<p> Decisions made by street-level police officers during encounters with the public have an immediate and long-lasting effect. Bad choices can cause a loss of trust, respect, and legitimacy for the police in a community and lay a foundation for violent confrontations between officers and citizens. Layers of culture that shape human decisions consist of social and institutional culture, including interactions that shape an individual&rsquo;s culture and beliefs and demographics and technology that affect cultural development. Police culture (which includes these layers of culture and factors like rank, units, and history) shapes attitudes and opinions about communities and people in a police jurisdiction, leading to barriers to officers&rsquo; acceptance of training initiatives to implement new methods of dealing with the public. Understanding police culture is the first step in making positive changes in police decision-making and improving trust, respect, and legitimacy between officers and the community. Acker&rsquo;s theory of social structure social learning provided the theoretical framework for understanding police culture, which could lead to positive changes such as training programs that address police culture&rsquo;s influence on decision-making. A qualitative research method with a phenomenological approach for interviewing officers was used to investigate police culture and how it affects decision-making. Results indicated that officers think of culture as a family or brotherhood and not a culture. The most significant impact on decision-making is experience. These findings can lead to positive social change by making officers stakeholders in developing training in positive social relationships with the community. </p><p>

<p>Law enforcement is responding to an ever-increasing number of large-scale critical incidents involving an adversary who has killed or is attempting to kill innocent citizens. These incidents include active shooters, terrorist attacks, hostage situations, snipers, and other associated conflicts. The initial response phase of these incidents is an extreme challenge for law enforcement response organizations. Moreover, little academic research has been conducted concerning this phase and the issues occurring within it. This thesis intends to help address this gap in the research and provide important insight into the factors and dynamics at play during this time period with a focus on the major issues that are occurring. An analysis of 15 after- action reports from these large-scale events was conducted and used to formulate useful percentages on the primary errors occurring during these events. The results of the analysis were also utilized to create the framework for the timeline of the initial response phase. The ultimate goal of this research thesis is to provide useful information for these events by drawing attention to primary issues for future incident commanders and law enforcement first responder consideration.

<p> The response to civil disturbances has historically been the aggressive use of force or <i>escalation</i> with tactics such as the use of police dogs, armed federal troops during war protests, and police field forces. These types of tactics can escalate tensions between protestors and police and only add to the violence and destruction of the incident. To reduce the violence between protestors and the police and the destruction often associated with civil disturbances, it is necessary to examine the need to include de-escalation techniques in the responses. This study utilized 3 theoretical frameworks, the chaos theory, the behavioral decision theory and the strain theory, all which complement each other in interpreting the opinions and experiences of participants and civil disturbance responses. The research questions were used to determine the influence of experience, training, personal biases or external influences on decision making and elicit the opinions of respondents in how they would respond to a civil disturbance. Twenty-five respondents responsible for policy or response decisions regarding civil disturbances from southern U.S. state emergency management and law enforcement agencies took part in the survey. The results of a cross-tabulation analysis determined that there is a need for the inclusion of de-escalation techniques and that they would be effective in civil disturbances. The results also showed that an aggressive response was the preferred method to restoring or maintaining order, but there was a need to examine changes in response tactics. This study may be beneficial and provide a social impact through policy changes, which may lead to a lessening of the severity and scope of an incident.</p><p>

<p> This project examines correctional officer misconduct in the United States and how to detect and prevent it from occurring. The author did a content analysis of available literature regarding misconduct incidents in attempt to narrow the causation factor(s) to its existence. With the lack of empirical data regarding misconduct, the author was able to reference other criminal justice entities to provide educational knowledge on prevention, detection and to determine the causation factor(s). The author provides several examples of prevention and detection techniques. With prevention and detection techniques at the fore front of this project, the author was able to determine that ineffective supervision is the causation factor to correctional officer misconduct in United States jails and prisons.</p><p>

This thesis discusses the history of law enforcement and the role of local law enforcement agencies dealing with juveniles and juvenile delinquency.

Cryptocurrencies have developed and widely spread within recent years. Their anonymous and decentralised characteristics have attracted criminals who leverage these technologies to sell and purchase illicit goods on the black market while concealing their identities and avoid prosecution. The new development of cryptocurrencies and their underlying architecture blockchain has had positive and negative effects on the success of law enforcement investigations. It is perceived as a threat when there are factors that increase the complexity of law enforcement investigations due to the use of highly anonymous cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin mixers. Cryptocurrencies are also perceived as a threat when criminals use them for money laundering purposes. Conversely, the rise of cryptocurrencies also introduces new opportunities for law enforcement investigations. Records of cryptocurrency transactions in the blockchain help law enforcement to trace suspicious addresses by the emergence and improvement of analysis tools. In parallel, anti- money laundering (AML) regulations and the financial authorities have proved to play a key role in fighting against money laundering and gather information on suspicious activities carried out through financial institutions. The analysis of this dissertation sets forth that...

