Texas sheriffs’ perceptions on firearm regulations and mass shootings

2021 ◽  
pp. 146135572110046
Author(s):  
Michele Bisaccia Meitl ◽  
Ashley Wellman ◽  
Patrick Kinkaid
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Discrete Populations ◽  
Limit Access

Criminal justice research often focuses exclusively on municipal police departments. Sheriffs’ departments are largely ignored in this research despite this population’s reach and role. There are nearly 3,000 sheriffs’ offices around the United States and they often serve as the only law enforcement body in rural areas. This study sought to address the scarcity of this research and focused on Texas sheriffs’ views regarding firearm regulations and the causes of mass shootings. An 18-question instrument created in consult with the Texas Narcotic Officers Association was sent to each sheriff in the 254 counties of Texas to assess their perceptions regarding solutions to mass shootings, disqualification criteria for gun ownership, and civilian access to certain types of firearms and ammunition. Responding sheriffs, as a whole, were reluctant to limit access to guns and ammunition as a general matter, but strongly agreed that certain discrete populations should have limited or no access to firearms. Policy implications are discussed.

When Law Enforcement Pays: Costs and Benefits for Elected Versus Appointed Administrators Engaged in Asset Forfeiture

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siân Mughan ◽  
Danyao Li ◽  
Sean Nicholson-Crotty
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
State Level ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
Asset Forfeiture ◽  
Appointed Administrators ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

The billions of dollars in assets seized by law enforcement each year represent a crucial source of revenue for these organizations, but also raise important constitutional questions and can create significant tensions within the jurisdictions they administer. Research on asset forfeiture to date has focused heavily on municipal police, largely neglecting forfeiture activities by sheriffs. Thus, it has missed an important opportunity to build theory about the differences between appointed and elected administrators and neglected an important source of institutional variation that may help to explain this particular administrative activity. To develop expectations about the relative levels of asset forfeiture and the response to intergovernmental incentives related to forfeiture, we draw on and extend scholarship comparing the behavior of elected versus appointed administrators in other settings. We test those expectations in analyses of more than 1,200 sheriff’s offices and over 2,200 municipal police departments between 1993 and 2007. Results suggest that sheriffs receive less forfeiture revenue than municipal police and are less responsive to state-level policies that change the financial rewards of asset forfeiture for agencies. These results hold whether we examine forfeitures made through the federal Equitable Sharing Program, where civil and criminal forfeiture cases can be distinguished, or jurisdictional level data on forfeiture, where civil and criminal forfeitures are combined. We conclude with a discussion of implications for both the research on asset forfeiture and on elected versus appointed public administrators more generally.

Biggest Gang in Town

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-66
Author(s):  
Darren A. Raspa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Urban Policing ◽  
Experimental Process ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Standing Army ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

The police are arguably the most visible and contested apparatus of legal authority and urban power in American history. The navy blue uniform, badge, and utility belt of armaments of varying lethal potential have simultaneously been the symbols of justice, order, and security, while also representing the trappings of a virtual standing army of punitive state coercion, eliciting equal amounts of fear and admiration among the most vulnerable members of society. The traditional law enforcement historiography dictates that urban policing in its present form saw its origins in London in the first half of the nineteenth century. I contend, however, that a diverse array of social classes and communities in the American city from the mid-nineteenth century onward formed and continuously reformed the municipal police departments into their current form. This process can best be observed in the experimental process of law enforcement in San Francisco, where a diversity of political ordering and community visions competed for dominance in policing methods and ideology. The sudden convergence of a multitude of classes and ethnicities on the small peninsula of San Francisco from the late 1840s onward shaped the institution of urban policing in ways that would have national ramifications.

Administrative Determinants of Civil Liability Lawsuits Against Municipal Police Departments: An Exploratory Analysis

1998 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Worrall
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Civil Liability ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Recruitment Method ◽  
Civilian Review ◽  
Community Oriented Policing ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Management

Most contributions to the police civil liability literature have described trends in the incidence of suits, the outcomes of actual cases, or the impact litigation has on police departments. This article outlines a predictive model of administrative determinants of civil litigation against police. Specifically, it asks: Do police administrators influence trends in litigation? Data drawn from the 1993 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and from a 1996 survey of 248 police departments suggest that interest in minority recruitment, method of civilian review, and commitment to community-oriented policing affect the incidence of suits. Potential problems with research in this area are discussed.

