Dumping: Police-Initiated Transjurisdictional Transport of Troublesome Persons
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1098611102250586 |
| Author | Thomas M. Dunn,William R. King |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
King, Dunn / POLICE-INITIA
ARTERL
TED TRANSPORT Y (Vol. 7, No. 3, September 2004)
DUMPING:
POLICE-INITIATED
TRANSJURISDICTIONAL TRANSPORT
OF TROUBLESOME PERSONS
WILLIAM R. KING
Bowling Green State University
THOMAS M. DUNN
University of Northern Colorado
Those who write about the police have generally neglected the informal ways
police officers handle situations involving troublesome persons. Trouble-
some persons, including homeless and mentally disturbed people, prosti-
tutes, juveniles, and people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, are not
necessarily best handled by arrest. In fact the recent move by many police
agencies to handle situations with either aggressive order maintenance or
community policing may encourage officers to handle troublesome persons
via informal methods. This article focuses on one such informal method:
police-initiated transjurisdictional transport (PITT) of troublesome persons,
or dumping. This article describes PITT, explores the literature for examples
of it, describes some of its possible causes, and proposes three ways to con-
trol PITT. We conclude with four research strategies for studying police
dumping of troublesome persons.
Keywords: dumping; transjurisdictional transport; police discretion; men-
tally ill; troublesome people
Street-level interactions between police officers and various categories of
disenfranchised, problematic, or disorderly persons have long concerned
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal
Justice Sciences in Orlando, Florida. We are indebted to the helpful assistance and comments of Robin
Engel and Michael Buerger.
POLICE QUARTERLY Vol. 7 No. 3, September 2004 339–358
DOI: 10.1177/1098611102250586
© 2004 Sage Publications
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POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 7, No. 3, September 2004)
observers of the police. During the past 35 years, research interests in
police-citizen interactions have concentrated primarily on police use of
coercive actions (e.g., arrest and use of force) against problematic citizens
(for review, see Riksheim & Chermak, 1993). This trend has continued with
the most recent examinations of police behaviors (Engel, Sobol, & Worden,
2000; Klinger, 1994, 1996; Mastrofski, Worden, & Snipes, 1995). Given
the severity of the consequences for citizens associated with formal coer-
cive actions, the concentration on arrest and use of force is certainly impor-
tant. This focus, however, does not adequately reflect the majority of
police-citizen encounters. Many of the early qualitative observations of
police behavior suggested that officers very rarely use arrest or force to han-
dle situations—rather, the majority of these encounters are handled infor-
mally (Bittner, 1967; Muir, 1977; Reiss, 1971; Rubinstein, 1973; Wilson,
1968).
Policing has evolved considerably since the 1960s to 1970s when much
of this early qualitative research was conducted. In the past 20 years, many
American police organizations have adopted community policing and/or
aggressive order maintenance policies. The adoption of these policies has
slightly different implications for officers’behavior at the street level. Some
have suggested that community-policing policies will lead to greater use of
informal handling of problematic situations encountered by officers (H.
Goldstein, 1990; Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990). In fact, the emphasis
of community-policing strategies is to encourage officers to respond to
problematic situations in ways other than traditional, formal responses such
as arrest and use of force (H. Goldstein, 1990; Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux,
1990). In contrast, aggressive order maintenance policies encourage offi-
cers to use formal coercive action toward citizens for even minor offenses
that had been traditionally handled informally. Aggressive order mainte-
nance entails using the threat of enforcing public order laws, such as cur-
fews and loitering ordinances, as a way to control troublesome populations
and, many claim, to control violent crime (Kelling & Coles, 1996). The
recent passion with aggressive order maintenance as a crime control tech-
nique stems in part from the broken windows theory (Wilson & Kelling,
1982) and from claims that New York City’s recent crime drop can be attrib-
uted to aggressive order maintenance (Eck & Maguire, 2000). These two
dissimilar police tactics may lead officers to dump troublesome persons
either in the interests of handling such situations informally (COP) or in the
name of order maintenance.
