POLICE INTEGRITY LOST

Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer & Todak’s article Drink, Drive, Go to Jail? A Study of Police Officers Arrested for Drunk Driving has recently been prepublished online by the Journal of Crime and Justice. The purpose of the study is to provide empirical data on cases of police driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol and/or drugs. It identifies events that may have influenced the decision to arrest, including associated traffic accidents, fatalities, officer resistance, the refusal of field sobriety tests, and the refusal of blood alcohol content (BAC) tests. The study is a quantitative content analysis of news articles identified through the Google News search engine using 48 automated Google Alerts queries. Data are analyzed on 782 DUI arrest cases of officers employed by 511 nonfederal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. The study is the only study known to describe police officer DUI arrests at many police agencies across the United States.

Phil Stinson and John Liederbach–together with several colleagues–will present findings of two of their recent research studies related to police crime and police integrity at the annual conference of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in Chicago, IL, on November 15, 2012.

The first presentation, Drunk Driving Cops: A Study of Police Officers Arrested for DUI, 2005-2010, will highlight various predictors of two outcome variables: job loss and criminal case disposition. The study sample consists of data related to 782 DUI cases where 750 sworn officers were arrested during the years 2005-2010. The arrested officers were employed by 511 non-federal state and local law enforcement agencies located in 406 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The second presentation is entitled CHAID Analysis of Drug-related Police Corruption Arrests. This study analyzed data on 221 drug-related cases where non-federal sworn law enforcement officers were arrested during the years 2005-2007. Findings show that drug-related police corruption involves a wide range of criminal offenses, and cocaine is the most prevalent drug. Older officers is are less likely than younger officers to lose their jobs after a drug-related arrest.