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The purpose of this paper is to examine how celebrated cases affect attitudes toward police, controlling for key demographic, police contact, and neighborhood contextual variables.

The paper presents two waves of public opinion data measuring attitudes toward police, police services, police harassment, and officer guilt before and after a celebrated police misconduct trial. Data were collected by telephone from residents living in three areas.

The findings in the paper suggest that news consumption of this celebrated case had no significant effects on general attitudes toward police, police services, and concerns about police harassment. Media coverage, however, did effect citizen evaluation of the guilt of the officers involved in the case. The more a citizen read a newspaper or read about the case, the more likely she was to think that the officers were guilty. Concern about crime in the neighborhood was an important predictor of attitudes toward the police, and race effects were much more pronounced after media coverage of the case.

This paper highlights the need to examine more closely media coverage of celebrated cases and the effects of such high profile cases. In addition, it illustrates that public opinion research must be careful of contextual variables when conducting a study at a single point in time.

These findings also have critical implications for law enforcement agencies. The findings highlight the importance of police departments being prepared to respond to crisis events.

This paper is valuable to scholars and police practitioners because of its close examination of the effects of a celebrated case on various measures of public opinion of the police. Although there have many studies examining this general topic, research has ignored the impact of media coverage generally and coverage of high profile incidents.

This research updates and expands upon Decker’s article “Citizen attitudes toward the police: a review of past findings and suggestions for future policy” by summarizing the findings from more than 100 articles on perceptions of and attitudes toward the police. Initially, the value of research on attitudes toward the police is discussed. Then the research pertaining to the impact of individual level variables (e.g. race) and contextual level variables (e.g. neighborhood) on perceptions of the police is reviewed. Studies of juveniles’ attitudes toward the police, perceptions of police policies and practices, methodological issues and conceptual issues are also discussed. This review of the literature indicates that only four variables (age, contact with police, neighborhood, and race) have consistently been proven to affect attitudes toward the police. However, there are interactive effects between these and other variables which are not yet understood; a finding which indicates that theoretical generalizations about attitudes toward police should be made with caution.

Purpose – Emergency situations are known to have significant effects on public attitudes toward the police. However, little is known about these effects over prolonged periods of time, and how they vary across different types of attitudes. Moreover, it is unclear what the root causes of fluctuations in public sentiments of the police in emergency situations are. The present chapter reviews the findings of a research project designed to address these questions.

Methodology/Approach – A three-wave panel survey carried out in Israel in the first three peaks (and corresponding lockdowns) of the COVID-19 pandemic: April, September and December, 2020.

Findings – Following what appears to be a rise in support for the police at the first peak of the pandemic, the authors find a significant drop in numerous types of attitudes in the second peak. Between the second and the third peaks, broad evaluations of the police (not directly related to the pandemic) stabilized, while some pandemic-specific attitudes continued to deteriorate. The drop in diffused support for the police was associated with participants’ assessments of the government’s performance in handling the pandemic.

Originality/Value – Beyond shedding light on fluctuations in public attitudes toward the police over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, these findings add to our more general understanding of what happens to the relationship between the police and the public in emergency situations.

Surveys attitudes to police (ATP) in Santa Ana, California by asking respondents what they most like or dislike about police. Finds inter alia that the primary indicator of ATP is how people feel about their location. Contrasts sharply with previous research in finding that ethnicity is not a very good predictor of ATP. Points out that unrealistic expectations for law enforcement may be ameliorated by community policing, which involves citizens in decision making and neighborhood improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to test theories of organizational justice in the context of a police agency.

Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyze data from a survey of officers in a police force in England.

The SEM showed that organizational justice was associated with positive attitudes towards serving members of the public. This relationship was mediated by commitment to elements of community policing and, for community police officers, by general satisfaction with the organization.

The findings suggest that police managers committed to implementing process‐based policing policies may need to ensure their organizations also implement internal policies and practices that are procedurally fair.

This study is one of the first to apply the well established literature on organizational justice to the context of policing, and the first to examine the impact of organizational justice on alignment with community policing and the service model.

