Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S.

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:

Document Title: Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law

Enforcement Officers Arrested

Author(s): Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D, Ph.D., John

Liederbach, Ph.D., Steven P. Lab, Ph.D., Steven

L. Brewer, Jr., Ph.D.

Document No.: 249850

Date Received: April 2016

Award Number: 2011-IJ-CX-0024

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this federally

funded grant report available electronically.

Opinions or points of view expressed are those

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect

the official position or policies of the U.S.

Department of Justice.

POLICE INTEGRITY LOST: A STUDY OF

LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS ARRESTED

Final Technical Report

Award Number: 2011-IJ-CX-0024

National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Program

U.S. Department of Justice

Principal Investigator:

Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D, Ph.D.

Telephone: 419-372-0373

E-Mail: [email protected]

Co-Investigators:

John Liederbach, Ph.D.

Telephone: 419-372-1053

E-Mail: [email protected]

Steven P. Lab, Ph.D.

Telephone: 419-372-2326

E-Mail: [email protected]

Consultant:

Steven L. Brewer, Jr., Ph.D.

Telephone: 724-983-2954

E-Mail: [email protected]

Criminal Justice Program

Department of Human Services

College of Health & Human Services

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH 43403-0148

http://www.bgsu.edu/policeintegritylost

January 2016

This project was supported by Award No. 2011-IJ-CX-0024, awarded by the National Institute of

Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and

conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not

necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

ABSTRACT

There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity, and no

government entity collects data on all criminal arrests of law enforcement officers in the United

States. Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers with the

general powers of arrest. These crimes can occur while the officer is either on- or off-duty and

include offenses committed by officers employed by state and local law enforcement agencies.

This study provides a wealth of data on a phenomena that relates directly to police integrity—

data that previously did not exist in any useable format.

The first goal of the study is to determine the nature and extent of police crime in the

United States. The objective for this goal is to determine the incidence and prevalence of

officers arrested. A second goal is to determine what factors influence how an agency responds

to arrests of its officers. Objectives for this goal are to determine whether certain factors

influence agency response and employment outcomes: (a) severity of crimes for which officers

are arrested; (b) level of urbanization for each employing agency; (c) geographic location for

each employing agency; (d) length of service and age of arrested officers; and, (e) criminal case

outcomes. A final goal is to foster police integrity by exploring whether officer arrests correlate

with other forms of police misconduct. Objectives for this goal are to determine whether

arrested officers were also named as a civil defendant in any 42 U.S.C. §1983 federal court

actions during their careers, and to inform practitioners and policymakers of strategies that will

better identify problem officers and those at risk for engaging in police crime and its correlates.

The advent of nationwide, objective, and verifiable data on the law-breaking behavior of

sworn officers and provides potential benefits to law enforcement agencies that connect the

technical expertise of researchers to criminal justice policymakers and practitioners. These data

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

provide direct guidance in three areas. First, the study provides agencies information on the

types of crime that are most frequently perpetrated by police officers. Second, the research

provides information on the relationship between police crimes and other types of misbehavior

that collectively comprise the problem officer. Third, nationwide data on police crimes and the

manner in which arrested officers are organizationally sanctioned provides points of comparison

for law enforcement agencies that confront these problems, as well as information on the degree

to which law enforcement agencies tend to sanction or ignore certain crimes committed by

officers.

This is a quantitative content analysis study of archived records reporting several

thousand arrests of police officers during the years 2005-2011. The primary information source

is the Google News search engine and its Google Alerts email update service. Chi-Square was

used to measure the statistical significance of the association between two variables measured at

the nominal level. Cramer’s V was utilized to measure the strength of the Chi-Square

association. Stepwise binary logistic regression was used to determine which of the predictor

variables are statistically significant in multivariate models. Classification tree analysis was

utilized to uncover the causal pathways between independent predictors and outcome variables.

