Examining Views of Police Chiefs and College Students Regarding Drug Disqualifiers for the Hiring of Police Officers in Arizona

• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0022042620959331
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Cody W. Telep,A. Johannes Bottema
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042620959331

Journal of Drug Issues

2021, Vol. 51(1) 109 –127

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042620959331

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Article

Examining Views of Police Chiefs

and College Students Regarding

Drug Disqualifiers for the Hiring

of Police Officers in Arizona

A. Johannes Bottema1 and Cody W. Telep1

Abstract

Police applicant disqualification due to prior illegal drug use is a contributing factor to major

recruitment and hiring challenges currently facing many American policing agencies. This article

explores how chief executives of law enforcement agencies and college students enrolled

in criminology courses in Arizona view current statewide police hiring standards related to

prior drug use. We use surveys conducted in cooperation with the Arizona Peace Officer

Standards and Training Board to examine respondent opinions regarding the preemployment

use of marijuana and illicit use of prescription drugs. Generally, we find significant differences

between the chief executive and student views. Students, who represent potential policing

applicants, typically are in favor of harsher treatment of prior drug use than chief executives,

although students are also more open to forgiving marijuana use under certain circumstances.

We discuss the implications of these findings for police hiring and suggest potential areas of

policy change.

Keywords

college students, drug use, marijuana, police chiefs, police hiring, police recruitment, prescription

drugs, survey

Many police agencies in the United States are facing challenges in recruitment and hiring,

leading the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF, 2019) to call the current situation a “work-

force crisis” in a recent report and the President of the International Association of Chiefs of

Police (IACP) to state “the field of law enforcement is broadly experiencing a recruitment and

retention crisis” (Casstevens, 2020, p. 6). While a myriad of factors potentially contributes to this

crisis, one particularly salient issue is that hiring disqualifiers can reduce the potential applicant

pool. Such disqualifiers include criminal history, education, physical capabilities, and appear-

ance (Inwald & Thompson, 2020; McMullen & Gibbs, 2019; PERF, 2019). One type of disquali-

fier that is attracting increased attention is preemployment drug use. This is especially true for

substances such as marijuana and prescription drugs, given current changes in law, policy, and

1Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA

Corresponding Author:

A. Johannes Bottema, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, 411 N Central Ave Suite

600, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA.

Email: abottema@asu.edu

959331JODXXX10.1177/0022042620959331Journal of Drug IssuesBottema and Telep

research-article2020

110 Journal of Drug Issues 51(1)

public perceptions (Daniller, 2019; Oliphant, 2017). While public opinion on these topics has

changed rapidly, we know little about the views of law enforcement leaders and potential polic-

ing applicants. These perspectives could facilitate changes to policy that might lessen the impact

of the police hiring crisis. This article explores these issues by examining the views of both

Arizona law enforcement chief executives and college students enrolled in criminology courses

from Arizona State University (ASU) regarding drug use by policing applicants.

Undertaken in cooperation with staff from the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training

Board (AZPOST), we surveyed chiefs and students to identify the potential for state rule changes

that would assist law enforcement agencies with hiring. AZPOST wanted input from key constituen-

cies to ensure policy changes reflected the perspectives of both law enforcement organizations and

their potential applicant pool.1 We focus on students in criminology courses as this is a group espe-

cially likely to be interested in a career in law enforcement. To this end, this study asks what are the

perspectives of chiefs and students on drug hiring disqualifiers, and to what extent are they consis-

tent? Furthermore, do these perspectives provide direction for revised hiring standards that would

better reflect both the needs of police departments and the values of their potential applicant pool?

We first review the literature on the current state of police hiring, police hiring disqualifiers,

and the nature of drug disqualifiers, focusing on marijuana and prescription drugs. We also pres-

ent a brief overview of the current drug disqualifiers in Arizona and how AZPOST approaches

preemployment drug use in practice. We then describe our surveys, present results, and conclude

with a discussion of what these findings may suggest for the future of police hiring in Arizona.

Prior Research

Police Hiring Crisis

Data from the Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey show

the number of sworn officers in the United States decreased by about 23,000 from 2013 to 2016,

from 2.29 per 1,000 residents to 2.17 (Hyland, 2018). While the actual decrease in officers was a

new development, the drop in officers per capita continues a trend for the last two decades, where

growth in police agency size has not matched growth in the U.S. population. In 1997, there were

2.42 officers per 1,000 people in the United States. While these national numbers mask a great

deal of variability within and across agencies, they overall suggest less police hiring, particularly

in the early 2010s. The Phoenix Police Department, the largest in Arizona, is a good example of

this change. The agency dropped almost 600 sworn officers between 2008 and 2016, going from

2.11 officers per 1,000 to 1.74 (Telep, 2018). This was in large part because of a 7-year hiring

freeze following the 2008 economic crash, a situation experienced by many agencies (Office of

Community Oriented Policing Services, 2011). In recent years, the department has been aggres-

sively recruiting in an effort to once again get back to more than 3,000 sworn officers.

We have fewer data about the experience of agencies as they try to build back up numbers.

This is in part because of the lag in data from LEMAS. The 2016 survey results became available

in 2019 and so it will be several years before we have a better sense of how departmental num-

bers are changing now. However, current concerns about hiring have been covered extensively in

media reports (see The Marshall Project, 2020). In addition, recent work from surveys conducted

by practitioner organizations also suggests significant recruiting challenges as agencies try to

address staffing issues. A study conducted by the PERF (2019) of 411 agencies of all sizes from

45 states, Washington DC, and Canada found that 63% of surveyed police departments had

reduced numbers in applications compared with 5 years ago, with 27% of respondents reporting

slight drops and 36% responding they had more significant decreases in applications. Almost half

of the respondents indicated that length of service among their department’s sworn personnel had

decreased relative to 5 years prior, suggesting that officers may be more frequently leaving