Citizens' opinions of the police are important indicators of how well the police are performing their duties and can help to shape police practice as well as public policy. However, little research exists in Canada on people's opinions of the police. This paper aims to provide a more robust understanding of citizen attitudes toward the police in Canada by examining a variety of factors that have been deemed important in shaping people's attitudes in other countries (predominantly from research conducted in the USA).

The paper utilizes path analysis to decompose and better understand the relationships between sociodemographic/non‐sociodemographic variables and attitudes toward the police. Data were drawn from the 1999 General Social Survey conducted by Statistics Canada. A random sample of Canadians was surveyed regarding victimization, personal safety and attitudes toward the criminal justice system.

Several distinct groups of people (i.e. young people, visible minorities, males, those who have experienced criminal victimization, those dissatisfied with their safety and those who perceive their neighborhoods as being high in crime) emerged as having negative views toward the police, which is consistent with much of the research conducted in the USA.

Police practice should more closely resemble the principles inherent in community policing if certain groups' negative views of the police are to be improved. This can be partly accomplished by the police being more inclusive of diverse opinions in the community and actively seeking out this opinion in order to better inform policing practices and strategies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the ideological gaps across a range of policing interactions with the public.

In a survey distributed via Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (n = 979), the authors explore the role that respondents' political ideology plays in the agreement of 13 aspects of policing services, their demeanor and decorum.

Attitudes toward policing interactions are slightly positive. Conservatives steadfastly hold positive attitudes about police. Liberals vacillate from negative to positive attitudes across the 13 policing interaction statements.

Although small, there is an ideological consensus that police adequately protect citizens and are knowledgeable about the law.

Even at record lows of public confidence in the police, some subsections of the sample, such as conservatives, firmly hold positive attitudes about police. The unwavering support for police by conservatives continues across the multi-item measure of policing interactions, whereas liberals illustrated less uniformity in their attitudes.

This paper comparatively assesses the connections between individual demographic traits, occupational characteristics, and organizational factors and officers' attitudes toward important groups in China and Taiwan.

Survey data used in this study were collected from 722 police officers from mainland China and 531 officers from Taiwan. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted to assess the correlates of police attitudes toward peers, supervisors, and citizens.

The Chinese and Taiwanese officers do not differ in their trust in peers, but the Chinese officers hold significantly more positive views on the trustworthiness of supervisors and citizens compared to the Taiwanese officers. Supervisor justice and organizational identification are significant predictors of officers' attitudes toward all three groups in both countries.

A major limitation revolves around the inability to test and explain exactly why findings from the two groups vary in their ways. Future research should include specific social, political, and cultural predictors.

This study represents one of the few studies that compare police attitudes toward important groups of peers, supervisors, and citizens across nations/cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese police cadets' attitudes toward police roles and their work.

Using survey data collected from 182 cadets in a Chinese police college, this paper assesses the influences of cadets' characteristics and training on their attitudes toward law enforcement, order maintenance, preventive patrol, and community building.

Cadets without family members or relatives serving as police officers and with stronger physical capability are more likely to support the law enforcement role, while cadets with greater physical capability are less likely to favor order maintenance. Younger cadets and those without a Bachelor's degree are more likely to view preventive patrol as an important goal for the police. Cadets with stronger attitudes toward law enforcement are more likely to regard community building as an important police goal.

Future research should continue to explore factors that influence officers' occupational attitudes and incorporate more attitudinal dimensions into the analysis. Future projects should also target local station officers from different departments.

This study represents one of the first attempts to empirically assess Chinese police cadets' work‐related attitudes. Findings of the study provide Chinese police administrators with useful references and directions to improve police training and enhance police‐community relations.

The relationship between race and attitudes toward the police has been the subject of numerous studies since the, 1960s. Unfortunately, only a limited number of studies have addressed this relationship as it applies to juveniles. The present study, using survey responses from 852 public high school students in a large metropolitan area, compares the attitudes of black and white teenagers. We find that the overall attitudes of black and white juveniles toward police performance are significantly different from one another, while their evaluations of officer performance during personal encounters are more similar.