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Police Department (police + department)
Selected AbstractsINVESTIGATING RACIAL PROFILING BY THE MIAMI-DADE POLICE DEPARTMENT: A MULTIMETHOD APPROACHCRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2007GEOFFREY P. ALPERT Research Summary The perception and existence of biased policing or racial profiling is one of the most difficult issues facing contemporary American society. Citizens from minority communities have focused their concerns on the improper use of race by law enforcement officers. The current research uses a complex methodological approach to investigate claims that the Miami-Dade, Florida Police Department uses race improperly for the purposes of making traffic stops and conducting post-stop activities. The results are mixed in that the officer's aggregate actions do not show a pattern of discriminatory actions toward minority citizens when making a traffic stop, but results of post-stop activities do show some disparate treatment of minorities. Policy Implications Five specific policy recommendations are made to reduce the perception or reality of racial profiling by the police. First, police departments must have clear policies and directives explaining the proper use of race in decision making. Second, officers must be trained and educated in the overall impact of using race as a factor in deciding how to respond to a citizen. Third, the department must maintain a data-collection and analytic system to monitor the activities of their officers as it pertains to the race of the citizen. The fourth police recommendation involves the use of record checks in the field that can set in motion a process that results in the detention and arrest of citizens. Fifth, the completion of a record of interrogation for later intelligence has implications for the citizen. The use of this intelligence tool must depend on suspicion rather than on the race of the citizen. [source] PROBLEM-ORIENTED POLICING IN PRACTICE,CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2005GARY CORDNER Research Summary: Interviews and surveys were used to measure the extent of problem-oriented policing (POP) by individual police officers in the San Diego Police Department. Officers tended to engage in small-scale problem solving with little formal analysis or assessment. Responses generally included enforcement plus one or two more collaborative or nontraditional initiatives. Policy Implications: Despite 15 years of national promotion and a concerted effort at implementation within the San Diego Police Department, POP as practiced by ordinary police officers fell far short of the ideal model. It may be unreasonable to expect every police officer to continuously engage in full-fledged POP. [source] Intelligence-led policing at the Amsterdam-Amstelland Police Department: operationalized business intelligence with an enterprise ambitionINTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCE & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2009Stijn Viaene This article elaborates on the setup for intelligence-led policing in support of ensuring public safety as it presented itself in the Spring of 2007 at the Amsterdam-Amstelland Police Department in the Netherlands. The picture that is painted is the outcome of a qualitative research effort involving semi-structured interviews triangulated with other internal data sources. The main goal of the article is to establish how an organization can leverage its operationalized business intelligence ambition by connecting it into an ambition for better enterprise management. The case ends in showcasing two popular operational business intelligence tools instrumental to capacity management. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Disciplining Subjectivity and Space: Representation, Film and its Material EffectsANTIPODE, Issue 2 2004Jennifer England Although the distinction between representation and reality is increasingly blurred, I argue that representational discourses have material effects in everyday life. By moving "outside the text" I trace the messy terrain between visual discourse and everyday life in Downtown Eastside, Vancouver by examining two questions: (1) how do discursive productions of visual culture articulate, inscribe, and discipline space and subjectivity and (2) how do aboriginal women negotiate the material consequences of those representations? Using discourse and feminist analysis, I analyse how a documentary film, produced by the Vancouver Police Department, constructs spaces and subjectivities of deviance through techniques of realism and the moral gaze of the police officers. I argue that aboriginal women negotiate these deviant representations through their experiences of racism and sexism by police officers. Consequently, aboriginal women are rendered either hyper-visible or invisible by police officers, marked by their gender, race, and class. Combining an analysis of the documentary film and in-depth interviews with aboriginal women, I argue that critical geographers must consider the analytical spaces "outside of the text" to explore the material effects of visual representations. [source] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A POLICE GANG UNIT: AN EXAMINATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS,CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 1 2001CHARLES M. KATZ Although researchers have begun to document the programs and activities performed by police gang units, little research has examined why police gang units are created and why they have responded to local gang problems in the way they have over the past 10 years. Using a multimethodological research design, the present study examines the factors that shaped a Midwestern police department's response to its community's gang problem. The results from the present study lend support for the institutional perspective. The data suggest that the gang unit was created as a consequence of pressures placed on the police department from various powerful elements within the community and that, once created, the unit's response was largely driven by its need to achieve and maintain organizational legitimacy. [source] Racial differences in promotion candidate performance and reactions to selection procedures: a field study in a diverse top-management contextJOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Issue 3 2008John Bret Becton The present study examined African-American and White promotion candidates' reactions to and performance on selection procedures that were completed within a police department where African Americans occupied the majority of top-management positions. Reactions (perceived job relatedness and test-taking motivation) of 187 candidates competing for promotion to the rank of sergeant were assessed after completing a written job knowledge test and a situational interview. Analyses showed that both the African-American and White candidates judged the situational interview to be more job-related than the pencil-and-paper job knowledge test. In addition, African Americans perceived both selection measures to be more job-related and reported higher levels