To serve and protect, but who? How the organizational structure of law enforcement in America shapes the safety of the police and the public
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Chillar, Vijay F..
To serve and protect, but who? How the organizational structure of law enforcement in America shapes the safety of the police and the public. Retrieved from
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TitleTo serve and protect, but who? How the organizational structure of law enforcement in America shapes the safety of the police and the public
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-10 (degree)
Extent234 pages : illustrations
DescriptionFollowing the “second great awakening” of police reform and concurrent sentiment of a “war on cops”, American police organizations are increasingly asked to respond to seemingly opposed goals of public safety. On the one hand, officers have a sworn duty to serve and protect the public, while on the other hand, they must also protect themselves from the public who are a source of danger to members of law enforcement. In three interrelated essays I describe the organization of law enforcement at the municipal level across measures of context, complexity, and control at varying levels of proposed structure in terms of items, concepts, and dimensions. In addition, I study potential cross-linkages between these institutional designs and concurrent indicators of fatal encounters and police victimization at the local level. To ground these assessments empirically, I combine three administrative and crowd-sourced databases: LEMAS, LEOKA, and the FE dataset. Using this information, I generate a cross-sectional sample of 879 municipal police agencies across the United States encompassing a wide array of organizational characteristics as well as reported incidents of fatal encounters and police victimization between 2013 and 2019. Findings suggest that agencies with a large administrative component and are more vertically differentiated experience fewer counts of fatal encounters and police victimizations. Among the contextual factors considered, – proportion of the population experiencing poverty, unemployment, the proportion of the population that identifies as Latino (ethnicity) or Non-Hispanic Black (race), operational budget per capita, and crime rate per 10,000 residents – those that are statistically significant for fatal encounters are not the same for police victimizations. For example, whereas the proportion of Latino residents is positively related to fatal encounters, it is not associated with police victimization. Furthermore, an increase in the proportion of Black residents decreases police victimization but is not associated with fatal encounters. Across both outcomes, crime rate is positively associated. Finally, spatial maps suggest that agencies with like organizational structure appear to cluster more often than agencies with a different organizational design. Overall, findings from this dissertation highlight the importance of organizational structure in understanding the variation in fatal encounters and police victimization.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
LanguageEnglish
CollectionGraduate School - Newark Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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