POLICE INTEGRITY LOST

The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database was recently updated to include approximately 1,200 cases of nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested in the year 2014. The searchable database website now includes summary information on 10,287 criminal arrest cases from the years 2005-2014 involving 8,495 individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers, each of whom were charged with one or more crimes. The arrested officers were employed by 3,429 state, local, and special law enforcement agencies across the United States located in 1,486 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This week we launched The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database. It is a publicly available web-based searchable database of nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested for one or more crimes during the years 2005 through 2012. The database currently includes summary information on 8,006 criminal arrest cases involving 6,596 individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers, each of whom were charged with one or more crimes. The arrested officers were employed by 2,830 state, local, and special law enforcement agencies located in 1,302 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Arrest case data are searchable by location that generate heat-maps and also searchable by specific criminal offenses and offense characteristics. The database will be updated periodically, with additional cases added annually. Arrest cases from the year 2013 will be added during Fall 2017. We anticipate adding 2014 arrest data in late 2018, and so on.

The 244 variable data set in Phil Stinson’s study, Study of Sworn Nonfederal Law Enforcement Officers Arrested in the United States, 2005-2011 (ICPSR 35648), was deposited with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data pursuant to the requirements of NIJ Award No. 2011-IJ-CX-0024. It it available at the Inter-university Consortium of Political & Social Research to qualified university-affiliated researchers as a restricted use data set. For more information, go to http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/35648

By my count, since the beginning of 2005, there have been 82 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers with the general powers of arrest (e.g., police officers, deputy sheriffs, state troopers, etc.) who have been arrested for murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting where the officer shot and killed someone. Of those 82 officers, to date only 30 have been convicted of a crime resulting from the on-duty shooting (14 by guilty plea, 16 by jury trial, and none by a bench trial).

In the cases where an officer has been convicted, it is often for a lesser offense. Only 5 officers have been convicted of murder (in four of those cases the murder convictions were overturned, but the officers were later convicted of federal crimes arising out of the same incident). The only officer in this time frame who was convicted of intentional murder and is now in prison is James Ashby (Rocky Ford Police Department in Colorado). As to the other officers, 11 were convicted of manslaughter, 4 were convicted of voluntary manslaughter, 6 were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, 2 were convicted of official misconduct, 1 was convicted of reckless homicide, and 1 was convicted of federal criminal deprivation of civil rights.

The criminal cases for 36 of the officers ended in a non-conviction: 20 were acquitted at a jury trial, 6 were acquitted at a bench trial, 4 were dismissed by a judge, 5 were dismissed by a prosecutor, and in one instance no true bill was returned from a grand jury. The criminal cases for 16 of the officers are still pending today (including Tensing in Ohio).

Out of the 82 officers charged since the beginning of 2005 with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting, the criminal cases have been concluded for 66 of the officers (30 convicted and 36 not convicted).

In recent days I have received a number of media inquiries regarding police-involved shootings. While there are limited data publicly available, some of the data collected in my NIJ-funded research study of police crime in the United States provide context.

Note though, however, that several gun-related variables were not included in the analyses provided in our draft final technical report that was submitted to the NIJ in June 2014, as these specific variables were supplemental variables added to our study for coding and analyses after we commenced work on the NIJ-funded study. In other words, a few specific gun-related variables were not included in my original dissertation study (2009) nor were they included in our grant application to NIJ during 2011. Rather, these specific gun-related variables were added by me to our data collection instrument in 2012. Since that time, graduate research assistants working with me have gone back and completed supplemental coding on these and other supplemental variables for all of the police crime arrest cases during the years 2005-2011 in our database. In the months ahead we will be conducting additional analyses on gun-related cases in our database of police crime arrests and providing that information to the NIJ at the U.S. Department of Justice.

The study identified 6,724 cases in which nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers were arrested during the years 2005 through 2011. The cases involved the arrests of 5,545 individual sworn officers employed by 2,529 state and local law enforcement agencies located in 1,205 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings indicate that nonfederal law enforcement officers were arrested nationwide during 2005-2011 at a rate of 0.72% officers arrested per 1,000 officers, and at a rate of 1.7 officers arrested per 100,000 population nationwide.

Within the aforementioned arrest cases, there are 664 cases involving an officer who was arrested during the years 2005-2011 for a crime where the arrested officer was alleged to have “pulled, pointed, held, or fired a gun and/or threatened someone with a gun.” The 664 arrest cases involving police misuse of firearms involve 518 individual officers (71 officers had more than one arrest case because of having multiple victims and/or crimes occurring on more than one occasion). More than two-thirds of the criminal cases involving misuse of firearms occurred on-duty (70.5%), but many occurred while the officer was off-duty (29.5%). The majority of officers arrested for crimes involving firearms were arrested by a law enforcement agency that is not the officer’s employing agency (71.1%). Most of the cases involving gun-related crimes allegedly committed by officers were prosecuted in state courts (n = 614, 92.5%).

