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Importance: Law enforcement activity, in the form of outside agencies or hospital security forces, is increasingly common in American healthcare. Little is known about the potential effects of this prevalent, modifiable exposure on hospital staff and patient health. This narrative review characterizes existing evidence on the direct and indirect health effects of law enforcement activity in hospitals., Observations: Law enforcement activity in hospitals can affect health outcomes through four mechanisms: (1) physical health effects related to workplace violence, restraint use, excessive force, and weapon use; (2) mental health effects involving perceptions of safety and psychological distress; (3) social effects related to the patient-provider relationship, mistrust, and bias and discrimination; and (4) legal and ethical considerations affecting overall well-being., Conclusions and Relevance: Unchecked law enforcement activity in hospitals may risk patient physical and mental health, reduce patient trust, result in bias and discrimination, and contribute to legal and ethical rights violations. Importantly, law enforcement activity in hospitals may also contribute to staff perceptions of safety. To fill knowledge gaps on the measurable impact of law enforcement activity in the hospital on staff and patients, hospitals should collect and publicly share robust data on law enforcement activity in their facilities, create and adopt patient-centered policies to ensure safety and protect patient health and privacy, and implement evidence-based interventions that safely reduce law enforcement involvement with patients., (© 2022. W. Montague Cobb-NMA Health Institute.)

Background: The threat of a deadly pandemic, racial tension, recessionary economic circumstances, and educational disruption likely contributed to the heightened anxiety felt by many Americans in 2020. This study examines the differential anxiety experienced by Black, White, and Hispanic households with and without children during 2020., Method: Data from the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey detailing the frequency of anxiety among a nationally representative sample of adults from April 23 to December 21, 2020, was coupled with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records of COVID-19 diagnoses and state-level police killings. Multinomial logistic regression assessed the relative contribution of COVID-19 deaths, police violence, unemployment, fear of unemployment, change in educational delivery, and geographic location to anxiety among racial/ethnic cohorts with and without children., Results: Anxiety frequency increased over the sample for all groups. However, White anxiety was highly responsive to state-level COVID-19 fatalities, while Black anxiety was highly correlated with police violence. Households with children showed higher levels of anxiety during nontraditional educational delivery, whereas both households with and without children experienced high levels of fear regarding employment uncertainty and poverty., Conclusions: Experiences in 2020 impacted all groups differently, but each showed a high frequency of anxiety., (© 2021. W. Montague Cobb-NMA Health Institute.)

Copyright of Bridging Cultures is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2017, the Trump Administration restored local law enforcement agencies' access to military weapons and some other types of surplus military equipment (SME) that had been prohibited by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department background paper used to justify this decision cited two papers published by the American Economic Association. These papers used SME data collected with a 2014 Freedom of Information Act request and concluded that SME, supplied to local law enforcement by the federal government via the 1033 Program, reduces crime. Here we show that the findings of these studies are not credible due to problems with the data. Using more detailed audit data on 1033 SME, we show that the 2014 data are flawed and that the more recent data provide no evidence that 1033 SME reduces crime.

Since the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, activists have argued for connecting police violence with reproductive justice. We argue that systematic violence, including police violence, should be evaluated in relation to reproductive health outcomes of individual patients and communities. Beyond emphasizing the relationship between violence and health outcomes, both qualitative and epidemiologic data can be used by activists and caregivers to effectively care for individuals from socially marginalized communities.

Working dogs are an essential part of modern society, and police canines (K9s) in the United States are amongst the most recognizable of all working dogs. Given the dearth of published data on active police canines in the U.S. and the calls for police reform, an interdisciplinary effort is necessary to comprehensively understand how these dogs are best used for the benefit of society. This review paper relies on veterinary public health expertise to present a comprehensive overview of police canine use by municipal law enforcement in the United States, including known impacts and gaps in knowledge. The existing literature from animal-assisted interventions (AAI) provides evidence to ensure working dog well-being, while human-animal bond research contributes to officer safety and canine partnership. Lastly, law enforcement and public health agendas (LEPH) assure the team's successful efforts in built environments and local neighborhoods. These frameworks acknowledge the complexity of police dog use, spanning from punitive to public relations, which mirrors the role of law enforcement in U.S. society. This paper proposes the use of a One Health framework to ensure police canine contributions to society, including suggested approaches to partner municipal police with veterinary medicine and public health, and integrate One Health in promoting public safety for local communities.

