CRJ 1010 Lecture Transcript PDF

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all. Today we're going to conclude our discussion on contemporary issues in policing. Uh, again, revisiting trust and legitimacy and then moving on to what police actually do. Factors that influence their role and then the mental health and well-being of police officers. So this...

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all. Today we're going to conclude our discussion on contemporary issues in policing. Uh, again, revisiting trust and legitimacy and then moving on to what police actually do. Factors that influence their role and then the mental health and well-being of police officers. So this here is a a graph mapping, um, survey respondents responses based on confidence in police. And it differentiates between white and black adults. And it goes from, you know, 1993 um, to 2021. And some of the the years are averaged out, as you can see. So 93 to 99, the average 2000 to 2009, etc.. And what we can see pretty clearly is from 1993 to 2021, that white adults, um, consistently held more confidence in police than black adults, sometimes to the tune of twice as much confidence. Right. And that should, um, raise concerns for policing as an institution. But also, um, I would say politicians and the general public. Um, not only do isolated cases of police misconduct influence public perception, so too does the media, you know, aimed at sometimes further dividing communities and police. Um, to be clear, saying these cases are isolated. Is not the same thing. It's saying they are unimportant or that we should not be concerned with them. Um. They are extremely important and we should be extremely concerned with them. But the risk is believing that all or most police engage in these behaviors. And this is clearly not the case. You know, this has had an impact on people's perceptions of criminal justice related issues, as evidenced by perceptions of police use of force in Portland, Oregon. Right. And so when there's an overemphasis placed on people doing the wrong things. It's easy for some to hold that view that most in that group do the wrong things. Right. So just as we would say with, um, the general public, you know, the vast majority of people do not commit crime. Right. Some people don't hold that view. Some people think that because crime is rampant, um, most frequently in inner cities, that most people in those communities commit crime. But the research evidence is quite clear on this. That's not true. The vast majority of people, even in the most crime ridden neighborhoods, do not commit crime. And so the same applies to policing. If we're constantly bombarded with images of police officers doing something that they shouldn't do, it's not difficult for someone to have that perception that police in general engage in those behaviors. Interestingly, Despite a lot of media hype about abolishing the police, very few people actually support this idea. And this speaks to, um. The phenomenon that, uh, you know, trying to get at, we might come we might have a perception that a lot of people want to abolish the police based on media portrayals of something, whether it be, you know, a particular demonstration or a particular politician advocating for it. Um, but when we look at the data and again, this is coming from Gallup and this was taken between June 23rd and July 6th of 2020, we see that abolishing police departments, only about 15% of respondents, uh, strongly supported or somewhat supported that type of reform. Um, Interestingly, Asian Americans seemingly were the most likely at 27%. So sometimes I think, you know, the the fringes of the movement that are the loudest often make it seem like everyone in a reform movement might be for a abolishing the police. But that seemingly is not the case based on these data. But reports on, you know, individuals who express that sentiment get repeatedly played, were repeatedly exposed to them, thinking that that is a viable option that people are proposing more often than they actually are. And that becomes problematic again, because now police, individual police officers and police in his institution might feel like they're not supported by the public because of what they see and hear in news media. Um, but when the rubber hits the road and we see some actual survey data asking respondents about their support for abolishing the police, um, it ranks pretty low. You can see all of these other reform efforts, um, have much, much more support than the next closest one is reducing the budgets of police departments and shifting money to social programs. And that's 3 to 1 over abolishing the police. Right? I think it's stuff like this, you know, shifting money to social programs, maybe changing the language a little bit and that, and to say that shifting money from training budgets to train officers to deal with things that they might encounter in their daily um, Some jobs more effectively, such as how to deal with people going through or experiencing mental health crises, how to deal with individuals who, um, are experiencing an addiction crisis. You know, we have people in society that go to school for years to effectively, um, deal with individuals suffering from these types of, of crises. And it's unfair to think that police training, which usually occurs over, you know, a 6 to 12 month period, um, can provide them with all of the tools that they need to effectively address the problems that they're going to experience. So I want you to pay close attention to this video clip. Um, there's not audio in the first bit and then audio will kick in. It's about a minute and a half long. No. SPEAKER 1 Thank you. Thank you. UNKNOWN Yes. Yes. What was that? Was that charity? Yo yo yo. Hold up, hold up. SPEAKER 2 Not yet. Not yet. SPEAKER 0 Okay, I'm going to play that for you one more time. Pay close attention. Maybe I'll play it for you one more time. Okay. Clearly I won't. So what happened here? Well, it appears, uh, based on this