The Google News searches resulted in the identification of 6,724 cases in which 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 nonfederal 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.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................................14

The Problem of Police Crime ..................................................................................14

The Purpose of the Study .........................................................................................16

Research Design.......................................................................................................17

Findings....................................................................................................................21

Conclusion ...............................................................................................................25

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................29

Statement of the Problem .........................................................................................33

Literature Citations and Review ..............................................................................41

Statement of Rationale for the Research ..................................................................60

METHODS ........................................................................................................................65

Coding and Content Analysis ..................................................................................65

Statistical Analysis ...................................................................................................69

Strengths and Limitations ........................................................................................72

RESULTS ..........................................................................................................................76

Part I: Full Police Crime Data Set Models ...............................................................76

Part II: Sex-related Police Crime Data Set Models ...............................................104

Part III: Alcohol-related Police Crime Data Set Models .......................................124

Part IV: Drug-related Police Crime Data Set Models ............................................139

Part V: Violence-related Police Crime Data Set Models .......................................151

Part VI: Profit-motivated Police Crime Data Set Models ......................................167

Part VII: Employing Law Enforcement Agencies of Arrested Officers ................177

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................188

Discussion of Findings ...........................................................................................189

Implications for Policy and Practice ......................................................................199

Implications for Further Research .........................................................................207

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................210

DISSEMINATION OF RESEARCH FINDINGS...........................................................232

Publications ............................................................................................................232

Presentations ..........................................................................................................235

TABLES ..........................................................................................................................229

Table 1 – Arrested Officers and Agencies .............................................................238

Table 2 – Most Serious Offense Charged ..............................................................239

Table 3 – Victim Characteristics ............................................................................240

Table 4 – Police Crime Arrest Cases: Bivariate Associations of Conviction ........241

Table 5 – Police Crime Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................244

Table 6 – Police Crime Arrest Cases: Bivariate Associations of Job Loss ...........245

Table 7 – Police Crime Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................249

Table 8 – Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Sex-related Arrest Cases ...............................................250

Table 9 – Police Crime:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Sex-related Arrest Cases ..........................254

Table 10 – Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Alcohol-related Arrest Cases ........................................255

Table 11 – Police Crime:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Alcohol-related Arrest Cases ...................259

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Table 12 – Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Drug-Related Arrest Cases ...........................................260

Table 13 – Police Crime:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Drug-related Arrest Cases ........................263

Table 14 – Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Violence-related Arrest Cases ......................................264

Table 15 – Police Crime:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Violence-related Arrest Cases ..................268

Table 16 – Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Profit-motivated Arrest Cases ......................................269

Table 17 – Police Crime:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Profit-motivated Arrest Cases ..................273

Table 18 – Civil Rights Litigation as a Correlate of Police Crime:

Bivariate Associations of Being Named as a Party Defendant

Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 at Some Point during

Law Enforcement Career .......................................................................................274

Table 19 – Logistic Regression Model Predicting Being Named

as a Party Defendant in a Section 1983 Action at Some Point

during Law Enforcement Career ............................................................................277

Table 20 – Arrested Officers and Agencies in Sex-related Cases .........................278

Table 21 – Most Serious Offense Charged in Sex-related Cases ..........................279

Table 22 – Victim Characteristics in Sex-related Cases ........................................280

Table 23 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Sex-related Arrest Cases ........................................................................................281

Table 24 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................282

Table 25 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Sex-related Arrest Cases ........................................................................................283

Table 26 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................284

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Table 27 – Bivariate Associations of Child Victims in

Sex-related Arrest Cases ........................................................................................285

Table 28 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Child Victims ...........................................287

Table 29 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases .....................................................................288

Table 30 – Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................289

Table 31 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases .....................................................................290

Table 32 – Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................291

Table 33 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases ......................................................................292

Table 34 – Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................293

Table 35 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases ......................................................................294

Table 36 – Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................295

Table 37 – Arrested Officers and Agencies in Alcohol-related Cases ..................296

Table 38 – Most Serious Offense Charged in Alcohol-related Cases ...................297

Table 39 – Victim Characteristics in Alcohol-related Cases .................................298

Table 40 – Police DUI Arrest Cases: Incident Events ...........................................299

Table 41 – Police DUI Arrest Cases: Drug-related ...............................................300

Table 42 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Alcohol-related Arrest Cases .................................................................................301

Table 43 – Alcohol-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................302

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Table 44 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Alcohol-related Arrest Cases .................................................................................303