Michele Reutty was director of the Free Public Library of Hasbrouck Heights for 17 years. Hasbrouck Heights is a mile-square "bedroom community" of New York City that is located in northern New Jersey. In this article, she narrates her experience--one that probably occurs with alarming regularity to professional librarians all over the United States: The police came knocking at her door--without proper documentation--and asking for information about a patron. When the police asked her for some patron information, she followed the letter of the law. But that did not keep her out of trouble. She was asked to sign papers saying she was guilty of many things, ranging from failure to contact the borough attorney first (he had contacted her and had given wrong advice) to purposely delaying the investigation. All of these papers ended with a paragraph that said she would not sue the municipality--ever. And if she did not sign, she was to be suspended for two weeks without pay. Rather than face this blot on her unblemished record, she resigned on October 2. She is now director of the Oakland (New Jersey) Public Library, a library positioned for greatness. For her, the best thing to happen from all of this heartache and trouble is that just about every library in New Jersey now has a policy that details exactly what to do if law enforcement officials come knocking at the door. (Contains 3 endnotes.)

This paper delves into examining the practical problems facing the police during the implementation of the arrest procedure within the realm of criminal justice administration. Employing a comparative analytical approach, the study juxtaposes the legal framework of the United States of America and the State of Kuwait, where the study traced the legal texts, judicial rulings, and regulations regarding the behavior of police officers in both systems. It has been shown through this study that some of these problems are due to legislative texts, others are related to practical practices, others are due to social problems, and some are related to the scientific (academic) aspect. Through a comprehensive exploration of these critical aspects, the paper contributes valuable insights to the ongoing discourse on the challenges within the arrest process and underscores the need to address unresolved issues to enhance the efficacy of criminal justice administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from social epidemiology literature on structural racism, and rooted in critical race theory and critical theory related to narrative power, this paper uses satire and humor as commentary on mainstream U.S. public health discourse related to the role of "race" (properly understood, racism) in shaping inequities observed via COVID-19. Taking the form of a "RACISM-20" fact sheet, this paper transposes structural racism and COVID-19. In doing so, it accentuates how individualist, ahistoric, and pathologizing "downstream" frames of health risks/solutions curtail productive dialogue and action to advance racial and health equity. In the spirit of "racial emancipatory humor", this work represents a potential pedagogical tool to discuss and critique dominant frames of racial(ized) risks, "vulnerability", and responsibility – both in the context of COVID-19 and within broader discourse of racial health inequities, including as related to racialized police violence. In this capacity, this "fact sheet" serves as an example health promotion product of critical resistance and counternarrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of White supremacy, ableism, and U.S. policing on both the history and current state of psychology and sheds light on ways that psychologists can acknowledge and divest from carceral White supremacist practices in mental healthcare. Because of how oppression and intersectionality function within a White supremacist society, not all Black lives have been equally valued by non-Black Americans. Similarly, White supremacy and ableism have had lasting impacts on the public perception of disabled people. Connecting the historical origins of the U.S. policing system to the current practices of the U.S. police system, this paper argues that the police have always been about controlling "disorder." Similarly, psychology and the larger mental health field have a troubled history of controlling Black, Brown, and disabled bodies. Recommendations for ways therapists can unlearn therapy practices stemming from White supremacy cultural practices (e.g., carceral therapeutic practices and biased mental health care) are provided along with action items for mental health practitioners to maintain a commitment to undoing the harm from these historic and systemic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policing in many parts of the world—the United States in particular—has embraced an archetypal model: a conception of the police based on the tenets of individuated archetypes, such as the heroic police "warrior" or "guardian." Such policing has in part motivated moves to (1) a reallocative model: reallocating societal resources such that the police are no longer needed in society (defunding and abolishing) because reform strategies cannot fix the way societal problems become manifest in (archetypal) policing; and (2) an algorithmic model: subsuming policing into technocratic judgements encoded in algorithms through strategies such as predictive policing (mitigating archetypal bias). This paper begins by considering the normative basis of the relationship between political community and policing. It then examines the justification of reallocative and algorithmic models in light of the relationship between political community and police. Given commitments to the depth and distribution of security—and proscriptions against dehumanizing strategies—the paper concludes that a