed by the general public, with more negative than positive responses. However, officers felt more positively perceived in their own communities, but concerns were raised that national events affected the perceptions of officers even in positive relationships with their communities. Finally, officers felt that public perceptions impacted their job satisfaction, job performance and personal lives.

The results have practical implications for how to encourage positive interactions between officers and their community, with recommendations for both law enforcement leaders and civilians.

This study is one of the few that highlights the officers' perspective on how public perceptions affect their work. This is important in understanding how to maximize quality community interactions while minimizing conditions that would increase burnout.

The purpose of this paper is to review the state of research of police militarization in the USA to explore the claim that the police are becoming more like the military, or “militarized” in order to identify gaps in the research on this topic that require further investigation.

To explore the state of police militarization, this paper draws on a scan of scholarly papers published on militarization in the American context as well as a select array of gray literature on the topic.

While the nature of militarization has received substantial scholarly attention, debate on the phenomenon remains and there is little consensus on the definition of what makes a department militarized. The impact of militarization is similarly unclear: some scholars suggest that it has a negative impact on policing because it creates community hostility and encourages police to see force as a central problem-solving tool. However, other scholars suggest militarization is a positive development, as it could promote professionalism and accountability. To date, there has been little empirical work on the impact of militarization on policing that could inform this debate.

This paper suggests that empirical assessments of how militarization affects use of force and legitimacy will be valuable for informing the militarization debate. As scholars on both sides of the debate have suggested that militarization affect policing outcomes in these areas, empirical tests here offer a way to explore both sides’ claims. Such tests could offer new evidence on how militarization is affecting the character and operations of American police.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between burnout and violent victimization in terms of physical assaults in patrol police officers. A burnout-victimization model is proposed assuming emotional exhaustion and depersonalization to be associated with violent victimization via different mechanisms.

The study entails a cross-sectional survey of 1,742 German patrol police officers who reported 4,524 police encounters. The paper employs a binary logistic multilevel structural equation modeling approach to test the proposed model.

In line with the hypotheses, emotional exhaustion was found to reduce police officers’ self-protecting behavior, which in turn heightened their risk of victimization. Depersonalization was positively linked to a favorable attitude toward violence, which was linked to violent victimization but only to a small extent. Further analyses yielded an additional direct pathway from emotional exhaustion to victimization.

The main limitations include the cross-sectional design of the study and the lack of including police officers’ own aggressive and violent behavior. Multimethod studies also using observational data of police-citizen interactions would be desirable in future studies.

This study is one of the first investigating the burnout-victimization link in police officers. By proposing and examining two different pathways, it further enhances the understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

The proliferation of recording technologies has increased the prevalence of police intervention videos in news media. Although previous research has explored the influence of such coverage on public opinion, the mechanisms underlying this impact have received limited attention. This study investigates the role of information credibility in the assessment of police interventions portrayed in news media videos.

A total of 634 participants were shown a mock-up TV news report that included a description and a brief clip of a police use-of-force event. A survey was conducted before and after the presentation of the report.

Camera perspective, anchor tone, viewer gender and pre-existing perceived TV news credibility were found to influence how credible the mock-up news report was perceived. Participants who judged the news report as complete and credible tended to have a more favourable opinion of the police intervention. Perceived credibility also acted as a moderator in the relationship between video and receiver characteristics and the assessment of the police intervention.

These findings offer valuable insights for law enforcement agencies and their public affairs units to develop effective strategies for managing public opinion.

This research highlights how important perceived credibility is in influencing public opinion and how different factors such as video and receiver characteristics can impact credibility assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to apply focal concerns theory as a theoretical explanation for police officer decision making during a traffic stop that results in a consent search. The study uses coefficients testing to better examine the issue of racial profiling through the use of a race-specific model.

The data for this study come from traffic stops conducted by the Louisville Police Department between January 1 and December 31, 2002.

The results show that the three components of focal concerns theory can explain police officer decision making for consent searches. Yet, the components of focal concerns theory play a greater role in stops of Caucasian male drivers.

The data for this study are cross-sectional and self-reported from police officers.

This paper shows the utility of applying focal concerns theory as a theoretical explanation for police officer decision making on consent searches and how the effects of focal concerns vary depending on driver race.

The findings based on focal concerns theory can provide an opportunity for police officers or departments to explain what factors impact the decision making during consent searches.

This is the first study (to the researchers’ knowledge) that examines the racial effects of focal concerns on traffic stop consent searchers using coefficients testing.