Table 45 – Alcohol-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................305

Table 46 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

DUI Arrest Cases ...................................................................................................306

Table 47 – DUI Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................307

Table 48 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in DUI Arrest Cases ....................308

Table 49 – DUI Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................309

Table 50 – Arrested Officers and Agencies in Drug-related Cases .......................310

Table 51 – Most Serious Offense Charged in Drug-related Cases ........................311

Table 52 – Specific Drugs ......................................................................................312

Table 53 – Victim Characteristics in Drug-related Cases ......................................313

Table 54 – Patterns of Drug-related Police Corruption .........................................314

Table 55 – Drug-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Patterns of Corruption ...................................................315

Table 56 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Drug-related Arrest Cases ......................................................................................316

Table 57 – Drug-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................317

Table 58 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Drug-related Arrest Cases ......................................................................................318

Table 59 – Drug-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................319

Table 60 – Arrested Officers and Agencies in

Violence-related Cases ...........................................................................................320

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Table 61 – Most Serious Offense Charged in

Violence-related Cases ...........................................................................................321

Table 62 – Victim Characteristics in

Violence-related Cases ...........................................................................................322

Table 63 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Violence-related Arrest Cases ................................................................................323

Table 64 – Violence related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................326

Table 65 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Violence-related Arrest Cases ................................................................................327

Table 66 – Violence-related Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................330

Table 67 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases ................................................331

Table 68 – Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................332

Table 69 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases ................................................333

Table 70 – Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................335

Table 71 – Arrested Officers and Agencies in

Profit-motived Cases ..............................................................................................336

Table 72 – Most Serious Offense Charged in

Profit-motivated Cases ...........................................................................................337

Table 73 – Victim Characteristics in Profit-motivated Cases ................................338

Table 74 – Bivariate Associations of Conviction in

Profit-motivated Arrest Cases ................................................................................339

Table 75 – Profit-motivated Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Conviction ................................................341

Table 76 – Bivariate Associations of Job Loss in

Profit-motivated Arrest Cases ................................................................................342

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Table 77 – Profit-motivated Arrest Cases:

Logistic Regression Model Predicting Job Loss ....................................................344

Table 78 – 200 Largest State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # of Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .........................................................345

Table 79 – Nonmetropolitan State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................351

Table 80 – Primary State Police Agencies in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................367

Table 81 – Sheriff’s Offices in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................369

Table 82 – County Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................382

Table 83 – 500 Largest Municipal Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................384

Table 84 – Special State & Local Law Enforcement Agencies in

Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted Alphabetically by Agency Name) .............................................................399

FIGURES .........................................................................................................................403

Figure 1 – Police Crime Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................403

Figure 2 – Police Crime Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................404

Figure 3 – Police Crime:

CART Model Predicting Sex-related Arrest Cases ...............................................405

Figure 4 – Police Crime:

CART Model Predicting Alcohol-related Arrest Cases .........................................406

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Figure 5 – Police Crime:

CART Model Predicting Drug-related Arrest Cases .............................................407

Figure 6 – Police Crime:

CART Model Predicting Violence-related Arrest Cases .......................................408

Figure 7 – Police Crime:

CART Model Predicting Profit-motivated Arrest Cases .......................................409

Figure 8 – CART Model Predicting Being Named as a

Party Defendant in a Section 1983 Action at

Some Point during Law Enforcement Career ........................................................410

Figure 9 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................411

Figure 10 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................412

Figure 11 – Sex-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Child Victims ................................................................413

Figure 12 – Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases:

CHAID Model Predicting Conviction ...................................................................414

Figure 13 – Police Sexual Violence Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................415

Figure 14 – Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases:

CHAID Model Predicting Conviction ...................................................................416

Figure 15 – Driving-While-Female Arrest Cases:

CHAID Model Predicting Job Loss .......................................................................417

Figure 16 – Alcohol-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................418

Figure 17 – Alcohol-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................419

Figure 18 – DUI Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................420

Figure 19 – DUI Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................421

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Figure 20 – Drug-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................422

Figure 21 – Drug-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................423

Figure 22 – Violence-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................424

Figure 23 – Violence-related Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................425