nonideal-theory priority rule promoting respect for personhood (manifest in community and dignity-promoting policing strategies) is a necessary condition for the justification of the above models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper focuses on the creation of the overly criminalistic Latin@ stereotype in the United States as a response to growing numbers of immigrants threatening white hegemony. As a mechanism of social control, Latin@s have faced inequitable treatment within the judicial and school systems of the United States. This paper examines criminality literature and its focus on the white/black binary before a legal system evolution that controls Latin@s. Social, legal, and racial control of Latin@s has occurred via negative public sentiment, inequitable juror practices, biased judicial sentencing and leniency, over-policing, and the "War on Drugs." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government and consumer-information organizations can motivate automakers to address additional crash types through front crash prevention (FCP) testing programs. This study examined the current state of crashes potentially relevant to current and future FCP systems to provide a roadmap for the next crash types that vehicle testing programs in the United States should evaluate. Crash records from 2016 to 2020 were extracted from the Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Crashes were restricted to ones involving no more than two vehicles where the striking or path-intruding vehicle was a passenger vehicle and a vehicle defect was not coded. Percentages of police-reported crashes, nonfatal-injury crashes, and fatal crashes were computed for different crash types and circumstances. Rear-end and pedestrian crashes evaluated in existing FCP testing programs accounted for 27% of all police-reported crashes, 19% of nonfatal-injury crashes, and 18% of fatal crashes. The remaining crash types relevant to FCP accounted for 25% of police-reported crashes, 31% of nonfatal-injury crashes, and 23% of fatal crashes. A turning passenger vehicle crossing the path of an oncoming vehicle accounted for the largest proportion of the remaining police-reported (8%) and nonfatal-injury crashes (13%). Head-on crashes accounted for the largest proportion of remaining fatal crashes (9%). Most FCP-relevant police-reported crashes occurred on roads with a posted speed limit between 30 and 50 mph. Medium/heavy trucks were the crash partner in a disproportionate number of fatal head-on and rear-end crashes and motorcycles in a disproportionate number of fatal rear-end and turning crossing-path crashes. Fatal bicyclist and pedestrian crashes were overrepresented at night. The findings from this study indicate that testing organizations should evaluate FCP performance at higher speeds; with non-passenger vehicles and vulnerable road users; during the night; and in more complex head-on and turning crash scenarios to reduce crashes of all severities. Some of these conditions are currently assessed by other testing organizations and can be readily adopted by U.S. programs or possibly addressed with new approaches like virtual testing., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Undocumented monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants are one of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups to experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in the United States. This paper explores the barriers that prevent IPV disclosure in healthcare settings. Qualitative interviews (n = 14) were conducted with previously undocumented Spanish-speaking legal clients of a community domestic violence agency. The major barriers expressed by the interviewees regarding IPV screening and disclosure include limited opportunities for IPV screening, misinformation about legal rights from abusers, fear of deportation and separation from children, and lack of knowledge about resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence points to a persistent Black-White racial gap in police-caused homicides. Some scholarship treats the gap as denoting criminal justice exposure either in terms of involvement in crime or living in a high-crime context. By contrast, health scholarship typically points to the importance of racism including the attitudes, institutional practices, and overall structures that operate to privilege one group over another. Still, given the demographics of US society, the Black-White racial contrast overlooks the 25% of Americans who are neither Black nor White: Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians. The question of how the groups should be organized vis-a-vis the current Black-White model and theories arises. An answer is not straightforward. There is a rank-ordering to the groups' mortality rates as well as an exponential increase in the number of possible comparisons. In this paper we systematically review the literature on race and police-caused homicide with a particular focus on studies that attempt to move beyond the Black-White model. We find that studies on race and police-caused homicide either make no comparison between the groups, or, alternatively, use a White-non-White, a Black-non-Black, and/or a Black-Native American-Latino vs. White-Asian comparison. We use data on group-specific mortality rates to examine the strengths and limits of each of these practices. The limits are the selection of counterfactual gaps, the selection of smaller gaps, and/or the omission of larger gaps. To address these limits, we propose that a Black-Native American vs. Latino-White-Asian model best captures the higher and lower mortality rates in police-caused homicide data., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

A call for papers on the enhancement of law enforcement officers safety in U.S. is presented.