Assessing the Utility of Body-Worn Cameras for Collegiate Police Agencies

2021 ◽  
pp. 109861112110375
Author(s):  
Janne E. Gaub
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Police Executives ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Nearly all scholarship on body-worn cameras (BWCs) has focused on municipal police departments, as they comprise a majority of sworn agencies. Given the unique environment of collegiate law enforcement agencies, however, it is possible that their paths to BWCs—and the benefits and challenges they experience—vary from that of more traditional agencies. Using a survey of 126 collegiate police departments and in-depth interviews with 15 collegiate police executives, this study describes their goals, challenges, and benefits related to BWCs. Importantly, it also describes the decision-making of agencies that chose not to implement BWCs, giving voice to an understudied population and providing guidance to special agencies in making the decision to adopt BWCs. The most notable benefits and challenges interrelate with their placement as part of institutions of higher education, such as the impact of collegiate privacy concerns (e.g., FERPA) and the utility of BWC footage in both law enforcement and educational processes.

scholarly journals The Effect of Court-Ordered Hiring Quotas on the Composition and Quality of Police

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin McCrary
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Work Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
White Test ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Newly Hired

Arguably the most aggressive affirmative action program ever implemented in the United States was a series of court-ordered racial hiring quotas imposed on municipal police departments. My best estimate of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action on work-force composition is a 14-percentage-point gain in the fraction African American among newly hired officers. Evidence on police performance is mixed. Despite substantial black-white test score differences on police department entrance examinations, city crime rates appear unaffected by litigation. However, litigation lowers slightly both arrests per crime and the fraction black among serious arrestees. (JEL H76, J15, J78, K31)

Police self-legitimacy and democratic orientations: Assessing shared values

2021 ◽  
pp. 146135572110326
Author(s):  
David R White ◽  
Michael J Kyle ◽  
Joseph A Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Organizational Fit ◽  
Democratic Policing ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Using a sample of frontline police officers from several mid-sized municipal police departments in the United States, this study explores the relationships between frontline police officers’ self-legitimacy, organizational fit, moral alignment with policed communities, and attitudes toward democratic policing principles. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, the analysis frames democratic policing using a formative latent construct to test several hypotheses. The results support a direct positive relationship between self-legitimacy and attitudes toward democratic policing, and suggest the relationship is partially mediated by officers' perceptions of moral alignment with their policed communities. The results further demonstrate that self-legitimacy is significantly related to organizational fit, but organizational fit does not appear to mediate the relationship between self-legitimacy and attitudes toward democratic policing.

Filmgoers’ Fingerprints

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-256
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
Movie Theater ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Biometric Information

This chapter focuses on fingerprinting stations, which, from the early 1920s until the late 1950s, were often located in the lobbies of movie theaters and used both in conjunction with crime films and as part of a broader push to collect Americans’ personal biometric information. An increasingly popular component of efforts to normalize civil identification, fingerprinting stations routinely functioned to promote both crime films and local police departments. They also raised alarming questions about the scope of police power in the United States. Fingerprinting stations were naturalized aspects of a cinematic assemblage that served police power, smuggling law enforcement into the local movie theater and making the collection of patrons’ personal biometric information seem continuous both with screen representations and with the wider work of advertising and publicity departments.

Using Web 2.0 as a Community Policing Strategy

2012 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Jones ◽  
Melchor C. de Guzman ◽  
Korni Swaroop Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policing Strategy ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Community Livability ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Community policing is intended to empower citizens who are plagued by crime and disorder. Scholars have considered community policing as a proactive measure that addresses issues of disorder to prevent the occurrence of more serious crimes (Goldstein, 1986; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). In a digital age, people are increasingly interacting socially via web platforms. This digital interaction includes governments, which can interact with the citizens in their society to co-produce effective responses to criminal activity. Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, iPhone applications, and Nixle provide new media for citizens and police interactions. Using a sample of 163 municipal police departments, this chapter examines the level and type of participation among municipal police departments using these resources. It is argued that Web 2.0 social media applications allow for a more fluent and dialogic relationship between citizens and police to work together to reduce crime and increase community livability. Policy and practice recommendations related to participating in and enhancing social media presence for police are also provided.

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