Figure 24 – Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................426

Figure 25 – Officer-involved Domestic Violence Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................427

Figure 26 – Profit-motivated Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Conviction .....................................................................428

Figure 27 – Profit-motivated Arrest Cases:

CART Model Predicting Job Loss .........................................................................429

APPENDIX A: Employing Law Enforcement Agencies:

Rates of Officers Arrested Sorted by # of Full-Time Sworn Personnel ..........................430

Appendix A-1 – Nonmetropolitan State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................430

Appendix A-2 – Primary State Police Agencies in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................446

Appendix A-3 – Sheriff’s Offices in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................448

Appendix A-4 – County Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................461

Appendix A-5 – 500 Largest Municipal Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................463

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Appendix A-6 – Special State & Local Law Enforcement Agencies in

Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by # Full-Time Sworn Personnel) .............................................................478

APPENDIX B: Employing Law Enforcement Agencies:

Rates of Officers Arrested Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers ........................................482

Appendix B-1 – 200 Largest State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................482

Appendix B-2 – Nonmetropolitan State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................488

Appendix B-3 – Primary State Police Agencies in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................504

Appendix B-4 – Sheriff’s Offices in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................506

Appendix B-5 – County Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................519

Appendix B-6 – 500 Largest Municipal Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................521

Appendix B-7 – Special State & Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 1,000 Officers) .......................................................................536

APPENDIX C: Employing Law Enforcement Agencies:

Rates of Officers Arrested Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population ................................540

Appendix C-1 – 200 Largest State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................540

Appendix C-2 – Nonmetropolitan State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................546

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Appendix C-3 – Primary State Police Agencies in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................562

Appendix C-4 – Sheriff’s Offices in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................564

Appendix C-5 – County Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................577

Appendix C-6 – 500 Largest Municipal Police Departments in Study:

Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................579

Appendix C-7 – Special State & Local Law Enforcement

Agencies in Study: Rates of Officers Arrested, 2005-2011

(Sorted by Rate per 100,000 Population) ...............................................................594

APPENDIX D: State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies:

Police Crime Arrest Cases ...............................................................................................598

APPENDIX E: Entity Relationship Diagram of

Stinson’s Police Crime Database .....................................................................................669

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This study is a quantitative content analysis of archived news articles and court records

reporting on the arrest(s) of law enforcement officers in the United States from 2005-2011.

Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers given the general

powers of arrest at the time the offense was committed. These crimes can occur while the officer

is on or off duty and include offenses committed by state, county, municipal, tribal, or special

law enforcement agencies. Police crimes damage the occupational integrity of police, the

organizational legitimacy of the employing agency, and the overall authority and legitimacy of

the law enforcement enterprise. Three distinct but related research questions are addressed in

this study. First, what is the incidence and prevalence of police officers arrested across the

United States? Second, how do law enforcement agencies discipline officers who are arrested?

And, third, to what degree do police crime arrests correlate with other forms of police

misconduct?

The Problem of Police Crime

Surprisingly little is known about the crimes committed by law enforcement officers, in

part because there are virtually no official nationwide data collected, maintained, disseminated,

and/or available for research analyses. Researchers have utilized other methodologies to study

police misconduct and crime in the absence of any substantive official data, including surveys,

field studies, quasi-experiments, internal agency records, and the investigative reports of various

independent commissions delegated to report on this phenomenon within particular jurisdictions.

These methodologies have thus far failed to produce systematic, nationwide data on police

crime.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The lack of data on police crime is clearly a problem, since the development of strategies

to mitigate police crime in the least requires that they be documented and described in some sort

of systematic and generalizable manner. From an organizational perspective, more

comprehensive data could provide comparisons among agencies on rates of police crime, and

subsequently contribute to the development and implementation of policies to deter police crime

and lessen damage to police-community relations in their aftermath. From a scholarly

perspective, the collection, analysis, and dissemination of more comprehensive police crime data

could instigate studies designed to identify significant correlates, explore relationships between

police crimes and more general forms of police deviance, and provide information on how police

culture and socialization potentially contribute to the problem. Scholars have yet to fully pursue

these and other important issues associated with the problem of police crime because we lack

any sort of comprehensive data on the types of crime that police commit and how frequently they

commit them.

