Can You Build a Better Cop?

• Author: Emily Owens,David Weisburd,Geoffrey P. Alpert,Karen L. Amendola
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12337
• Date: 01 February 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

CAN YOU BUILD A BETTER COP?

Can You Build a Better Cop?

Experimental Evidence on Supervision, Training,

and Policing in the Community

Emily Owens

University of California, Irvine

David Weisburd

George Mason University, Hebrew University

Karen L. Amendola

Police Foundation

Georey P. Alpert

University of South Carolina, Griff ith University

Research Summary

By drawing from psychology and economics, we present an experimental evaluation of

a procedural justice training program designed to “slow down” police officers’ thought

processes during citizen encounters. Wefind that officers who were randomly assigned to

participate in training were as engaged in the community as similarly situated officers,

but they were less likely to resolve incidents with an arrest or to be involvedin incidents

We thank Maria Valdovinos and Earl Hamilton for assistance at all stages of this project, along with Scott

Decker, Matthew Freedman, Ben Hansen, John MacDonald, Kyle McLean, Sarah Tahamont, Travis Taniguchi,

seminar participants at the University of Pennsylvania—Wharton, the Royal Economic Society annual

meeting, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. This research was made possible by the

cooperation and enthusiasm of Fmr. Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer, Captain James Dermody, Kim Kubie, Mimi

Walsh, Peggy Garcia, and Jan Hoyt of the Seattle Police Department and Claudia Gross-Shader of the City of

Seattle. We also acknowledge the support and ongoing assistance of our grant monitor, Dr. Brett Chapman.

This project was supported by Award 2012-IJ-CX-0009 granted by the National Institute of Justice. Part of this

research was made possible through the use of Cornell University’s Social Science Gateway, which is funded

through NSF Grant 0922005. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this

publication/program/exhibition are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the

Department of Justice or any other agency. All errors are our own. Direct correspondence to Emily Owens,

Department of Criminology, Law and Society and Department of Economics, University of California, Irvine,

Irvine CA 92697 (e-mail: egowens@uci.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12337 C2018 American Society of Criminology 41

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 1

Research Article Can You Build a Better Cop?

where force was used. These changes were most evident among officers who worked in

areas with a modest level of risk.

Policy Implications

Police officers who areactively engaged with the public can reduce crime through general

deterrence and by arresting criminals. Nevertheless, excessive discretionary arrests and

the use of force by officers can reduce public trust in the police. To date, there is

scant evidence as to how police departments can successfully train officers to balance

enforcement and public trust in the field. Through our study, we demonstrate that a

relatively minor supervisory intervention may cause substantive changes in how police

and citizens interact with each other.

Keywords

policing, job training, procedural justice, field experiments

How do law enforcement agencies convince the public that they are benevolent

and trustworthy, while making arrests and using physical force? Officers must

strike a delicate balance between apprehending and detaining those accused

of violating the law, while making sure that all citizens feel like they are treated fairly

and equitably. Police researchers have characterized this as an “impossible mandate” for

departments; it requires being simultaneously perceived as “warriors,” who aggressively

attack criminals, and as “guardians,” who nurture and protect residents (Manning, 1977).

High arrest rates and publicized incidents of force used against citizens by police can

make it difficult for departments to find the optimal combination of their warrior and

guardian roles, especially when crime rates are low and the social costs of having a criminal

record are high (Rahr and Rice, 2015; Stoughton, 2015). Indeed, dissatisfaction with police

practices led to a series of nationwide, occasionally violent, protests in the summers of

2014, 2015, and 2016. The immediate catalysts for these protests were specific incidents

in which officers caused the death of a citizen (and were not perceived to have legitimately

done so), but the sustained nature of the public outcry is generally understood to be a

response to a perceived overemphasis on the warrior role, leading officers to stop, detain, or

use force against individuals, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, without adequate

cause or explanation (e.g., Friedersdorf, 2014).

Academics in law, psychology, and criminology argue that part of the solution to

the tension between these two roles is to use “procedural justice,” treating citizens fairly

and with dignity, no matter what the outcome (Meares, Tyler, and Gardener, 2016). As

defined by Tyler (1988), procedural justice comprises multiple components: the officer’s

perceived motivation, honesty,and ethicality; opportunities for representation of all parties;

opportunities for error correction; the quality of the officer’s decision; and the officer’s bias

in reaching a decision. In theory, police departments that implement procedural justice

42 Criminology & Public Policy

Owens et al.

practices will build social capital and be trusted by the communities they serve. Increased

witness and victim cooperation will then result, as well as, ultimately, lower crime rates.

Although this idea has been heavily promoted at the federal, state, and local levels (e.g.,

President’s Task Force on 21st Policing, 2015), there is little evidence-based guidance for

police chiefs to train their officers to behave in a way that is consistent with these goals,

and thus far, only high-cost, intensive interventions have shown any sign of changing

officer behavior in the field (e.g., Major Cities Chiefs Association, Major County Sheriffs

Association, and FBI National Executive Institute, 2015).

In cooperation with the city of Seattle, Washington,and the Seattle Police Department,

we developed a low-cost, low-intensity supervisory program inspired by the principles of

procedural justice. By building on recent advancements in psychology and economics, the

program was aimed at affecting the way officers gather and process information in the field.

The goal of the program was to influence the way that officers think about even the most

mundane aspects of their job, potentially reducing the frequency with which officers engaged

in behavior that could be perceived by the public as unjust. It involved short supervisory

meetings with officers who were identified to be at higher risk of negative encounters with

the public.

Our training program differs from standard police supervision and training programs in

three ways. First, during these meetings, officers and their supervisors discussed a relatively

benign event that would typically not be subject to discussion under standard practice.

Second, rather than focusing on outcomes, officers were prompted to reflect on their

thought processes and actions during these encounters. Finally, supervisors were trained to

model some of the central components of procedural justice during these meetings. The

latter approach was based on the assumption that for officers to employ procedurally just

interactions, procedural justice should also be modeled at the agency level with regardto their

supervisors’ treatment of them. During a 6-month period, officers were randomly enrolled

in the program, which the officers and their supervisors generally reported as noninvasive.

A randomized experiment was employed to evaluate the impact of this program byusing

direct measurements of officer performance in the field. It is important to reiterate that we

did not directly observe whether officers used procedural justice but the more traditional,

observable, and quantifiable measures of officer “output” that their line supervisors, the

federal government, and the public care about (Major Cities Chiefs Association, Major

County Sheriffs Association, and FBI National Executive Institute, 2015). We found that,

in the 6 weeks after a supervisory meeting, treated officers were as active in the community

as untreated officers along multiple dimensions, but they were less likely to resolve incidents

with an arrest and less likely to be involved in use-of-force incidents. Furthermore, we found

that the largest reduction in arrests occurred among officers who worked beats where there

was a moderate level of “predicted risk,” which we defined by using the frequency with

which other officers used force, were injured, or were the subject of citizen complaints after

working in that area.

Volume 17 rIssue 1 43