Citizen Satisfaction with Police Encounters (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Applied Psychology, 1985
As a response to budgetary constraints and increased service demands, many police departments have developed telephone report units as the primary mode for delivering citizen service. Citizen satisfaction with the service provided by the officer who handles the call is important to the successful operation of a telephone report unit. This study examines communication behaviors and patterns in satisfying and dissatisfying officer/citizen telephone interaction and identifies officer conversational tendencies related to citizen responses to the service. The results of the study have important implications for developing effective telephone report units and for the training of officers assigned to telephone operations.
Race and satisfaction with the police in a small city
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2005
In a democratic society, public opinion of criminal justice systems is essential for the proper functioning of police departments. Since the 1970s, police organizations were increasingly concerned with their external social relationship. This was particularly true in the era of community policing. This study explored determinants of satisfaction with the police. Data from 235 residents of a small northeastern city in the United States were analyzed. The results indicated that Hispanics had the lowest global satisfaction with the police, while Caucasians had the highest. The results also revealed the importance of separating global satisfaction from specific satisfaction. The study concluded that police departments must work harder at gaining public satisfaction among African Americans and Hispanics and work toward increasing public feelings of safety in order to improve citizen satisfaction with the police.
Asymmetry in the Impact of Encounters with Police
Policing & Society, 2006
This article examines the impact of personal experience on popular assessments of the quality of police service. Following past research, it addresses the influences of personal and neighbourhood factors on confidence in the police. It then focuses on the additional impact of positive and negative personal experiences with the police. Several studies of police encounters with the public have noted that the relationship between how people recall being treated and their general confidence in the police may be asymmetrical. At its worst, the police may get essentially no credit for delivering professional service, while bad experiences can deeply influence peoples' views of their performance and even legitimacy. This proposition is tested using survey data on police-initiated and citizeninitiated contacts with police in Chicago. The findings indicate that the impact of having a bad experience is four to fourteen times as great as that of having a positive experience, and the coefficients associated with having a good experience*/including being treated fairly and politely, and receiving service that was prompt and helpful*/were not statistically different from zero. Another section of the article replicates this finding using surveys of residents of seven other urban areas located in three different countries. The article concludes that this is bad news indeed for police administrators intent on solidifying their support among voters, taxpayers and the consumers of police services.
Determinants of attitudes toward city police
Criminology, 1980
This paper reports the results of a survey of attitudes toward police and police service among 273 citizens in 4 neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Extensive socioeconomic and personal history data were collected for all individuals. Results indicate that personal history. particularly respondents' perceptions of the way in which specific officers have related to them personally in previous encounters. is a more signijicant determinant of general attitudes towards police than were all socioeconomic variables including race and income. Results thus suggest that positive styles of policing will significantly aflect police-community relations, and that police-community relations programs stressing officer-citizen interaction in a law enforcement context will have the highest probability of success. AbStract 0 n increasing concern over police-community relations in urban a areas throughout the United States has prompted researchers in the field of criminal justice to investigate the nature of community attitudes toward police and police service. Much of the published literature derived from this research has been primarily descriptive
"Determinants of Attitudes Toward City Police." Criminology 11:485-494, 1980.
1980
Co-authored with Richard G. Condon This paper reports the results of a survey of attitudes toward police and police service among 273 citizens in 4 neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Extensive socioeconomic and personal history data were collected for all individuals. Results indicate that personal history. particularly respondents’perceptions of the way in which specific officers have related to them personally in previous encounters, is a more significant determinant of general attitudes towards police than were all socioeconomic variables including race and income. Results thus suggest that positive styles of policing will significantly affect police-community relations, and that police-community relations programs stressing officer-citizen interaction in a law enforcement context will have the highest probability of success.
Public-Police Relations: Officers' Interpretations of Citizen Contacts
2015
Public-Police Relations: Officers’ Interpretations of Citizen Contacts by Donal Hardin MA, Chapman University, 2008 BS, University of Phoenix, 2007 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy and Administration. Perceptual differences in how citizens and police view police-initiated contacts can result in individual and communal tension, mistrust, and social strife, which complicate the relationships needed in order to thrive and promote safe environments. To examine how police officers interpret these contacts, this case study sought to explore the nature of citizen-police relations from the perspective of police officers in a city in the northwest part of the United States. Social contract and procedural justice theories were used to examine the circumstances that officers cited for taking enforcement actions, including operational definitions of police fairness and legitimacy from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial. Data were collected from interviews with 10 officers during police ride-alongs and from departmental data related to officer performance. These data were inductively coded and then analyzed using a naturalistic inquiry approach. Findings suggest that police officers we...
Journal of Communication, 2008
Although the study of police-civilian relations has recently entered the intergroup communication arena, there are no studies of actual interactions between these social categories. In part to rectify that stark omission and guided by communication accommodation theory, 313 randomly sampled video recordings from police cars on traffic stops in Cincinnati, Ohio were content analyzed. The study revealed 3 key differences as a function of the officers' and drivers' races: (a) Black drivers were more likely to experience extensive policing during the stop; (b) the communication quality of White drivers was, on average, more positive than that of the Black drivers; and (c) officers' communication behavior was more positive when the officer and driver were of the same race. These findings are consistent with public opinion data and their implications for theory are discussed.
Criminal Justice Policy Review, 2003
There have been several studies that report a positive correlation between police-resident interaction and resident satisfaction with the police and that community policing can substantially lower resident fear of crime. However, these studies failed to control for levels of community solidarity. This study uses ordinary least squares regression to predict levels of satisfaction with local police among residents of a small neighborhood in western South Carolina. Once levels of community solidarity were accounted for, positive interactions between residents and the police did not influence resident perceptions of police effectiveness. Conversely, the visible presence of officers in the neighborhood improved the residents' opinions of the police.