of test-taking motivation than White candidates even though African Americans performed more poorly than White candidates on the paper-and-pencil test. These results challenge the contention that lower test-taking motivation for African-American candidates is related to racial differences in performance on pencil- and-paper tests. Implications and directions for future research on reactions to selection procedures for promotion in racially diverse employment settings are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Suspect Police Officers Investigated by Former Police Officers: Good Idea, Bad Idea?LAW & POLICY, Issue 4 2001Sergio Herzog Up to 1992, all illegal use-of-force complaints against police officers in Israel were handled internally by the police department. In 1992, following public and political pressure, an external civilian board was established to handle such cases. In this framework, investigations of suspect police officers are conducted by former police officers. In this study, investigators' and suspects' personal and organizational characteristics were examined, as well as their attitudes to the civilian board and the manifestation of police violence. In general, the two groups were found to differ significantly on both levels. The employment of former police officers with high professional qualities seems to have some advantages in this investigative situation. [source] Generalising the Hit Rates Test for Racial Bias in Law Enforcement, With an Application to Vehicle Searches in Wichita,THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 515 2006Nicola Persico This article considers the use of outcomes-based tests for detecting racial bias in the context of police searches of motor vehicles. We characterise the police and motorist decision problems in a game theoretic framework, where police encounter motorists and decide whether to search them and motorists decide whether to carry contraband. Our modelling framework generalises that of Knowles et al. (2001). We apply the tests to data on police searches of motor vehicles gathered by the Wichita police department. The empirical findings are consistent with the notion that police in Wichita choose their search strategies to maximise successful searches. [source] INVESTIGATING RACIAL PROFILING BY THE MIAMI-DADE POLICE DEPARTMENT: A MULTIMETHOD APPROACHCRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2007GEOFFREY P. ALPERT Research Summary The perception and existence of biased policing or racial profiling is one of the most difficult issues facing contemporary American society. Citizens from minority communities have focused their concerns on the improper use of race by law enforcement officers. The current research uses a complex methodological approach to investigate claims that the Miami-Dade, Florida Police Department uses race improperly for the purposes of making traffic stops and conducting post-stop activities. The results are mixed in that the officer's aggregate actions do not show a pattern of discriminatory actions toward minority citizens when making a traffic stop, but results of post-stop activities do show some disparate treatment of minorities. Policy Implications Five specific policy recommendations are made to reduce the perception or reality of racial profiling by the police. First, police departments must have clear policies and directives explaining the proper use of race in decision making. Second, officers must be trained and educated in the overall impact of using race as a factor in deciding how to respond to a citizen. Third, the department must maintain a data-collection and analytic system to monitor the activities of their officers as it pertains to the race of the citizen. The fourth police recommendation involves the use of record checks in the field that can set in motion a process that results in the detention and arrest of citizens. Fifth, the completion of a record of interrogation for later intelligence has implications for the citizen. The use of this intelligence tool must depend on suspicion rather than on the race of the citizen. [source] Incident Command System as a Response Model Within Emergency Operation Centers during Hurricane RitaJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008Leslie D. Lutz This study examines the degree to which the use of the Incident Command System (ICS) influenced the performance of Texas emergency operations centers (EOCs) during Hurricane Rita. Staff in evacuation, transition, and host county EOCs completed a questionnaire that assessed demographic variables, EOC physical environment, ICS experience, ICS implementation, and team climate. The results indicated that the duties each ICS section performed varied substantially from one EOC to another. Moreover, ICS experience and ICS implementation lacked statistically significant correlations with team climate, even though EOCs' physical environments did. Finally, staff from emergency relevant agencies (e.g., public works and social services) seemed to have more problems with ICS than did staff from emergency mission agencies (e.g., fire and police departments). Thus, there needs to be further study of ICS application in emergencies other than structural and wildland fires, as well as the development of new ICS training materials for emergency relevant agencies to supplement the current ICS training materials for emergency mission agencies. [source] Learning Organizations in the Public Sector?PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2003A Study of Police Agencies Employing Information, Technology to Advance Knowledge In an attempt to reap the purported benefits that "knowledge workers" bring to organizations, many police departments have shifted to a community problem,oriented policing philosophy. Rather than focusing on enforcement and incarceration, this philosophy is based on the dissemination of information to promote a proactive, preventative approach to reduce crime and disorder. In keeping with much of the contemporary literature on the "learning organization" (sometimes called the "knowledge organization"), police departments hope to deter crime through the knowledge benefits that derive from information and its associated technologies. With goals to stimulate productivity, performance, and effectiveness, police departments across the country are employing information technology to turn police officers into problem solvers and to leverage their intellectual capital to preempt crime and neighborhood deterioration. Many public and private organizations are striving to change their operations toward this same concept of the knowledge worker. Information technology is often touted as a vehicle for capturing, tracking, sorting, and providing information to advance knowledge, thus leading to improvements in service,delivery efforts. Based on an extensive study of police departments that have attempted to implement a knowledge,worker paradigm (supported by information technology initiatives), this research explores the feasibility, effectiveness, and limitations of information and technology in promoting the learning organization in the public sector. [source] |