The current study demands a conceptual framework that reflects both the broad range of

offenses committed by law enforcement officers and the generalized nature of our research

questions. Thus, the finding of the current study are organized within a conceptual framework

that incorporates five key types of police crime:

 Sex-related Police Crime

 Alcohol-related Police Crime

 Drug-related Police Crime

 Violence-related Police Crime

 Profit-motivated Police Crime

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The study is organized around these five types of police crime. We provide data pertinent to the

three broad research questions within each area, as well as additional data that further describes

the nature and character of police crime both in general and within each of the five types. The

conceptual framework serves to organize data that describes a phenomenon that encompasses a

wide range of criminal behavior. The framework also allows for the presentation and discussion

of data specifically focused on answering the stated research questions; but also, the wealth of

data collected on police crime as part of this project that does not readily fit under one or more of

the specific research questions.

The Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the current 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 law

enforcement executives did not previously have access to because they did not exist in any

useable format. The first goal of this research is to determine the nature and extent of police

crime in the United States. A second goal of this research is to determine what factors influence

how a nonfederal law enforcement organization responds to arrests of officers. A 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.

The purpose for the current study evolved from long-standing obstacles associated with

the collection of data on police crime. The underlying reasons for the current study reflect the

ongoing lack of empirical data on the crimes committed by law enforcement officers—a

situation that relates directly to the limitations of previous methodologies used to collect data on

the phenomenon. Researchers have resorted to a variety of methodologies to learn more about

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

the nature and extent of police misconduct, corruption, or crime. Empirical scholarship has

usually incorporated one or more of the following: (a) officer surveys, (b) agency records, and

clearly contributed to the knowledge base on police crime, but the methodology used in the

present study offers clear advantages in terms of both the scope and quality of potential data on

police crime.

Research Design

Data for the current study were collected as part of a project designed to locate cases in

which sworn law enforcement officers had been arrested for any type of criminal offense(s).

Data were derived from published news articles using the Google News search engine and its

Google Alerts email update service. Google Alerts searches were conducted using the same 48

search terms developed by Stinson (2009). The Google Alerts email update service sent a

message each time one of the automated daily searches identified a news article in the Google

News search engine that matched any of the designated search terms. The automated alerts

contained a link to the URL for the news articles. The articles were located, examined for

relevancy, printed, logged, and then scanned, indexed, and archived in a digital imaging database

for subsequent coding and content analyses. The present study focuses on the identification and

description of the cases in which police officers were arrested during the years 2005-2011.

Content analyses were conducted in order to code the cases in terms of (a) arrested

officer, (b) employing nonfederal law enforcement agency, (c) each of the charged criminal

offenses, (d) victim characteristics, (e) organizational adverse employment outcomes, and (f)

criminal case dispositions. Each of the charged criminal offenses was coded using the data

collection guidelines of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as the coding

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

protocol for each criminal offense category (see U.S. Department of Justice, 2000). Fifty-seven

criminal offenses are included in the NIBRS, consisting of 46 incident-based criminal offenses in

one of 22 crime categories as well as 11 additional arrest-based minor criminal offense

categories. In each case every offense charged was recorded on the coding instrument as well as

the most serious offense charged in each police crime arrest case. The most serious offense

charged was determined using the Uniform Crime Report’s (UCR) crime seriousness hierarchy

(see U.S. Department of Justice, 2004). An additional eight offenses were added following an

earlier pilot study (see Stinson, 2009) because police officers who were arrested often were

charged with criminal offenses not included in the NIBRS (e.g., online solicitation of a child,

indecent exposure, official misconduct / official oppression / violation of oath, vehicular hit-and-

run, perjury / false reports / false statements, criminal deprivation of civil rights).

The primary unit of analysis in this study is criminal arrest case. One of the primary

issues in coding was differentiating between arrest cases with multiple victims and officers who

were arrested on multiple occasions within the study years 2005-2011. Arrest incidents that

involved multiple victims with corresponding criminal charges were assigned an individual case

for each respective victim. Additionally, law enforcement officers who were arrested on

multiple occasions had an arrest case generated in the project database for each respective arrest.