The overly aggressive use of force by police on African Americans illustrates a fundamental dissonance within the American polity. The ideal of justice and liberty juxtaposed with the reality of suffering and death at the hands of frontline law enforcement. This paper considers the relationship between administrative rules, policing, and racial disparities in the application of the use of force in the United States through the lens of social equity. The article details the racialized nature of use of force and suggests a possible way forward for administrators to address the unequal application of force by police in their encounters with African Americans. Specifically, the creation of processes that limit discretion related to the use of force, the establishment of uniform licensing standards, and the implementation of a database that tracks all incidents when force is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the scale and composition of emergency demand for police services in Detroit, United States. The contribution is made in replication and extension of analyses reported elsewhere in the United States. Findings indicate that police spend a considerable proportion of time performing a social service function. Just 51% of the total deployed time responding to 911 calls is consumed by crime incidents. The remainder is spent on quality of life (16%), traffic (15%), health (7%), community (5%), and proactive (4%) duties. A small number of incidents consume a disproportionately large amount of police officer time. Emergency demand is concentrated in time and space, and can differ between types of demand. The findings further highlight the potential implications of radically reforming police forces in the United States. The data and code used here are openly available for reproduction, reuse, and scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One in four women report experiencing intimate partner violence. Yet, nearly 45% of Black women report experiencing this same crime. In addition, while Black women compose 14% of the U.S. population, they represent 31% of domestic violence fatalities and are three times more likely than White women to be killed by an intimate partner. This points to the continued need to better understand how the Black community perceives domestic violence and how their perception influences their help-seeking strategies. This paper reports on a project examining how Black communities perceive domestic violence, high-risk domestic violence, and how these perceptions impact their help-seeking strategies. The study was conducted between April 2020 and October 2020 with 128 participants that participated in focus groups in six geographically diverse U.S. cities including rural, urban, and suburban communities. The findings reaffirmed and presented new information about the perceptions of domestic violence, the impact of inadequate and negative systems' responses, the lack of cultural responsiveness and poor police interactions, and the calculated decision-making that survivors in the Black community use to determine who to tell, how to tell, and where to go in use of adapted help-seeking strategies. Implications are provided as to how to address these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines families' perceptions of deaths after police contact of persons with mental illnesses (PMIs) in the United States. It uses qualitative semi-structured interviews with the bereaved family members of citizens who died after police contact in the US in the period 1999–2015. The paper considers the factors that led to their death, and how families perceive police actions led to the death of their loved one. The paper uses three key tenets of policing identified by Bittner [1975. The functions of the police in modern society: a review of background factors, current practices and possible role models. New York, NY: Aronson] as a framework in aiming to understand how police interactions with PMIs can lead to deaths. It discusses how police have become a de facto response to a healthcare issue and how the use of force appears to be linked with these interactions. Interventions such as enhanced training and the implementation of Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) are assessed in terms of families' perceptions of their capacity to improve the outcomes of police interactions with PMIs. The paper concludes that the policing of PMIs in the US is problematic, and can result in the deaths of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that racial composition shocks during the Great Migration (1940–1970) reduced the gains from growing up in the northern United States for Black families and can explain 27 percent of the region's racial upward mobility gap today. I identify northern Black share increases by interacting pre-1940 Black migrants' location choices with predicted southern county out-migration. Locational changes, not negative selection of families, explain lower upward mobility, with persistent segregation and increased crime and policing as plausible mechanisms. The case of the Great Migration provides a more nuanced view of moving to opportunity when destination reactions are taken into account. (JEL H75, H76, J15, J62, K42, N32, R23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author discusses the challenges and the roles and responsibilities of law enforcement officers in the U.S.

