A. Johannes Bottema and Cody W. Telep
The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which intelligence officers integrated at the patrol level contribute to successful case outcomes through information sharing.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which intelligence officers integrated at the patrol level contribute to successful case outcomes through information sharing.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilizes multinomial logistic regression to analyze the outcomes of three years of Intelligence Officer Reports (IORs) submitted by officers trained in the Phoenix Police Department’s Intelligence Officer Program.
Findings
The majority of IORs are either tangible case successes or intelligence successes that have the capacity to become these, as opposed to non-successes. The type of success is impacted by a number of predictors. These include case categorization, nature of crime, information-gathering methods and perceived validity of information. Perceived reliability of information was the only non-significant predictor.
Research limitations/implications
The study suggests the benefits of looking at multiple predictors of success in understanding the value of information gathered by intelligence officers in the field. Limitations include a fair amount of missing data and potential lack of generalizability to other agencies. Future research will also consider alternative ways of measuring success and the nesting of reports within officers.
Practical implications
The study provides insight into key factors for optimizing tangible case outcomes when institutionalizing intelligence-led policing at the patrol level.
Originality/value
This is the first study to consider how intelligence-led policing at the patrol level may influence case outcomes, and, in turn, what factors may contribute to this. Findings provide some initial considerations for optimizing desirable case outcomes.
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Keywords
This paper aims to explore the potential impact on policing by consent and trust in the police of diminished political and generalised trust.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the potential impact on policing by consent and trust in the police of diminished political and generalised trust.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on a range of academic literature on trust, the legal foundations of policing by consent, police occupational culture, disproportionality and neighbourhood policing.
Findings
An analytical framework is developed by recognising that policing by consent can be conceived as comprising two complementary facets, police state consent and police citizen consent and drawing lose mappings between police state consent and political trust and police citizen consent and generalised trust. This supports the argument that the importance of tackling disproportionality in policing practices and an increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing are not only valuable for reasons recognised in existing literature but also because they may bolster policing by consent in circumstances of reduced political trust and contribute to increased generalised trust across society.
Originality/value
This paper builds upon existing work on trust in the police and policing by consent to give novel insights into the importance of neighbourhood policing and tackling disproportionality. The analytical frame developed also highlights new areas for nuanced research questions in the field of trust and provides grounding from which policy objectives for policing can be developed.
Details
Keywords
Empirical research suggests that traffic enforcement is the most common type of proactive activity police officers engage in on a daily basis. Further, agencies often use traffic…
Abstract
Purpose
Empirical research suggests that traffic enforcement is the most common type of proactive activity police officers engage in on a daily basis. Further, agencies often use traffic enforcement to achieve both traffic safety and crime control. Given these goals, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether (and to what extent) officers are accurately targeting their proactive traffic enforcement with crime and vehicle crashes in two agencies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study examines traffic enforcement patterns in two agencies to see whether proactive traffic enforcement aligns spatially with crime and vehicle crashes. This study employs negative binomial regression models with clustered standard errors to investigate this alignment at the micro-spatial level. Key variables of interest are measured with police calls for service data, traffic citation data and vehicle crash data from two law enforcement jurisdictions.
Findings
High levels of spatial association are observed between traffic accidents and crime in both agencies, lending empirical support to the underlying theories of traffic enforcement programs that also try to reduce crime (i.e. “DDACTS”). In both agencies, traffic accidents also appear to be the most prominent predictor of police proactive traffic enforcement activities, even across different times of day. However, when vehicle crashes are accounted for, the association between crime and traffic stops is weaker, even during times of day when agencies believe they are using proactive traffic enforcement as a crime deterrent.
Originality/value
No prior study to authors knowledge has examined the empirical association between police proactive traffic activities and crime and traffic accidents in practice. The current study seeks to fill that void by investigating the realities of traffic stops as practiced daily by police officers, and their alignment with crime and vehicle crashes. Such empirical inquiry is especially important given the prevalent use of traffic enforcement as a common proactive policing tool by police agencies to control both traffic and crime problems.