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Abstract
Police supervisors play a critical role in preventing unreasonable use of force. Despite their importance, only a few studies have examined the influences of supervisors on their subordinates’ daily practices, especially on their uses of police force. To bridge this gap, the current study explored the relationship between supervisors’ education level and use of force training and subordinate officers’ use of force practices. Using police use of force reports from 2004 to 2007 in a single urban police department, the current study examined how supervisor education and training impact on police use-of-force and found both highly educated and trained supervisors moderate their subordinate officers’ uses of higher levels of force.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. There is strong evidence that police administrative policy is one of the best methods in controlling police behavior, including the handling of domestic violence, high-speed pursuits, and use of force (White, Citation2001). It is well known that the significant decreases of police deadly force incidents as well as officer injury and death since the 1970s resulted from the implementation of the restrictive deadly force policy created by the New York Police Department (Fyfe, Citation1979). Moreover, the nationwide adoption of use-of-force continuum after Graham v. Connor (Citation1989) also represents the importance of police administrative policy on reducing use of excessive force by the police (Terrill & Paoline, Citation2012). As Lee and Vaughn (Citation2010) noted, improper polices in law enforcement can be a source of municipal liabilities under Section 1983. Unfortunately, the current study could not include the participant department’s policies in the analysis; however, the department also implements a use-of-force continuum, which is used as the dependent variable in the study.
2. White (Citation2008) found recruits’ reading level was the most significant predictor of their academy performance while college credits were not significant. This finding, however, must be interpreted with caution. He used the average score of four exams taken throughout academy training as his dependent variable without controlling for any possible interaction effect between recruits’ reading level and college credits. Thus, it may be inappropriate to conclude that there is no college education effect on police performance.
3. Active supervisors are characterized by ‘directive decision-making, a strong sense of supervisory power, a relatively positive view of subordinates, and a less likely to encourage team building, coaching or mentoring’ (Engel, Citation2003, p. 6). They perform ‘the dual functions of street officer and supervisor’ (Engel, Citation2003, p. 6).
4. The current study defined continuation training as a training course that would be required to be taken periodically, or a training course with different levels such as a basic, intermediate, and advanced.
5. Arrests are not automatically included as use of force although the vast majority of all use of force incidents (approximately 74%) does result in an arrest.
6. The unit of analysis in the current study was a use-of-force report. There were 582 officers who were involved in a total of 2938 use-of-force encounters for the study period, 2004–2007. The average use-of-force encounters in which an officer was involved for four years were 5 (1.26 reports per year). Ninety percent of the officers were involved less than 10 cases (2.5 cases per year), and 4% of the officers were involved more than 5 cases per year.
7. Soft empty hand control tactics include joint locks, pressure points, and escort hold. Hard empty hand control techniques refer to hand and leg strikes. The last category, any weapons, includes electronic shocking devices, impact weapons, impact/chemical munitions, diversionary devices, and firearms.
8. We were unsure why there was a big gap in the completion of the intermediate use-of-force training between supervisors and subordinate officers; we asked the agency, but they were also not sure or were not aware of it. The training was not mandated by either the state of Texas or the agency during the study period. What we could guess was that supervisors might recommend their subordinate officers to complete an intermediate use-of-force training, but themselves to do the same.
9. Non-White category includes Black, Hispanic, and other ethnic groups. Considering the city’s racial composition, it is inappropriate to name them as a minority group.
10. Considering most reports (95.0%) were submitted by male officers, the current study included only citizens’ gender in the analysis.
11. This study uses individual officers’ and supervisors’ accumulated training hours, including police academy training as a cadet. The participant police department requires its cadets to complete approximately 1080 h compared to the state’s minimum 618 h.
12. The test of parallel lines determines the level of measurement mostly when there are three to five categories/levels in the dependent variable to see if the parameters are the same across all response categories. If the null hypothesis is retained, the parallel line assumption holds. Practically, the test directs researchers with respect to choosing an ordinal regression model or a multinomial logit model. In the current study, the test of parallel lines rejects the null hypothesis; therefore, a multinomial logit model was employed.
13. There were no violations of logistic regression assumptions, including multicollinearity.
14. The odds-ratio smaller than 1 was inversed for better interpretation, and the italicized word, ‘odds ratio,’ indicated the inversed value in the context for convenience. For example, if an odd-ratio equals to .415, it is inversed and indicated as odds ratio = 2.409.