Scant research exists on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among law enforcement officers, hindering health messaging development for officers and, by extension, the communities they serve. This paper's goal was to address this gap by providing the necessary data to better under hesitancy to guide training and policy interventions for officers. The objective was to conduct the first nationally representative survey of officers on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and its correlates. We collected data from February 2021 to March 2022 on officer COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and examined their responses in terms of sociodemographic factors, health status, and job characteristics. We found that 40% of officers were COVID-19 vaccine hesitant. We found that officers with higher education, older officers, officers with more law enforcement experience, officers who received recent health checkups, and commanders (compared to line officers) were less likely to be COVID-19 vaccine hesitant. Critically, officers working in law enforcement agencies that provided masks for COVID-19 protection were less likely to be COVID-19 vaccine hesitant (compared to agencies not providing masks). Ongoing research is needed to understand how evolving attitudes and barriers toward vaccination change over time for officers and to test messaging to better align officers with health guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following research used a paper and pencil survey to assess programming for mental health and wellness in 7742 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. A total of 465 respondents provided data to two open-ended questions to share several types of programs and services that would be beneficial for agencies to support officers who experience job challenges or stress. The qualitative data was analyzed via constant-comparison method by two independent coders who engaged in several techniques to aid in trustworthiness. The resulting themes included officer wellness initiatives, counseling, and the role of the overall agency culture in order to provide access to support and for reducing the stigma for police seeking services for mental health. Implications include the need for program and policy changes within law enforcement agencies., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Study Objectives Fear of sleep contributes to insomnia in some individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but remains uncharacterized in first responders, a population with high rates of insomnia and PTSD. We evaluated the clinical relevance of fear of sleep in first responders by (1) examining its relationship with trauma types and clinical symptoms and (2) assessing differences in fear of sleep severity between those reporting provisional PTSD, insomnia, or both. Methods A cross-sectional study of 242 first responders across the United States (59.2% male, 86.4% white, 56.2% law enforcement officers, 98.7% active duty, and M years of service = 17). Participants completed the Fear of Sleep Inventory-Short Form and measures of trauma history, psychopathology (e.g. PTSD), and sleep disturbances (insomnia and trauma-related nightmares). Results Fear of sleep was associated with trauma types characterized by interpersonal violence and victimization, as well as symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, stress, alcohol use problems, insomnia, and trauma-related nightmares. Fear of sleep was most pronounced among first responders reporting provisional PTSD comorbid with insomnia compared to those with PTSD or insomnia only. Post hoc analyses revealed PTSD hyperarousal symptoms and trauma-related nightmares were independently associated with fear of sleep, even after adjusting for the remaining PTSD clusters, insomnia, sex, and years of service. Conclusions Fear of sleep is a clinically relevant construct in first responders that is associated with a broad range of psychopathology symptoms and is most severe among those with cooccurring PTSD and insomnia. Fear of sleep may merit targeted treatment in first responders. This paper is part of the Sleep and Circadian Health in the Justice System Collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Both anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that even well-intentioned eyewitnesses can make inaccurate identifications resulting in erroneous prosecutions and wrongful convictions. The risk of erroneous identification increases when witnesses are asked to identify people belonging to other races. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the policies which enhance the likelihood of obtaining accurate identifications from eyewitnesses. Legal implications especially relevant to police administrators in the USA including constitutional considerations and risks of civil liability are integrated with the empirical record and used to make policy recommendations likely to decrease legal and public relations entanglements for police. Design/methodology/approach – This paper integrates an empirical literature review with legal research and analysis in order to advocate for prudent policy reforms. Findings – Both the empirical record and current US law indicate that police administrators would be well-advised to require serial, double-blind identification procedures where witnesses are routinely warned about the perpetrator’s potential absence and required to give immediate certainty statements. Officers should be prohibited from using the same suspect with the same witness more than once and should be provided with training on the inherent dangers of inaccuracy associated with cross-racial identifications. Originality/value – While a significant amount of material concerning eyewitness identification exists, most of the existing work does not integrate legal realities, especially those concerning civil liability, within the framework of the eyewitness identification literature. Nor does past work contextualize the need for reform with the emerging racially charged atmosphere in which US police must currently work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional searches ofpersons, houses, papers, or ejfects usually begin with an identified suspect or person of interest. But today police are increasingly using technology to engage in what might be called suspectless searches-searches that try to identify a perpetrator-using techniques like geofencing, TiVo droning, DNA matching, automated license plate readers, and facial recognition technology. The Fourth Amendment should govern use ofsuch techniques. But application ofits reasonableness requirement to suspectless searches should not always require a warrant or probable cause, given the minimal intrusion often associated with them. Instead, the focus in these types of cases should be how to circumscribe the scope of the search consistent with the Fourth Amendment's particularity mandate and ensure that normal Fourth Amendment constraints are followed when police act on the information they obtainfrom the suspectless search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the societal impact of a rising dementia population and examines the legal and ethical implications posed by voluntary registries as a community-oriented solution to improve interactions between law enforcement and individuals with dementia. It provides a survey of active voluntary registries across the United States, with a focus on Arizona, which has the highest projected growth for individuals living with dementia in the country.

