Police Mental Health & Community Policing

• Study notes based on weeks 9-13
• Focus on key concepts, arguments, applications, and methods for MC Test 2.

Police Officer Mental Health

• Officers experiencing mental health issues may be seen as "less than," leading to internalized stigma and avoidance of help-seeking.
• Policy improvements don’t always address the deeper cultural resistance to mental health openness within police organizations.
• Spoiled Identity: An individual's identity that is discredited due to stigma.
• Stigma Management: The ways officers hide or downplay mental illness.
• Organizational Culture: Often hierarchical, masculine, and risk-averse, which discourages vulnerability.
• Hypermasculinity: Emotional control within police culture is equated to professional competence.

Community Policing, Broken Windows, and CPTED

• Community-Oriented Policing (COP) can improve satisfaction and legitimacy, but effectiveness varies depending on implementation.
• Many Broken Windows policies lack proper evaluation metrics and fail to consider contextual factors.
• Community-Oriented Policing (COP): Focuses on building trust, legitimacy, and collaboration between police and communities.
• Broken Windows Theory: Addresses minor disorder to prevent major crime.
• CPTED: Involves designing environments to reduce crime opportunities (e.g., improving lighting and visibility).
• Evidence-Based Policing: Acknowledges criticisms regarding the lack of rigorous evidence supporting Broken Windows policies.

Media & Communications

• Police departments manufacture public confidence by crafting media-friendly narratives.
• Twitter is used by police for both transparency and strategic public relations.
• Symbolic Policing: Policing as a performance to reassure the public.
• Mediatization: Media shapes how institutions act and are perceived.
• Policing the Image: Controlling narratives to gain legitimacy.
• Social Media Strategy: Involves balancing transparency with control in public engagement.

Risk, Technology, and Control

• Big data surveillance changes who gets monitored, how they're monitored, and what data is considered credible.
• Algorithmic systems should not be assumed to be neutral and objective.
• Surveillance Society: Data collection is a form of control.
• Predictive Policing: Algorithms are used to allocate police resources.
• Accountability: It’s difficult to hold algorithms to ethical standards.
• Technological Opacity: Officers and the public often do not understand how predictions are made.

Police Retirement

• Officers face emotional strain and a loss of purpose when they retire.
• Retirees reconstruct their identities through narratives of service, duty, and legacy.
• Organizational Exit: Focuses on understanding the challenges of leaving a total institution like the police force.
• Loss of Identity: Police retirement can be a psychological rupture.
• Narrative Strategies: Officers try to "make sense" of the transition through storytelling.

Test 2 Focus Areas

• Terms/Concepts: Stigma, spoiled identity, COP, CPTED, symbolic policing, predictive policing.
• Arguments: Author critiques and proposed solutions (e.g., Weisburd on Broken Windows, Brayne on data).
• Application: Understanding how concepts apply to real policing situations.
• Methods: Qualitative, ethnographic approaches (who used which method and why).