officer's body camera footage, um, which he did not know. His name is Officer Pinheiro. Apparently did not know that the camera has a pre-event record feature that captures footage before active recording begins. So if you have an iPhone, I'm sure it's probably similar if you have an Android based phone, but I know for sure iPhone has it similar to the Live Photo feature, right. Um, meaning there's ambient, um, recording the cap that happens before the the act of recording. So when he activated his camera, the prior 30s was automatically included. And what that 30s showed that he didn't seemingly know was being recorded was him putting the evidence where he found it some 45 seconds later. So during discovery, uh, which we'll talk about later in the semester, but that's associated with, um, court cases where prosecution and defense are supposed to turn over the documents that they have and that they plan, uh, or might plan to present to, to the court, um, the defendant's defense team discovered this issue, right? They discovered that the officer seemingly planted the drugs that he said were belonging to the defendant. As a result, this case was dropped. Um, all 123 cases that Officer Pinheiro and the other two officers were involved in, um, were undergoing review. The last time I checked, the last I heard, 34 cases, uh, were dropped and Officer Pinheiro was suspended, but still employed by the Baltimore Police Department. There's some other things that trouble me in this video, and it's that, first and foremost that the other two officers seemingly had no problem with this. But not only did they have no problem with it, they seem to take some amusement with it, as when they started chuckling, when he identified that he had found something. And so the Baltimore police commissioner at that time, uh, Kevin Davis, said, you know, this is a serious allegation of police misconduct. There's nothing that deteriorates the trust of a community more than thinking for one second that uniformed police officers, that police officers in general would plant evidence of crimes on citizens. And so it's images like this that we sometimes hear about and maybe it might not be this serious. Sometimes it might be more serious that lead us to believe that the police engage in these types of behaviors very, very frequently now, regardless of how frequent. As the commissioner said, it is horrible for officers to engage in this type of behavior, not just because it jeopardizes the life and liberty of, uh, a defendant in court, right, who was wrongfully accused of a crime. But because of the deterioration of trust with the community. When communities see images like this or hear about instances like this right? It naturally erodes their trust in police. How could it not? Even if you understand that it's an isolated incident, you probably have a little bit less respect because police are not supposed to do this, right? They're procedural laws that are supposed to govern how they behave. And this falls outside of a procedural law into just basic common sense and decency. Right. And questions why individuals, um, who want to. Work in law enforcement would engage in behaviors that they themselves would be policing. Doesn't make sense. So now we're going to switch tracks and talk about kind of what police really do on, um any given day. Conventional wisdom tells us police or crime fighters. Uh, most of us learn this implicitly and or explicitly. So from a young age. We observe media representations of police, or we might have family members who tell us the police or the good guys, and they catch the bad guys. Um, we often have a very unrealistic perception regarding what police actually do. Um, you know, my my now nine year old son thinks that police are constantly fighting crime. Of course, there is more than a granule of truth to this perception, but this is merely one aspect of police officers jobs. So one way to determine what police Do, um, is to document or research, um, the actions that they engage in in a given day. And several studies have, uh, collected data speaking to this and concluded that police spend very little time dealing with crime related issues. So estimates range from about 10 to 30%. Okay, meaning that the amount of time police officers spend on crime related activities range from 10 to 30%. And this is likely going to be jurisdiction based. Right? So officers and Detroit are probably going to spend more time dealing with crime related activities than, say, officers in Saint Clair Shores or Troy, as an example. Um, so back in 1968, James Q Wilson, someone I mentioned previously is a very famous policing scholar. Um, had his students study eight different jurisdictions in the 1960s, and their research revealed that only 10% of calls for service dealt with crime related issues. Similarly, in the 1970s, Webster found that police in his sample spent 20% of their time dealing with crime, while the largest percentage of time was devoted to administrative tasks, which was 50%. A study of Ohio officers found that officers initiated an arrest on average one time a month, drew their weapon on average once a year, and virtually never discharged their weapon. A more recent study by Jack Greene and Carter, Clockers, reported. Police reported that police in Wilmington, Delaware, spent about 26% of their time dealing with crime related issues. And this is a graphic that is similar to one presented in the text from a previous version. Um, so this means that the overwhelming majority of an officer's time is spent on issues unrelated to crime. And if this is true, then why does the public largely think policing is all about crime fighting the good guys, catching the bad guys? I mean, we already touched on this a little bit. The misconception is largely, you know, due to the media portrayal and inaccurate image of policing that gets propagated. In reality, policing is very different from how it is depicted in the media. Particularly TV shows. And movies tend to glorify the job