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Abstract
Within the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shooting was praise for the campus and community police departments based on their prior coordination and collaboration. After-action reports frequently credited the actions of the agencies with preventing an even greater loss of life thereby focusing attention on the presumed importance of close inter-agency relationships. This paper examines the level of agreement between officials representing campus public safety agencies and their neighboring local law enforcement departments on a range of issues related to campus critical incident preparedness. Data were collected from a national sample of both campus safety departments and a matched sample of adjacent law enforcement organizations. Results are based on agreement analysis of responses from 116 agency pairs. Overall findings suggest only modest agreement, at best, on issues related to campus safety including history of critical incidents, perceived risk of future incidents, mutual assistance, and preparedness activities, suggesting that agency officials may not share common understandings of important issues. In addition to reporting empirical findings, the research demonstrates the value of concordance measures as a means of examining agreement between law enforcement leaders and others.
Acknowledgements
This project was supported by Grant #04-DB-BX-0043, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice, through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Points of view or opinions contained within this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice, or the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
Notes
1. The generic term ‘campus public safety department’ is used throughout to refer to all forms of public safety provision on campus. This would include both sworn police services and non-sworn security forces. Where it is necessary to make a distinction between sworn and non-sworn departments more specific language is used.
2. Our interest was in gauging preparedness activities in the year since the Virginia Tech shooting. Another high-profile shooting at Northern Illinois University occurred approximately 2–3 months before the surveys were fielded. We cannot rule out the possibility that the Northern Illinois University incident influenced responses to survey questions.
3. Although surveys were mailed to a census of Illinois agencies, the language ‘sample’ is used for convenience and to recognize the fact that not all campuses responded to the survey.
4. The national and Illinois-only samples overlap. Of the 600 agencies randomly chosen from the IPEDS sampling frame, 33 were from Illinois. These same 33 agencies were also part of the Illinois sample.
5. Several corrections occurred due to survey responses from campus law enforcement officials (e.g., campus policed by county sheriff rather than municipal law enforcement agency).
6. One agency responded indicating that the referenced campus was not in the jurisdiction reducing the denominator to 554 agencies.
7. Illinois paired campuses were compared to non-Illinois paired campuses on all 42 outcome measures shown in through 6. Only three significant differences emerged (local law enforcement assists with campus events; campus police assist off-campus when students involved; and campus has emergency response plan). Similarly, all Illinois paired local law enforcement agencies were compared to non-Illinois paired law enforcement agencies on the 42 outcome measures. Five significant differences emerged (earthquake occurred; active shooter event occurred; campus police assist with traffic stops off campus, campus police assist with calls for service off campus; and campus police assist off-campus when students involved). In no case does the effect size (η2) exceed 0.10.
8. Observed agreement is computed by summing the diagonal (agreement) proportions. Expected proportions are computed for each diagonal cell by multiplying the associated marginal (row and column) total proportions. These are then summed to arrive at pe . For details, see Cohen (Citation1960).
9. Cohen (1968) provides an alternative formula based on disagreement rather than agreement. In the event that his formula is used, the weighting scheme is different; maximum weights (1) will fall in cells of greatest disagreement rather than perfect agreement.
10. All tables include 95% confidence intervals. Where marginal totals are imbalanced (e.g., in cases where most agencies report an event as not occurring or having a policy/practice in place or not), the confidence interval is considerably wider than in situations where marginal totals are more balanced.