The primary purpose of this thesis was to determine whether self-legitimacy impacted police officer satisfaction. Using data collected through an online self-reported survey, perceptions of satisfaction among 266 St. Louis County police officers were analyzed, controlling for other factors previously determined to be important to satisfaction such as race, gender, educational achievement, stress, relationships with supervisors, and years of experience. Results showed that self-legitimacy did not significantly affect officer satisfaction; however, relationships with supervisors and stress were significant in determining officer satisfaction. A possible explanation is offered that takes into account the nature of law enforcement around the time of survey collection (i.e., in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting).

A Polícia Militar, cuja missão divulgada oficialmente é a de tutela da ordem jurídica, assegurando a tranquilidade pública e a proteção da sociedade contra as violações e malefícios\", tem crescido como tema de discussão tanto na mídia como nos meios acadêmicos nos últimos anos por sua relevância na vida das pessoas e relação com as questões de segurança pública. Dados sobre violência policial de inúmeros orgãos, pesquisas acadêmicas no assunto, e a própria preocupação manifesta de autoridades governamentais de segurança pública tornam quase que inevitável que essas discussões vinculem a polícia à violência. Este trabalho teve como objetivo estudar os efeitos de reconhecimento e desconhecimento das relações no trabalho que permearam o discurso de um grupo de soldados da polícia militar: como estes falaram de seu trabalho e através desta fala posicionaram-se e posicionaram sua clientela e sua hierarquia. Por conta da importância dos dados mencionados, buscou-se também analisar que lugar a violência ocupou neste discurso. Dez soldados de um mesmo batalhão da polícia militar do Estado de São Paulo, sendo estes nove homens e uma mulher, foram entrevistados no próprio local de trabalho acerca de seu trabalho e das pessoas com quem se relacionavam. Suas entrevistas transcritas foram analisadas através da Análise Institucional do Discurso a fim de configurar um sujeito soldado policial militar. O objeto da análise do discurso foi a articulação entre o texto e o lugar social. Através destas análises, percebemos que uma noção de ser o faz tudo deslizou para o cuidado de um tipo específico de clientela, a população despossuída, e culminou com a proteção da vida do próprio policial policial como foco último do trabalho do PM. A farda se sobrepôs ao indivíduo marcando com toda a força a matriz institucional desse sujeito (do discurso). Não é uma questão de ser vítima da farda, mas de, pressupondo-se só na linha de frente, conduta justificada, legitimada e reforçada pelo discurso que indissocia meliante e clientela, passa a ser natural que o PM então coloque-se no lugar de alvo e que a ajuda e proteção ao amigo de farda torne-se legitimamente o foco de seu trabalho. O estressante do trabalho do PM residia justamente nesta inversão quando PM tornava-se alvo. E, a regra, ponto de tensão para que o PM se defenda, abre brecha para uma virada do cumprimento da lei para o crime como caminho natural a seguir e deslocado do indivídio. Um caminho para a violência / The Military Police, whose mission as officially claimed is to safeguard the legal order, assuring public peace and protecting the society against violations and wrongdoings, has increasingly appeared as a theme of discussion in the media as well as in the academia in the last years due to its relevance to peoples lives and its relation to public safety issues. Police violence data from many organizations, academic research e the manifest concern from government authorities in public security make it almost inevitable for these discussions to relate police and violence. This research aims at studying the effects of recognition and disowning of the relationships in the job that permeated the discourse of a group of soldiers from the military policy: how they spoke of their job and through this speech positioned themselves and their clientele and hierarchy. Due to the importance of the mentioned data, the potential place that violence occupied in this discourse was subject of study as well. Ten soldiers; nine men and one woman, from the same battalion of the Military Police from the State of São Paulo were interviewed in the workplace about their jobs and the people they relate to in doing so. The transcribed interviews were analyzed through the Institutional Discourse Analyses to configure a military police soldier subject. The object of discourse analyses was the articulation between the text and the social place. Through these analyzes, we could see that a do it all notion slid to become the care of a certain type of clientele, the dispossessed, and culminated to the protection of the life of the police officer him or herself as the ultimate focus of the police officers job. The uniform overlapped the individual with the strength of the institutional matrix within this (discourse) subject. Its not a matter of being a victim of the uniform, but, assuming a solitude in the front line, a justified and rationalized conduct, also reinforced by the discourse that doesnt differ criminal from clientele, its naturalized that the military police officer/soldier puts him or herself in the position of a target so that helping and protecting the uniform pal becomes legitimately the focus of the job. The stressful in the job is exactly this inversion of positions when the soldier becomes the target. And the rules and procedures, source of tension for the police officer to defend him/herself, give license for the mode turn from law abiding to crime, a natural path to follow, detached from the individual and excused by the uniform. A path to violence

