Negative publicity, citizen cooperation, and officers’ perceptions of danger in the occupational environment

ABSTRACT

Policing as a dangerous occupation has been well documented. While prior inquiries have focused on the dangers resulting from injurious accidents or citizen-based violence, additional aspects of the external work environment have the potential to invoke concern among police. Utilizing survey data from a large municipal police department in the Southern region of the United States, the current study examines previously excluded sources of danger among police with street-level assignments – negative publicity and citizen cooperation. Our multivariate results reveal positive associations between negative publicity and perceptions of external danger, while a negative relationship was found for citizen cooperation. The implications for police practice and research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Police
• danger
• police culture
• negative publicity
• occupational attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The low alpha for the law-enforcement scale is typical of similar scales used in previous research (e.g., Gau et al., 2013; Paoline & Gau, 2018). It could be that more than three items are needed to ensure content validity for this role orientation; Cochran and Bromley’s (2003) 13-item scale had an alpha of .76. The present scale, though, is an improvement over single-item measures seen in much previous work (e.g., Engel & Worden, 2003; Ingram et al., 2013; Paoline, 2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacinta M. Gau

Jacinta M. Gau is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. Her work includes police-community relations, race, police culture, policy, and use of force.

Krystle L. Roman

Krystle L. Roman is a Criminal Justice doctoral student. Her research interests include domestic and intimate partner violence, police legitimacy, and police-community relations. Her work has appeared in multiple journals, and she serves as a graduate research associate in the Violence Against Women Cluster at the University of Central Florida.

Eugene A. Paoline

Eugene A. Paoline III is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include police culture, police use of force, and occupational attitudes of criminal justice practitioners. He is the author of Rethinking Police Culture (2001, LFB Scholarly Publishing) and Police Culture: Adapting to the Strains of the Job (2014, Carolina Academic Press).