Cases were also coded on Stinson’s (2009) typology of police crime, which posits that

most crime committed by police officers is alcohol-related, drug-related, sex-related, violence-

related, and/or profit-motivated. The types of police crime are not mutually-exclusive

categories. Rather, each type of police crime is coded as a dichotomous variable because crimes

committed by officers often involve more than one type of police crime. Additionally, cases

were coded for the presence of police sexual violence and/or driving while female encounters.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Police sexual violence is operationalized as “those situations in which a female citizen

experiences a sexually degrading, humiliating, violating, damaging, or threatening act committed

by a police officer through the use of force or police authority” (Kraska & Kappeler, 1995, p.

93). Driving while female is operationalized as instances where a police officer stops a female

driver under the pretext of an alleged traffic violation and then abuses the power and authority of

his position to take advantage of a vulnerable motorist (Walker & Irlbeck, 2002, 2003). In some

cases, driving while female encounters escalate into sexual harassment, sexual assault, and in

rare instances, forcible rape.

Secondary data were employed from the Census of State and Local Law Enforcement

Agencies (CSLLEA) (U.S. Department of Justice, 2008) to ascertain demographic data including

the number of full-time sworn personnel and part-time sworn personnel employed by each

agency where arrested officers served. County and independent city were used to verify location

of arrested officers’ employing law enforcement agencies, as well as for use as a key variable to

merge other data sources into the project’s master database and data set. The U.S. Department of

Agriculture’s (2003) county-level urban to rural nine-point continuum scale was used to measure

rurality. Population data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial census in years 2000 and

2010 were utilized for county, independent city, and state populations.

Analytic procedures were undertaken to ensure reliability of the data. An additional

coder was employed to independently code a random sample of five percent of the total number

of cases in the study. Intercoder reliability was assessed by calculating the Krippendorf’s alpha

coefficient across 195 variables of interest in this study on a random sample (n = 290, 4.3%) of

the cases in the study (N = 6,724) (see Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007). The Krippendorf’s alpha

coefficient (Krippendorf’s α = .9153) is strong across the variables in this study. The overall

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

level of simple percentage of agreement between coders across all of the variables in this study

(97.7%) also established a degree of reliability well above what is generally considered

acceptable in content analysis research.

Chi Square was used to measure the statistical significance of the association between

two variables measured at the nominal level. Cramer’s V measures the strength of that

relationship with values that range from zero to 1.0 and allows for an assessment of the

importance of the relationship. Stepwise binary logistic regression was used to determine which

of the predictor variables are statistically significant in multivariate models. Stepwise logistic

regression models are appropriate where the study is purely exploratory and predictive.

Classification tree analysis was utilized as a statistical technique to uncover the causal pathways

between independent predictors and various outcome variables of interest, including job loss, and

conviction. This is an exploratory study because little is known empirically about police crime

arrests and the specific factors responsible for conviction and job loss subsequent to the arrest of

a sworn law enforcement officers.

Strengths and Limitations

The news search methodology utilizing the Google News search engine and the Google

Alerts email update service provided an unparalleled amount of information on police crime

arrests at law enforcement agencies across the United States. The Google News search engine

algorithm offers some clear advantages over other aggregated news databases and the

methodologies employed by previous studies that used news-based content analyses to document

cases of sex-related police misconduct. The Google Alerts email update service provides the

ability to run persistent automated queries of the Google News search engine and deliver real-

time search results.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

There are four primary limitations of the data. First, this research study includes every

case known to the research team of a nonfederal sworn law enforcement officer who was

arrested during the years 2005-2011. Thus, this study is a census of the universe of police crime

arrest cases identified through our search methodology. We do not purport to include every

single instance of a law enforcement officer being arrested. Second, our research is limited by

the content and quality of information provided for each case. The amount of information

available on each case varied, and data for several variables of interest were missing for some of

the cases. Third, the data are limited to cases that involved an official arrest based on probable

cause for one or more crimes. We do not have any data on police officers who engaged in

criminal activity if their conduct did not result in an arrest. Fourth, we note that these data are

the result of a filtering process that includes the exercise of discretion by media sources in terms

of both the types of stories covered and the nature of the content devoted to particular stories.