Magister Commercii - MCom / This study was undertaken to determine the relationship between the emotional intelligence and burnout levels of police constables of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the Western Cape. The field work of constables includes situations in which police officers need to make quick decisions involving life and death. Constables regularly have to deal with and are exposed to dangerous and violent situations (Plani, Bowley & Goosen, 2003). There are certain skills which a police officer needs to demonstrate. These skills include the ability to make decisions promptly and accurately; the ability to favourably interact with the community and to observe, retain and recall detailed information. However, these skills are affected when the police officer experiences feelings of stress and burnout (Goodman, 1990). One factor that might help police officers with these skills is emotional intelligence (Levert, Lucas & Ortlepp, 2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Given the nature of policing, the potential benefit to the SAPS employing a police officer with high emotional intelligence to deal with burnout, would be the desired attribute. A simple random sample of N=108 police constables participated in this study. The Emotional Quotient-Inventory (EQ-i) and the Burnout Measure (BM) were administered. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 15.0. Cronbach reliability estimates for the EQ-i ranged from .87 to .90 and for the BM was .93. Positive and negative relationships were found between emotional intelligence dimensions: self-awareness (r=.-393, p>0.01), self-regulation (r=.-485, p>0.01), motivation (r=.-442, p>0.01), empathy (r=.-394, p>0.01) and social skills (r=.-383, p>0.01), [N=108] and police officers’ total burnout levels. The results indicated that the more self-aware, self-regulated, motivated, empathetic and socially inclined police officers were, the less likely police officers were to experience burnout. The results also indicated that the less self-aware, self-regulated, motivated, empathetic and socially inclined police officers were, they would be more likely to experience burnout. The exploratory factor analysis yielded a two factor structure for the individual on the emotional intelligence dimensions namely, self-awareness and empathy. A single factor was found for the manager consisting of the original five dimensions of the EQ-i. There was a moderate to strong negative correlation between total self-awareness (r=.-206), self-regulation (r=.-263), motivation (r=.-299), empathy (r=.-268) and social skills (r=.-311), [N=108, p>0.01] and police officers’ total burnout levels. This finding suggests that the more police officers viewed their manager to be self-aware, self-regulated, motivated, empathetic and socially inclined, the less likely they were to experience burn-out. The results of the multiple regression analysis show that police officers’ self-regulation appeared to be the only significant reliable predictor of burnout. The findings of this study provide an important contribution to expanding the body of literature and knowledge concerned with the emotionally intelligent constable which influences their burnout levels / South Africa

For an organization to become successful, creating an attractive environment with an atmosphere that both encourages, as well as motivates its employees, is vital. Furthermore, when wanting the employees to reach their optimal performance, good leadership is crucial. A leader’s visions and goals should be communicated to the employees to obtain maximized results within the organization. The research focuses on the motivation within the Swedish Police Department and its existing leadership. This paper aims to analyse and investigate the main motivational tools that are used by the Police Chiefs within the Swedish Police Department for motivating their subordinates. There will also be an investigation of whether the tools used correspond to the officers’ underlying motivation factors.In this paper, three different divisions of the Swedish Police Department were investigated: Field Operations, Criminal Investigations, and Crime Preventions. The reason for using different departments in this study was primarily to better reflect the Swedish Police Department. To answer the research question, a qualitative research method was used along with a data-collection consisting of interviews with a total of twelve respondents. The results showed that the used leadership tools do not fully correspond to police officers' motivation factors.

There is no doubt that police and correctional officers face an extraordinary amount of work related stress. The current study hopes to shed additional light on what stressors each profession perceives as being particularly stressful, establish how each profession copes with these stressors, and conclude with what similarities or dissimilarities exist between the two. Officers working for various police and correctional facilities in East Tennessee were surveyed for this study. Independent samples t-test determined that police and correctional officers are similar in many ways. However, correctional officers did reported statistically higher rates of stress associated with organizational aspects of the job (p=.029). Correctional officers and police officers reported identical rates of operational stress, overall stress, and use of coping strategies.

No description available.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently one of the most researched of all childhood developmental disorders and is receiving attention in many domains including popular media, social sciences, education, and medicine. The purpose of this dissertation was to design and provide initial psychometric evidence for a scale that measures police officer self-efficacy for working with individuals with ASD. Psychometric properties of a scale designed to measure knowledge of ASD were also explored. Data from 620 police officers actively serving in the United States were collected in two separate phases. A 13-item scale was created to measure police officer self-efficacy for working with individuals with ASD. Results from both phases indicated that the scale represented a unidimensional construct. Police officer knowledge of ASD was significantly and positively related to self-efficacy. Knowing more about officers’ knowledge and beliefs in their own capabilities to work with individuals with ASD can help inform future police education and training efforts.

