The Influence of Guardian and Warrior Police Orientations on Australian Officers’ Use of Force Attitudes and Tactical Decision-Making

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10986111231189857
• Author: Molly McCarthy,Kyle McLean,Geoff Alpert
• Date: 01 June 2024

Article

Police Quarterly

2024, Vol. 27(2) 187–212

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10986111231189857

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The Influence of Guardian and

Warrior Police Orientations

on Australian Officers’Use of

Force Attitudes and Tactical

Decision-Making

Molly McCarthy

1,2

, Kyle McLean

3

, and Geoff Alpert

2,4

Abstract

Concerns about excessive use of force by U.S. police have led to calls for agencies to

move from ‘warrior’to ‘guardian’policing. ‘Warrior’policing embodies an aggressive

or coercive approach to law enforcement, while ‘guardian’policing prioritises com-

munication, procedural justice and citizen safety. Associations between guardian and

warrior policing orientations and use of force attitudes in the U.S. have been found,

however the influence of these orientations on police use of force in Australia has not

been examined. This study examined the association of guardian and warrior policing

orientations with use of force attitudes, threat perceptions and tactical decision-making

among Australian officers, through a survey of 183 police officers in Queensland.

Regression analyses indicated that warrior policing was associated with greater support

for use of force and greater perceived threat in an ambiguous threat scenario, while

guardian policing was associated with more restraint in tactical decision-making among

Australian police officers.

1

School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VI, Australia

2

Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, QL, Australia

3

College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

4

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Molly McCarthy, School of Social Sciences, Robert Menzies Building, Wellington Rd, Monash University,

Clayton 3800, VI, Australia.

Email: molly.mccarthy@monash.edu

Keywords

police use of force, police orientations, warrior, guardian, police legitimacy, threat

perceptions, tactical decision-making

Introduction

Police agencies have been facing a crisis of legitimacy in recent years. Highly

publicised incidents of aggressive and lethal policing encounters in the United

States (U.S.) over the past decade, involving predominantly African American

citizens, have sparked public outcry and protest, and led to the birth of the Black

Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This movement gained international traction

following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in

2020, transcending national boundariesto become a global movement, with protests

taking place in Canada, Australia, the U.K., and parts of Europe. While each

country has its own unique history of policing and associated incidents of police

misconduct and brutality, these protests across so many Western democratic

countries indicate broader public dissatisfaction and distaste for some key aspects

of contemporary policing. In particular, excessive use of force and aggressive

policing of minority and disadvantaged communities, especially for minor offences,

have become less acceptable or tolerable to citizens in many countries. This

growing dissatisfaction has coincided with the expanded use of mobile phones and

other audio-visual technology such as police body-worn cameras, which have

publicized globally instances of poor policing, misconduct and brutality. Public

dissatisfaction with aggressive styles of contemporary policing leads to the natural

question of what does good policing look like? Many solutions to this crisis of

police legitimacy have been proposed, including greater use of procedural justice,

increasing community-oriented policing, training officers to reduce implicit bias,

and even further defunding or abolishing police and transferring policing re-

sponsibilities to communities (McLean & Nix, 2021;Najdowski & Goff, 2021).

Another proposal for improving policing focusses on reforming the core

principles of policing, including how officers see their role and purpose, and how

they view their relationship with the community (President’s Taskforce, 2015;

Stoughton, 2016). It has been suggested that transforming officers from ‘warrior

cops’to ‘guardian officers’would encourage more democratic, less coercive, and

more inclusive policing practices, and would reorient police agencies towards the

central importance of building trust and genuine relationships with communities

(Clifton et al., 2021). Modern styles of aggressive policing are argued to be

underpinned by a ‘warrior cop’orientation, a style of policing which sees officers

as metaphorical soldiers on the front lines of an endless battle to preserve order

and protect the community against criminality, with the use of righteous violence

justified to achieve these ends (Stoughton, 2015,2016). In the warrior approach to

policing, crime fightingisseenasanofficer’s primary mission, and ensuring

188 Police Quarterly 27(2)