An area of psychology-law research and policy that requires increased attention is the use of force during encounters with someone in mental health crisis. Cases in which law enforcement officer (LEO) intervention during a mental health crisis leads to injury or death of the person in crisis underscore the need to understand what behaviors and circumstances are relevant in excessive force litigation, what concepts may benefit from empirical research, and what facets of policies and precedent may require modification. In particular, the current national and international attention to the United States' external mechanisms of control over police conduct (i.e., criminal and civil proceedings against officers) suggests that excessive force jurisprudence is ripe for examination of its utility and fairness in shaping how police should interact with people with mental illness. Excessive force jurisprudence contains complex legal standards with which many psychology-law practitioners, researchers, and even policymakers are likely unfamiliar, however. The current paper explicates external methods of control over police conduct in the United States by reviewing excessive force jurisprudence and identifying points in need of research and policy attention., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Racial uprisings often include animalized commentary and symbolic use of nonhuman animal bodies. This paper highlights some of the nonhuman animal bodies observed during the #BlackLivesMatter protests within the United States in 2020 – specifically, the use of pig, horse, and dog bodies during street protests. Displays of pigs carry with them a racially rife past in the United States. This history harmed protesters during #BlackLivesMatter protests, being described as suffering "like animals," and the use of "pig" as an epithet for the police is explored. For the Black Cowboys who joined the protests on horseback, the physical presence of their horses amplified their message, symbolized a shift in their freedom, and positioned them eye-to-eye with the mounted police officers. The use of dog bodies within politics, how they amplified political messages as "sign-carrying vehicles," and the dangers for them and others in protests are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The majority of gun violence in the United States does not result in physical injury and therefore cannot be completely measured using hospital data. To measure the full scope of gun violence, the nation's crime reporting systems that collect police reports of crimes committed with a firearm are vital. However, crime data reporting conventions may underestimate gun violence in the U.S. This paper compares crime data sources to assess underestimation of gun violence. Findings: The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Summary Reporting System (SRS) and National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) measures of gun violence were compared in 2019 for states comprehensively reporting data to both systems. Gun violence is underestimated in the SRS compared to NIBRS. Within the sample, 18.8% more aggravated assaults with a firearm are recorded and 2.1% more robberies with a firearm are recorded in NIBRS. The proportion of assaults and robberies committed with a firearm measured in both sources did not differ. If the additional gun violence events recorded in the NIBRS sample are consistent with national crime reporting, the number of additional gun violence events per year captured using NIBRS totals approximately 65,071 additional events, or an additional 178 gun violence events per day. Of the additional gun violence events, approximately 31% are due to omitted crime categories, with the remaining variation driven mostly by aggravated assaults with a firearm. Conclusions: Police data are important data sources for estimating the full scope of gun violence. Comparisons between police data sources suggest that the proportion of crimes committed with a firearm is unchanged. Due to crime reporting conventions, however, the number of gun violence events may be substantially understated. Despite advantages in measuring gun violence, agency participation in NIBRS is alarmingly low and jeopardizes accurate and reliable national crime data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current socio-political circumstances in the United States (US), constituted by the increasing visibility of police shootings of Black people, present a compelling moment for analysing how news media report about law enforcement, culpability, and racism. This paper conducts a membership categorization analysis of recent news media reports of police shootings of Black people (May 2020-October 2020) and investigates how news media negotiate culpability of agents involved these shootings. Findings illustrate how news reports (1) use the repeated category formulation 'police shooting of a Black man' to imply police are culpable for engaging in racist shootings, (2) upgrade culpability of police officers through adding to racial categorization of victims in ways that foreground victims' moral character (e.g., 'unarmed Black man'), and (3) highlight racism as an explanation for shootings and culpability of police through using racial categorizations for police officers. Overall, news media reports use racial categories as a resource to construct racism as an explanation for police shootings and to construct police officers and policing institutions as culpable for these shootings. Thus, we highlight how race and racism are constitutive of, and inseparable from, culpability in news media reports., (© 2021 The British Psychological Society.)