King, Dunn / POLICE-INITIATED TRANSPORT
341
Unfortunately, our knowledge of police interactions with troublesome
persons has not kept pace with the changes in policing philosophies and
strategies. This article expands our knowledge of police behavior, order
maintenance, and troublesome persons in two unique ways. First, it concen-
trates on a type of informal handling of special populations that has received
scant descriptive and/or empirical attention by police scholars: police-initi-
ated transjurisdictional transport (PITT) of troublesome persons. Although
the informal policy of transporting troublesome persons to another loca-
tion—or police “dumping” of problematic citizens—is generally acknowl-
edged by police practitioners, it has rarely been discussed in the policing lit-
erature or systematically studied. Second, this article expands the category
of troublesome persons beyond the homeless and mentally disordered, who
are traditionally studied by researchers, by including the informal handling
of juveniles, prostitutes, and people under the influence of alcohol and
drugs.
This exploration of a police response to troublesome persons is timely
given the recent emphasis on community policing and aggressive order
maintenance by the police. Although proponents of these policies certainly
do not advocate dumping troublesome persons in other jurisdictions, it is
reasonable to suspect that some officers may resort to such tactics as the
most expedient way of handling troublesome persons.
This examination of transjurisdictional transport of troublesome persons
unfolds in four parts. First, the notion of PITT is described and its conse-
quences explained. Second, three general information sources (empirical
and nonempirical social scientific writings, general research on police
behavior, and journalistic accounts) are explored in an effort to better
describe and examine the use of PITT by police officers. Third, we discuss
the possible explanations for this type of informal handling of citizens and
we offer suggestions for preventing it. Finally, this article concludes with
four possible research strategies for studying the incidence of PITT.
DEFINING PITT
Dumping or PITT is a low-visibility police activity that stands outside
the legal and moral norms of policing. PITT occurs when a police officer
interacts with a mentally disturbed person, a person who is homeless, a
prostitute, a juvenile, a drunk, or a person under the influence of drugs, the
officer views this person as “troublesome,” and the officer resolves the
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situation by transporting that troublesome person out of that officer’s (or the
department’s) jurisdiction and releases that person into his or her own
recognizance. To qualify as PITT, the officer does not have to transport the
person but can arrange transportation instead (e.g., by placing the person on
a bus or train or by using another departmental vehicle, such as a patrol
wagon). PITT does not include instances in which an officer transports
someone to another location where they are released into the custody of
another “capable guardian” (such as a mental hospital, jail, or the trouble-
some person’s home). PITT only involves instances in which the trouble-
some person is released, unsupervised, somewhere else (but not instances in
which the police refuse to transport someone from a dangerous area; see
Kappeler, 1997). For example, an officer may give a homeless individual a
ride to their jurisdiction’s boundary, releases the individual, and instruct
them to not return. Similarly, arranging transport, such as buying a bus
ticket for a mentally ill person to send him or her to another city, exemplifies
dumping. Generally, the jurisdiction into which the troublesome person is
released does not know about or approve of the arrival of the troublesome
person. In some larger areas, PITT involves transporting people to another
part of the jurisdiction but not out of that department’s jurisdiction.
PITT is analogous to other punishments imposed by the criminal justice
system, such as banishment (Walker, 1998). Some courts have used “sun-
down parole” in which petty criminals were told to leave town or face
imprisonment. PITT has also been referred to by a number of different
terms. Transportation that involves buying troublesome people bus tickets
to facilitate their removal has been called “diesel therapy.” Indians in
Saskatoon, Canada, have referred to PITT as a “scenic tour,” a “starlight
tour,” or a “ride in the country” (Brass, 2001).
Transporting and dumping people who may be under duress may lead to
three adverse outcomes. First, the dumped persons may be harmed or may
harm others when they arrive at their destinations. In some cases, the
dumped persons are free to wander and may become crime victims or may
victimize others. It is plausible that behaviors...
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