and make it seem like it's always full of action. Again, newspapers tend to present high profile cases in which there is a great deal of action and make it out to be the norm. But in reality, most police officers have very routine days in which they perform very basic tasks. Now, again, this is going to be jurisdiction specific. And because research suggests that it's not, um, crime fighting that they spend most of their time on, but basic tasks doesn't minimize the role of the job. So don't take this to mean that police are unimportant. In fact, I think that selling they sell themselves short when they only talk about, uh, crime fighting as, um, their role because they serve so many other important roles in society. So when carrying out the police mandate, police can either be reactive or proactive. Proactive policing occurs when individual officers or the agency initiate policing activities. For example, there's an area of town where drug related crimes are very frequent. Um, the police might set up a special task force to deal with the issue. Conversely, reactive policing occurs when police respond to citizens requests for service. And the police need to strike a delicate balance between community and departmental expectations with regard to proactive policing. Because this approach is more intrusive, we can think about police perhaps going door to door looking for contraband. That would be a proactive approach, but one that's likely going to make the community unhappy. Even if it were legal. It's an intrusive way of policing. Now, if the community identifies problems that they want police to proactively enforce, then there's not likely going to be an issue. The community comes together and says, hey, these things are happening and we would like you to proactively address them. Then the community is more likely going to accept the police action, rather than police just going door to door and looking for something to deal with. Um, but if the police just begin proactively enforcement, begin proactive enforcement, they might run into problems with community support because, again, they might be intruding on people's lives, which is a touchy issue. So you got Bitner, another famous policing scholar that I've mentioned before, once said police are charged with the duty to address something that ought not to be happening and about which someone had better do something. Now, when people don't know what to do about something, they tend to call the police. And for this reason, some cities have established, you know, 311 call services or other non-emergency call numbers for uh, services to reduce the volume of call for 901 and help prioritize police calls, according to, uh, seriousness. So these non-emergency numbers are designed for issues such as, you know, a neighbor's barking dog or loud music or illegal parking, stray animals, traffic control malfunctions, etc. some of these are technically sizable offenses, but they are not urgent matters for the most part. Right. Do you think that police are supposed to deal with matters such as these? Well, if not, then who should deal with these issues? Right. And that becomes kind of the underlying problem. Society is used to calling police to deal with something, as Bittner identified in the 70s. That should not be happening. That is happening. And you call the police. And I encourage everyone to to, um, do a ride along or go sit in a 911 call center in your local jurisdiction, and kind of to get a sense of what people, um, are calling the police for and the types of things that police are sometimes tasked with dealing. You know, if you lock your keys out of your car, why would you call the police? Well, because the police can do something about it. But that's not the most appropriate way to spend police resources. It's okay if they have time, but if they have more important things to deal with. Getting someone's keys, um, unlocked from their car is probably not not the most pressing. We need to be, um, cognizant of factors that shape the police role. So there are several sources of expectations that shape how and what police actually do. So we've already talked about one of these. And these are legal expectations. And they again provide a framework within which police are expected to carry out their job. They do not always necessarily. SPEAKER 3 Fall. SPEAKER 0 Follow the legal expectations, but these expectations are in place. The organization also has expectations for how police carry out their duties, and organizational expectations can be either formal or informal. Formal expectations of the policies and training protocols and regulations officers are expected to abide by, as well as direct orders from administrators. Conversely, informal expectations are derived from peers. Several police officers that I have worked with over time have told me that much of what they learn in the Academy is forgotten the second they hit the street, and the real learning occurs on the job through their peers. The community also has expectations for police. In some communities, police are expected to enforce certain laws more rigorously than others based on community demand. So in some communities, you know, kids hanging out at night is a problem enough for police to disband them and make them them go. Other communities that experience more serious problems, that might not be something that is on the police radar. Lastly, um, each officer has his or her own expectations regarding another major issue. Police departments are currently dealing with is officer well-being. We are now beginning to take the danger associated stress, possible mental health consequences, and officer well-being more seriously. As a society, we all experience stress in some ways, although it might affect us differently. Stressors are the life events that are triggers for experiencing stress. 