Police Officers' Encounters with Disrespectful Citizens

In: Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship

Abstract

Utilizing survey data from officers in a mid-sized city police department in the United States and the London Metropolitan Police, Pizio seeks to understand the breadth of behaviors that officers find disrespectful, to discover how often officers perceive that they are experiencing disrespectful citizens, and to make cross-national comparisons. When assessing officer-based, occupation-based, and country-based characteristics, findings reveal few differences between officers in each country, supporting the notion that police in different countries are more alike than not. Additionally, education and experience were found to be positively related to disrespect in both countries, and in the U.K. unarmed officers anticipated disrespect more often than armed officers.