Determinants Of Police Behavior

Methodology for analyzing police behavior, specifically, the interrelationship of variables which affect police patrol performance. It has been suggested that a major determinant of the outcome of a police-citizen street contact is the physical and psychological condition of the officer at the time of the contact. As a preliminary step in testing this hypothesis, a pilot research project was conducted in Miami, Florida. This report discusses a methodology for analyzing police behavior and examines the interrelationship of variables which effect police patrol performance. Four Miami patrolmen were trained in behavioral observation techniques and a volunteer group of twelve radio - patrolmen to be observed was selected. The researchers developed a checklist to record police citizen interactions and constructed fatigue and stress scales to rate police performance. Among the behavioral determinants investigated, length of experience on the force - (for better or for worse) stood out as an influential factor. Other factors likely to affect police behavior were found to be the type of a call, the neighborhood, the shift, the day of the week, and number of citizens involved. Emphasizing the importance of the process of identification, the authors recommend that experienced officers should be selected for training men during the cadet probationary period. While this study is a novel approach to measuring police and contains some interesting results on the variable factors studied, the results might have been more meaningful if a larger sample had been used. The study did not clearly demonstrate the advantages of using police observers to record police behavior and did not specifically suggest means for measuring personality, stress of fatigue in a future study.