Objectives: Spitting is an occupational hazard of police work with increased risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We sought to calculate the prevalence of spitting on police officers in use of force incidents, as well as the demographic and situational factors associated with spitting., Methods: Data on spitting were compiled from more than 10,000 use of force incidents occurring at 81 agencies in eight different states in the US., Results: Spitting occurred in 3.6% of cases. Female and younger subjects and those using drugs and/or alcohol are more likely to spit on officers. Spitting is more likely to occur in incidents of longer duration, when officers use less force relative to subject resistance, when subjects are assaultive or engage in self-harm, and when subjects are hobbled., Conclusions: Spitting on officers is common and may now constitute a significant work hazard. Implications for police practice are discussed., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest Joey Warner and Jared Strote declare no conflict of interest. Both Matthew Hickman and Robert Scales are financially connected to Police Strategies LLC (Mr. Scales is the owner). This company contracts with police agencies to help them code and analyze their use of force data. Although there is no benefit we are aware of to Dr. Hickman or Mr. Scales that could come from this paper, this connection to the company that provided the data could be seen as a conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

As emerging technologies continue to shape the landscape of criminal opportunities, disruptive and destructive threats from state and non-state actors in the cyber domain challenge the ability of nations to respond to and defend their citizens and infrastructures. Cyberspace has been recognized as a distinct national security policy matter since 1998, and national security experts have since monitored the global balance of cyber power and trends in cyberattack vectors. However, the discourse surrounding national security with regard to the cyber domain has not routinely and explicitly defined the role of urban and rural local law enforcement agencies or examined these institutions' ability to address a broad range of cyber threats. As such, this paper first examines an emerging technology, the Tor Network, that employs anonymizing software and facilitates attack-based, processual, and economic cyber threats. The law enforcement model in the U.S. is then explicated, detailing challenges related to fragmentation that hamper the ability of some local police departments to adequately respond to these threats. This paper concludes with proposals for strengthening the cyber capabilities and situational awareness of local police departments nationwide, emphasizing the need to consider the role of local police in future national cybersecurity strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active shooter events have driven police to change how they respond to events where an attacker is actively engaged in killing civilians. This paper examines these changes through the lenses of Normal Accident Theory (NAT) and Resilience Engineering (RE). Our results show a police officer is shot in one out of every six active shooter events in the United States. We then apply RE to better understand how these shootings occur so that police can improve their ability to anticipate, monitor, and respond during these attacks. Implications for police training are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most American police departments claim to practice community-oriented policing (COP). The stated goals are to build partnerships between the police and the community, maintain order and quality of life, and solve problems that contribute to crime and fear of crime. However, researchers have noted how most departments attempting to implement COP have fallen short in successfully adopting the recommended reforms. This paper argues that the institutional setting in which American public policing operates leads to this result. By contrast, the institutional features of private security make its operation more conducive to achieving the goals of COP. These institutional differences include whether economic calculation is possible, the domain that is policed, and which rules are enforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police departments across the United States have adopted body cameras as a technological solution to conflicts between police and communities. A wide variety of stakeholders, including governments, corporations, and the police themselves, have positioned body cameras as devices that increase transparency and enable accountability in controversial situations. However, the lofty assurances made before the adoption of body cameras are often renegotiated after the fact, undermining the realization of such values. To understand the gap between the promise and practice of body cameras, this paper turns from the device towards the infrastructure of police video systems, analyzing the containment of body camera videos within law enforcement's evidence regime, a system of knowledge management that determines which information is suitable for public consumption and what becomes, or remains, a state secret. The potential of police video infrastructures is consistently frustrated by the creation of infrastructural friction, or small acts of mischief that trouble the system, interrupt its functions, and prevent it from fully realizing its promises. Police and other stakeholders resistant to the goals of transparency and accountability control which videos are released, when they become public, and how they are accessible. These tactics produce a mischievous infrastructure, equipped to produce secrecy and opacity as easily as transparency and accountability. Ultimately, body cameras and other police video systems have evaded and even worked against transparency and accountability on an infrastructural level rather than enabling their pursuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]