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Recently, numerous high-profile instances of police misconduct and corruption have been thrust into the national spotlight. Hiring police officers who will act with integrity and not betray public trust remains essential. The present research experimentally examines this phenomenon by evaluating pre-employment assessment results against applicant performance on a simulated cheating task (i.e., The Dots Task) in order to derive information to improve contemporary pre-employment screening and selection models. Four case examples are presented which depict malicious actors who possessed privileged access, assumed no one would ever scrutinize their activities, and attempted to leverage a lack of oversight for their personal benefit. A literature review of previous research findings is presented, and results from the current study are discussed. Spearman correlation analyses consistently indicated that participants who cheated were predisposed to moral disengagement via advantageous comparison. Participants who left all or part of their monetary award were less prone to general moral disengagement, particularly displacement of responsibility, while the opposite effect was observed for participants who took more than their earned award. Impression management was positively associated with stealing extra money, and cheating was more common among participants with elevated distorted thought patterns, including obsessional thinking, paranoid ideation, and alienation/perceptual distortion. Stepwise linear multiple regression analyses further substantiated the relationship between cheating and both distorted thought patterns and impression management, as well as provided evidence that (1) internalizing morality as part of one's self-identity and (2) warmth act as protective factors against cheating behavior. Positive relationships between cheating and distortion of consequences were also present within multiple regression analyses. Behavioral models produced from stepwise linear multiple regression analyses offer the potential to predict the likelihood and severity of cheating behavior that an individual may be predisposed to commit based upon their pre-employment assessment data, thereby enhancing pre-employment screening and selection decisions.

As an FBI Agent leading the FBI National Executive Institute (NEI) I met a number of law enforcement leaders who, after becoming the chief their police department, related that they thought they knew what the chiefs&rsquo; job was until the first day they took that position. Contemporaneously, I learned from one of my NEI students, who had also attended the Army War College (AWC), that the AWC strategic leadership courses educated Colonels before they became Generals. These seminal events gave me the idea to provide the NEI with studies on strategic leadership in law enforcement. The outcome of a preliminary literature search evidenced a paucity of research for strategic leadership involving law enforcement executives and suggested the need for a study. The chiefs of police in the Major Cities Chief (MCC) Association were an appropriate population for such research since a wealth of wisdom resided in them. This study was aimed at determining what their experience taught them about two global questions that guided the inquiry: (a) What is the meaning and value of strategic leadership for law enforcement officials in today&rsquo;s world, and (b) What is the developmental process involved in transitioning from tactical to strategic leader. A mailed instrument was used to gather data, including asking who the participants considered the best strategic leaders in the MCC. Ten chiefs were thereby peer-selected for face-to-face interviews that augmented, gave more richness, and more depth to the data. Findings suggest that while strategic leadership is still in process and escapes a finite definition, it includes a big picture, systems/contingency view of dealing with issues rather than incidents, continuous lifelong learning for themselves through assignments, reflection, and education, but also involves developing their followers through mentoring and delegation. This study found that the MCC perceive themselves as strategic leaders. Their transitional process of becoming a strategic leader included mentors, conflict, courage to stick with right decisions, integrity, and political perspective. Further statistical analysis and study is recommended comparing these data with other leadership studies to give a more distinct definition of and a model for strategic leadership both in law enforcement and the general population. / Ph. D.

This research explored the process by which several experienced and successful law enforcement officials arrive at the most effective method of decision-making. It draws from traditional decision theory models, but uses the naturalistic decision-making (NDM) paradigm as its guide. Studies framed by the NDM model have included fighter and commercial pilots, health care professionals, battle commanders, and others. Missing, however, are studies of law-enforcement officers making judgments and decisions under operational conditions. This examination utilized qualitative case study methods of participant observation and focused interviews to collect data and followed Lincoln and Guba's case study structure by identifying the problem, the context, the issues, and the lessons learned. Coding and analysis of the data conformed to the model initially outlined by Strauss (1987) and later redefined by Corbin and Strauss (1990), including open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The findings on the decision-making/judgments processes of three experienced law enforcement officials revealed that each officer strived to control the impending event utilizing a number of rational and intuitive processes. One practice was scanning for detail embedded in the situation and utilizing this information for subsequent development of a cognitive map. Additionally, all the officers pursued a comprehensive preparation phase that consisted of the creation of worst-case scenarios and planning tactics to effectively respond to these cases. When decision-making was required, the information available through the scanning process and the preparation phases acted as the foundation for the development of the cognitive map that led each officer to successful resolution of their respective cases. This study concluded with areas requiring further research and made recommendation that seek to improve police training practices. / Ph. D.