2005 Lue divided police stressors into five categories, the first being police work itself. The second being the police organization. The third being the criminal justice system, the fourth being the public or community, and the fifth being personal life. Family situations. We can simplify these categorizations into stressors internal to policing and stressors external to policing, meaning work related stressors and stressors that fall outside of work in the personal or home realm of an officer's life. Internal stressors include both organizational and operational ones, so this would be stressors resulting from officers work responsibilities. Organizational stress stressors, many of which occur in similar professions, include shift work, administrative changes, and rigid organizational structure. On the other hand, operational stressors include acute occupational occurrences and police work, such as exposure to a shooting, hostage situation or fatality, or any other highly traumatic event an officer might experience. Suffice to say, police, like all of us, deal with the constellation of stressors. What makes policing different is the inherent danger that comes with the job. If I had to go to work every day wondering if someone was going to try to harm me, I would probably quit. Or if I had to see and hear some of the horror and tragedy that police often deal with, I would probably quit. So the real question is how do danger and stress manifest to affect officers on the job? So this chart is showing the line of duty deaths for the year 2022. And I compiled, um, the data from two different sources because, um, all of the data that I'm interested in showing you is not housed in one, um, one data repository. So one of the pages that I use to collect the data is Officer Down Memorial page. And this was created in 1996 by a James Madison University freshman whose name was Chris Cosgrove, to honor fallen heroes who had paid the ultimate price. Um, it's a very sad page and documents the sobering reality that police officers face, um, every time they leave the station. Still, one key category of death is omitted in these data, and that is officer suicide. And this is where blue help comes in to shine a light on this tragic outcome. Blue health was founded in 2015 and began publishing suicide figures in 2017. In 2019, they started tracking other first responders as well as correctional Um officers. And so. Many people assume, um, that the number one killer of police officers, um, in the line of duty are felonious related actions, meaning getting shot or getting, um, run over or stabbed or some other horrible, horrible cause of death. Um, but in reality, in 2022, um, the number one cause of death for police officers was suicide, followed by Covid and then gunfire, auto crash, so on and so forth. So one of the things that I've been doing over the last several years is, is tracking this. And I think the last five years suicide has been the number one killer outside of, I think, 21, uh, 2020 and 2021 when it was Covid. Um, but notwithstanding Covid, suicide killed more people. Uh, was it killed more officers than any other line of duty? Death? Cause so of the 438 law enforcement deaths, um, in 2022, only 235 were captured by the officer down memorial page. Remember I said that that, uh, page does not track officer suicide. And so I had to compile these, um, these two data sources to, to to get a better understanding of, of the situation. And so when we look at suicide as a standalone category of death and compare it to deaths caused by felonious and non felonious reasons. We see that, um, suicide accounts for the largest proportion of death. Uh, at least it did in 2022 um, of officers, meaning more officers committed suicide than were killed by gunfire or stabbed. Uh, were killed by vehicle assault, killed in a vehicle pursuit, killed by assault, or died of 911 illnesses, even non felonious. Uh, reasons. These are oftentimes, um, accident related. Um, suicide was the number one killer. When we aggregate all of those different reasons, uh, non felonious Lee. And so this begs the question of. Are we as a society doing enough to help protect officers, right? Um, if we put this in context, you know, and thinking about the number of, uh, police citizen encounters that occur on an annual basis, if you recall, I said, you know, roughly 60 million. Um, if we look at the number of um, officers killed in 2022, based on those encounters, it's less than one 1%. That percentage, uh, is smaller if we break it down by category. And I think the point that I'm trying to make here is that we know that the likelihood of a police officer being killed in the line of duty is quite small. Doesn't mean it's unimportant. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned with it, doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to make policing safer? But what I'm hoping comes across here is we have data now that tell us that officers are more likely to take their own life than they are to die at the hands of someone else in the line of duty. And what are we doing to deal with that? Right? It seems an equally real problem in policing centers on mental health issues. Right. And the trauma that police are exposed to. And if we're not providing them with meaningful outlets and meaningful programs to help them deal with these issues. Right, are we failing them as a society? And how do we change the narrative about policing and what it involves and what it means to be a good, strong police officer. As you heard in the podcast, things are starting to change, right? But they're changing at a glacial speed and not changing equally across all policing contexts. And so if we're not providing officers with kind of mental health resiliency training, right. I fear that we're going to continually see this trend of police officers, um, taking their own lives, which is obviously very traumatic, not just for, um, them, but their loved ones, the agency, their peers, etc.. So that concludes our discussion on policing and contemporary issues. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop them in the discussion board on canvas or email me. Have a good week!