As a method of building relationships with the public, some police forces have integrated community members into the candidate assessment and selection process. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine the effect of integrating community evaluators as a new method in the assessment and selection process for police officers in a city police force. Media richness theory and general mental ability were used as a framework, and archival data from a large Midwest department of public safety were collected by filing two public records requests. Data from 2,510 police candidates were included. Quantitative data analysis was conducted using correlational and regression tests to examine rater agreement, subgroup differences (gender or race/ethnicity) in selection outcomes, and the predictive validity of a testing method as measured by academy performance with and without the integration of community evaluators. There was no evidence to suggest that integrating community evaluators into the assessment and selection process for entry-level police officers affected rater agreement or subgroup differences in selection outcomes. The findings from this study support positive social change by indicating that integrating the community into a structured assessment process did not impact selection outcomes as measured by gender, race/ethnicity, or academy performance, which may encourage public safety departments to build community relationships by inviting local residents to participate in the assessment and selection process for police officers. Other social change may include the effect that the integration of community members could have on applicant and community perceptions of the assessment and selection process for police officers.

<p>This licentiate thesis builds on the assumption that there is a shift in professional perspective when a police officer takes on the task of a police teacher in the Police Basic Education Training Programme. This shift of perspective is described as a professional process as well as a learning process, and the investigation focuses the reshaping of one’s professional identity.</p><p>The investigation is based on focus group interviews with four different groups of police teachers in Växjö, Stockholm, and Umeå, where they were asked to talk about their task as police teachers. The analysis is built on theories from George Herbert Mead, Moira von Wright, and Ludwik Fleck about the importance of in-tersubjective interaction in the interpersonal or social perspective of construction knowledge about oneself as a subject and the surrounding world. Professional identity is defined as the way, consciously or unconsciously, an individual under-stands oneself as a professional; it is seen as an ongoing process shaped by con-tinuous intersubjective meetings with others in a changeable world. Professional, personal and possibly tacit knowledge is in that aspect developed and may be pos-sible to articulate in the right environment, for example within focus groups.</p><p>The findings indicate that the change of professional task of the police teachers affects their understanding of themselves as professionals, i.e., their professional identity. The development of new professional and personal knowledge is due to the ability to reflect on the outcome of the intersubjective meetings with students and other teachers. This change of professional identity of the police teachers complicates their mission in two aspects. First, the denial of the relationship with the students as colleagues could be in conflict with the expectation from the stu-dent police officers. Secondly, the gap in knowledge about police work between the reflected personal knowledge of the police teachers and the student police offi-cers’ knowledge built on movies and books makes it difficult to meet the students at their level. This situation demands opportunities for police teachers to discuss their tasks with other teachers on campus, in the context of intersubjective meet-ings.</p>

This licentiate thesis builds on the assumption that there is a shift in professional perspective when a police officer takes on the task of a police teacher in the Police Basic Education Training Programme. This shift of perspective is described as a professional process as well as a learning process, and the investigation focuses the reshaping of one’s professional identity. The investigation is based on focus group interviews with four different groups of police teachers in Växjö, Stockholm, and Umeå, where they were asked to talk about their task as police teachers. The analysis is built on theories from George Herbert Mead, Moira von Wright, and Ludwik Fleck about the importance of in-tersubjective interaction in the interpersonal or social perspective of construction knowledge about oneself as a subject and the surrounding world. Professional identity is defined as the way, consciously or unconsciously, an individual under-stands oneself as a professional; it is seen as an ongoing process shaped by con-tinuous intersubjective meetings with others in a changeable world. Professional, personal and possibly tacit knowledge is in that aspect developed and may be pos-sible to articulate in the right environment, for example within focus groups. The findings indicate that the change of professional task of the police teachers affects their understanding of themselves as professionals, i.e., their professional identity. The development of new professional and personal knowledge is due to the ability to reflect on the outcome of the intersubjective meetings with students and other teachers. This change of professional identity of the police teachers complicates their mission in two aspects. First, the denial of the relationship with the students as colleagues could be in conflict with the expectation from the stu-dent police officers. Secondly, the gap in knowledge about police work between the reflected personal knowledge of the police teachers and the student police offi-cers’ knowledge built on movies and books makes it difficult to meet the students at their level. This situation demands opportunities for police teachers to discuss their tasks with other teachers on campus, in the context of intersubjective meet-ings.