Command-level Police Officers’ Perceptions of the “War on Cops” and De-policing

Abstract

Policing has been the subject of intense public scrutiny for the better part of two years after several high-profile police killings of unarmed African Americans across the United States. The scrutiny has been so extreme that some contend there is currently a “war on cops”—whereby citizens are emboldened by protests and negative media coverage of the police, and are lashing out by assaulting police officers more frequently. In response, it is argued that officers are de-policing (i.e. avoiding proactive stops). We surveyed command-level police officers from a southeastern state about their attitudes concerning the war on cops and de-policing. The majority of our sample believed there has been a war on cops over the last two years. Moreover, officers who felt strongly about the existence of a war on cops were more likely to believe that de-policing is common among officers in today’s world of law enforcement.

Keywords:

• policing
• legitimacy
• war on cops
• de-policing
• dialogic model

Notes

¹ While officers are obligated to respond to 911 calls, they have much greater discretion in proactively stopping citizens (see e.g. Goldstein, 1960, 1963; Kubrin, Messner, Deane, Mcgeever, & Stucky, 2010; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). As such, we would expect proactive work in particular to decline due to a war on cops.

² The idea that officers might de-police in response to occupational strains is nothing new. Researchers have previously uncovered evidence of de-policing after the implementation of consent decrees by the Department of Justice (Rushin & Edwards, 2017). Stone, Foglesong, and Cole (2009) found that officers in the Los Angeles Police Department said they engaged in de-policing to avoid receiving citizen complaints and reprisal for making “honest mistakes” after the department entered a consent decree in 1999. Similarly, officers in the Pittsburgh Police Department indicated that they were using less force and their response times were slower after entering a consent decree (Davis, Ortiz, Henderson, Miller, & Massie, 2002).

³ The ODMP is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by a police officer in Virginia. Comprised of a team of volunteers, its research staff receives information about fallen officers from user submissions, media accounts, and direct correspondence with fallen officers’ agencies. The staff carefully reviews each case to ensure it is valid and fits the inclusion criteria (see http://www.odmp.org/info/criteria-for-inclusion).

⁴ In North Charleston, officers made 26,000 traffic stops in the nine months following Scott’s death, compared to 54,000 during the same period the prior year—a decline of 51 percent (Knapp, 2016). In Chicago, the arrest rates for homicides and nonfatal shootings fell 48 and 69 percent, respectively, in the four months following the release of the video that captured McDonald’s death. Overall, arrest rates were down 31 percent compared to the same four-month period from the previous year (Arthur & Asher, 2016). Still, findings such as these do not definitively prove that de-policing is behind the observed lower arrest numbers. A recent paper by Desmond, Papachristos, and Kirk (2016) can provide insight here. The authors demonstrated that Milwaukee residents—particularly those from black neighborhoods—were less likely to report crime in the year following the highly publicized police beating of Frank Jude, an unarmed black man, in 2004. While this incident occurred a decade before Ferguson and the national police legitimacy crisis, the authors’ findings highlight how citizens’ behavior might change in the wake of a local controversial use-of-force incident.

⁵ We developed the survey specifically for the purposes of this study, using questions derived from the relevant literature.

⁶ An anonymous reviewer pointed out that Cronbach’s alpha for this index was somewhat low. Although .70 is typically considered the minimally acceptable level of reliability (see, e.g. Nunnally, 1967), Lyberg et al. (1997) suggest a threshold of .60.

⁷ Note that there was very little variation in the sample in terms of race (96% white) and gender (98% male).

⁸ We also ran a supplementary analysis whereby we dropped two potential outliers. The results remained substantively unchanged.

⁹ Because simply comparing the means of each scale can be deceptive, we include in Appendix 1 a table that provides a response breakdown for the individual survey items that comprised each scale. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Justin Nix

Justin Nix is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He received his PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of South Carolina in 2015. His research interests include procedural justice, police legitimacy, and police use of force.

Scott E. Wolfe

Scott E. Wolfe is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. His research focuses on organizational justice, procedural fairness, and police–citizen interactions.

Bradley A. Campbell

Bradley A. Campbell is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisville. He received his PhD in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in 2015. His research focuses on police investigations, decision-making, and responses to victims.