More than three-fourths of the cases where an officer was arrested for a crime involving firearms involved nonsupervisory patrol officers (77.1%), and the majority were employed by municipal police departments (78%) or sheriff’s offices (11.9%) located in 46 states and the District of Columbia. The states with the highest number of cases involving officers arrested for crimes involving firearms are California (n = 60, 9%), New York (n = 47, 7.1%), Louisiana (n = 44, 6.6%), and Tennessee (n = 41, 6.2%). There were 8 criminal cases in Missouri during the years 2005-2011 involving an officer having allegedly “pulled, pointed, held, or fired a gun and/or threatened someone with a gun.”

Officers arrested during 2005-2011 for crimes involving firearms were charged with a variety of different crimes. In the criminal cases where an officer was alleged to have “pulled, pointed, held, or fired a gun and/or threatened someone with a gun,” the most serious offenses charged, among others, include: aggravated assault (n = 241, 36.3%), murder and nonnegligent manslaughter (n = 71, 10.7%), weapons offenses (n = 63, 9.5%), simple assault (n = 54, 8.1%), robbery (n = 53, 8.0%), intimidation / harassment (n = 50, 7.5%), criminal deprivation of civil rights (n = 29, 4.4%), and negligent manslaughter (n = 10, 1.5%).

As to the criminal cases involving an officer arrested for gun-related murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, less than half of those cases involve crimes that occurred when the arrested officer was on-duty (n = 31, 43.7%), although the majority of gun-related cases where an officer was arrested for negligent manslaughter occurred when the arrested officer was on-dury (n = 10, 83.3%).

Conviction data are missing within our database for many of the gun-related police crime arrest cases (n = 273, 41.1%). In those cases where conviction data are available, officers were convicted on at least one criminal offense charged in over two-thirds of the gun-related cases (n = 266, valid 68%). Arrested officers were known to have been held in custody pending trial in about one-fourth of the gun-related arrest cases (n = 116, valid 25.8%).

Some data are available on victim injuries in the gun-related police crime arrest cases: no victim injury (n = 327, valid 55.2%), victim had minor injuries (n = 67, valid 11.3%), victim had serious injuries (n = 100, valid 16.9%), victim died from their injuries (n = 98, valid 16.6%).

PROJECT ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

The purpose of the research project is to promote police integrity by gaining a better understanding of police crime and agency responses to officer arrests. The study provides a wealth of data on a phenomena that relates directly to police integrity—data that police executives have not previously had access to because this information did not exist in any useable format.

In the previous reporting period we substantially completed tasks 1-4 100% complete, task 5 was 95% complete, task 6 was 75% complete, task 7 was 86.5% complete, task 10 was 82% complete, task 11 was ongoing, and task 12 was 15% complete. Tasks 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, and 16 had not yet been undertaken. On January 28, 2014, we again revised the project timeline. As of the close of business on December 31, 2013, tasks 1-5 are 100% complete, task 6 is 95% complete, task 7 is 97% complete, task 8 is 100% complete, task 9 is 20% complete, task 10 is 95% complete, task 11 is ongoing, task 12 is 20% complete, tasks 13 and 14 are 100% complete, task 15 is 85% complete, and task 16 has not yet been undertaken.

As of the close of business on December 31, 2013, a total of 8,880 police crime arrest cases involving 7,396 individual officers have been logged in our integrated relational, object-oriented, and digital imaging database. The arrested officers were employed by 2,816 nonfederal law enforcement agencies in 1,396 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Of these, 6,799 cases involve 5,580 individual officers arrested for one or more crimes during the time period of January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2011. The officers arrested in years 2005-2011 were employed by 2,339 nonfederal law enforcement agencies in 1,212 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Included in the database are cases from 2012 and 2013 (which are not included in this study), including 1,111 arrest cases for officers arrested during year 2012, and 970 arrest cases for officers arrested during year 2013. Prior to July 1, 2013, there were 8,154 police crime arrest cases (involving 6,853 individual sworn law enforcement officers) that had previously been logged in our database. Thus, during this reporting period we added 726 new police crime arrest cases and 543 more sworn officers to our database. The new cases include 141 additional cases involving 28 individual officers who were arrested during the years 2005-2011. In sum, during this reporting period, we expanded our database of known police crime arrest cases by 8.2% overall (an increase of 2.1% for the study years 2005-2011 arrest cases).

The project utilizes OnBase, an enterprise-level content management (ECM) database system. We continue to make enhancements and deploy customized application integrations to support the research project. The integrated project database includes a digital imaging ECM database with a full-text search optical character recognition (OCR) search engine, a relational and object-oriented database, and an electronic coding instrument. The project database also includes a video file object-oriented database that is integrated within OnBase. The integrated relational and digital imaging database includes electronic case log-in procedures and allows us to structure and search data in different ways for content analyses. The video database is used to triangulate data obtained from television news sources as a supplement to our other database libraries.

Coding of content is completed using a computerized coding instrument that utilizes a customized version of the IBM/SPSS Data Collection / Data Entry Author and Interviewer software application. The coding instrument system pulls information from the relational database into the on-screen coding instrument for each case to be coded, thus reducing coder duplication of effort and the potential for coding errors. We continue to make enhancements to our project database in OnBase. During this reporting period we designed and deployed an e-coding sheet that creates an electronic facsimile of the project’s paper coding sheet for each case that has been coded with the computer-based coding instrument. The e-coding sheets are imported and indexed in OnBase in Microsoft Word (doc.) files so that coded data can be retrieved and viewed without viewing a raw spreadsheet data file. Throughout this project, we have found that training (and routine periodic retraining) of graduate student research assistants and the process of coding the content of case file records is more time-consuming and slower than we anticipated when we developed the project timeline. Implementation of the electronic coding instrument has allowed us to streamline data coding processes, reduce potential coding and data entry errors, and ensure a high degree of intercoder reliability.

The digital imaging database includes 242,998 pages of digital images (consisting of 188,883 scanned pages and 54,115 imported pages). These digital image files consist of 19,526 TIFF case document files, 20,019 TIFF coding sheet document files, 2,479 e-coding sheet MS Word files, and 5,418 PDF PACER document files. Of these, 54,115 pages were added since July 1, 2013 (consisting of 2,663 case document files, 4,510 coding sheet document files, 283 PACER PDF document files, and 2,479 e-coding sheet MS Word files). The PACER files consist of 70,153 pages of federal court docket sheets, pleadings, court orders, sentencing records, and other docket entries. The e-coding sheets consist of 52,059 pages in MS Word document files that were created electronically from an SPSS data file for all of the cases that were coded using the Interviewer electronic coding instrument (thus making it possible to examine coded data for each case in OnBase without having to resort to the original data file spreadsheet). Also included in the database are 1,267 news media video files.

In sum, our enhanced content management system database currently includes more than 244,265 pages and object-oriented files of news articles, court records, news videos, and coding sheets that document the criminal arrests of more than 7,396 police officers since the beginning of 2005. The arrested officers were employed by nonfederal state, local, special, and tribal law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

PROJECT GOALS:

There are three major goals of the project. The first goal of this research is to determine the nature and extent of police crime in the United States. The second goal is to determine what factors influence how a police organization responds to arrests of officers. The third and final goal of the research is to foster police integrity by exploring whether police crime and officer arrests correlate with other forms of police misconduct.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

The project’s principal investigator, Dr. Philip Stinson, delivered a one-hour presentation on the project’s major findings at a mini-conference on police misconduct that was sponsored by the American Psychological Association’s Division on Psychologists in Public Service, Section on Police and Public Safety, in July 2013 as part of the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Honolulu, HI.

DISSEMINATION OF PROJECT RESULTS TO COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST:

Results have been disseminated to communities of interest through the writing and publication of refereed journal articles, magazine articles, and research briefs. We also maintain a project website and blog, and produce a monthly audio podcast that is available on iTunes.

We proactively disseminate our research results to communities of interest. To that end, we have engaged in outreach activities to reach members of communities who are not usually aware of these research activities for the purpose of enhancing public understanding and increasing interest in learning and careers in criminological research. We have published three short research-in-brief articles reporting our research findings in Police Chief, a practitioner-oriented magazine published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. We also make PDF copies of one-sheet research briefs explaining our research studies and findings on our web-site and post timely project-related entries on our blog. Additionally, we distribute an audio podcast on iTunes where we discuss the research project, studies, and related findings.

The web analytic reports for the Police Integrity Lost Project Blog indicate that for the time period July 1, 2013, through December 31, 2013, there were 341 unique visitors to the blog. Traffic to the blog was primarily from the United States (88.569%) where visitors to the blog were located in 119 cities in 37 states. There were also visitors to the blog from 15 foreign countries: India, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, Kenya, Cambodia, Leotho, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Traffic to the blog included organic search traffic (47.5%), direct traffic (39.5%), and referrals (4.9%).

The Police Integrity Lost Podcast is available on iTunes domestically as well as internationally, and interested persons can stream, download, and/or subscribe to the podcast audio files directly from the iTunes client application. Web analytics for the iTunes podcast episodes indicate that for this reporting period there were 1,333 mp3 file hits, indicating that there were 1,333 instances when someone either streamed (listened to) all or part of one of our podcast episodes and/or downloaded mp3 audio files. Of those hits, the largest number of requests directed to our pod server to stream and/or download the mp3 audio files during this reporting period was 141 hits for the “Police Crime Research Findings” podcast episode (Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 13) and 133 hits for the “Police Crime Sexual Misconduct” podcast episode (Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 11).

PLANS FOR NEXT REPORTING PERIOD TO ACCOMPLISH PROJECT GOALS:

As of the close of business on December 31, 2013, tasks 1-5 are 100% complete, task 6 is 95% complete, task 7 is 97% complete, task 8 is 100% complete, task 9 is 20% complete, task 10 is 95% complete, task 11 is ongoing, task 12 is 20% complete, tasks 13 and 14 are 100% complete, task 15 is 85% complete, and task 16 has not yet been undertaken. Currently, one research paper (a study of police sexual misconduct arrests) is under review for publication consideration at a refereed journal. We are also currently writing a second paper that focuses on the victims of police sexual misconduct, which will be submitted to a refereed journal for publication consideration within the next few months. We will be making a research presentation on our study of victims of police sexual misconduct in February 2014 at the annual conference of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We will also continue to produce our monthly podcast episodes for iTunes and disseminate research briefs on the various studies as completed. The project website and blog will also be updated with new postings periodically. The primary focus, however, during the next reporting period is continuing with statistical data analyses, writing, and submitting the final technical report and completing other related items to complete the final requirements of the current NIJ-funded project.

PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY THE PROJECT:

The project has produced four peer-reviewed journal articles, three research brief trade-magazine articles, six one-sheet research briefs, 17 mp3 audio podcast episodes, and 13 research presentations.

IMPACT AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE PROJECT:

The project’s principal investigator, Dr. Philip Stinson, was recently recognized by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., in recognition for his assistance during the past two years in responding to research-related inquiries from the police department.

CHANGES/PROBLEMS WITH THE PROJECT:

A six-month no-cost extension of the project was approved by NIJ on August 14, 2013, because it has taken longer for us to complete the content analysis than originally expected. The new project end date is June 30, 2014. Currently the draft final technical report is due to be submitted no later than March 31, 2014. Pursuant to a newly revised timeline, we now anticipate that the draft final technical report will be submitted on or before April 30, 2014.

The research project includes an integrated relational database of digital images of news articles and court records, websites, and other material from the Internet, such as audio and video files of television news reports related to the cases of interest. The media and communication products are important raw data for criminological and communication research. The data are archived for current and future research projects of the principal investigator, Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D., Ph.D., including but not limited to an ongoing study of police integrity funded by the National Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice.

We employ a range of scholarly methods, including quantitative and qualitative textual and content analyses, experiments, case studies, and historical analysis that may involve comparison of media processes and productions. All of the research may well employ copyrighted material. Pursuant to copyright law it is fair use to (1) create topically based collections as described herein for scholarly use, and (2) store copyrighted materials in collections and archives for an indefinite period of time. From time to time (at the sole discretion of the principal investigator) access to the database archives is made available to scholars and students who wish to access these collections for related research projects.

Fair use applies to personal archiving of copyrights material for scholarly purposes, either immediately or within a set of ongoing research interests, with the expectation of allowing scholarly consultation of it by others, both within the disciplines of criminology and communication, and on an interdisciplinary basis. This research project adheres to the standards promulgated by the Center for Social Media’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. Fair use of any copyrighted materials in the collection, database and archives is subject to the following limitations:

(1) Materials included in the collection are related to the research interests of the project’s principal investigator, Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D., Ph.D.

(2) Material archived in reliance on fair use is intended only for scholarly use, including functions as explaining scholarship results to others and distribution of scholarly results.

(3) The collection, database, and archives will be maintained only until the principal investigator no longer holds the research interests that motivate the collection, or until the collection no longer is required to support published research based on items in it. At that point, the collection will either be destroyed or donated to either an institutional archive or to other scholars pursuing similar research interests. Maintenance of the collection may involve, as appropriate, format migration and back-up copying.

(4) A policy will be developed to open the collection of archived material to others at a later date aimed at limiting access to scholars doing research in the relevant area and establishing appropriate limitations on the purposes to which the materials will be put.

(5) All archived material will be clearly marked as to its source, and whenever possible metadata associated with that material will be preserved.