Despite the noted limitations, the use of news articles as the primary data source is a long

established method of analyzing deviant/illegal police behavior (see, e.g., Lawrence, 2000;

Lersch & Feagin, 1996; Rabe-Hemp & Braithwaite, 2013; Ross, 2000).

Findings

Findings from the study provide three general observations about the nature of police

crime overall. First, police crimes are not uncommon. The study identified 6,724 arrest cases

from 2005-2011 involving 5,545 sworn law enforcement officers. The arrested sworn law

enforcement officers were 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. Sworn law

enforcement officers were arrested at a rate of 0.72 per 1,000 officers and 1.7 per 100,000 of the

population nationwide. Second, police crime is an occupationally-derived phenomenon. Police

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

work is conducive to all sorts of criminal behavior, largely because of plentiful opportunities

provided by the nature of the work and police-citizen interactions. Third, police crime is

complex and multivariate. Police crime can be alcohol-related, drug-related, sex-related,

violence-related, or profit-motivated. These five types of police crime are not mutually

exclusive, and there are numerous significant predictors of (a) each type of police crime, (b)

adverse employment outcomes, and (c) criminal case dispositions. Distinctions between on- and

off-duty police crime are often difficult to make. Aside from these general observations, the

findings can be summarized in terms of both the full data set and the five types of police crime.

The most common most serious offense charged in the cases overall were simple assault

(13%), driving under the influence (12.5%), aggravated assault (8.5%), forcible fondling (5.2%),

and forcible rape (4.8%). Slightly more than one-half of the cases (54%) ultimately resulted in

job loss for arrested officers. The factors that influence whether an arrested officer will be

criminally convicted or lose his or her job are numerous and complex, and include both legal

factors (e.g., most serious offense charged) and extralegal factors (e.g., age, years of service as a

sworn law enforcement officer, relationship of victim to the arrested officer). In terms of case

outcomes, the events of job loss and criminal conviction are not isolated. Job loss provides a

context for the incidence of criminal conviction and vice versa. The number of cases and

officers arrested in terms of the five types of police crime were as follows:

 Sex-related police crime included 1,475 arrest cases of 1,070 sworn officers

 Alcohol-related police crime included 1,405 arrest cases of 1,283 sworn officers

 Drug-related police crime included 739 arrest cases of 665 sworn officers

 Violence-related police crime included 3,328 arrest cases of 2,586 sworn officers

 Profit-motivated police crime included 1,592 cases of 1,396 sworn officers

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sex-related Police Crime

The two most important points in regard to the sex-related crimes include the serious

nature of these events and the prevalence of relatively young victims. Serious cases of police

sexual violence are not isolated events. The study identified a total of 422 forcible or statutory

rapes, 352 cases of forcible fondling, and 94 sodomy arrest cases. Children seem to be

particularly vulnerable to law enforcement officers who perpetrate sex crimes. Almost one-half

of the known victims were children, and the second-most commonly occurring category in terms

of the victim's relationship to the arrested officer was an unrelated child. Arrested officers were

criminally convicted on at least one charge in four-fifths (80%) of the sex-related cases in which

conviction data were available. The simple odds of job loss are 2.8 times greater if the arrested

officer was ultimately convicted of a sex-related crime.

Alcohol-related Police Crime

Job loss in the aftermath of being arrested for an alcohol-related police crime is tied to

organizational characteristics of an arrested officer’s employing state or local law enforcement

agency. Arrested officers employed by law enforcement agencies with 1-99 full-time sworn

personnel lost their jobs in less than half (44.6%) of the alcohol-related cases, and officers

employed by agencies with 100 or more full-time sworn personnel lost their jobs in less than

one-third (29.8%) of the alcohol-related cases.

Sworn law enforcement officers engaging in drunk driving is a major problem and

concern. There were 960 cases of police DUI (driving under the influence) arrests. These police

DUI arrest cases largely provide examples of officers who have lost their exemption from law

enforcement. That is to say, state and local sworn law enforcement officers do not typically

arrest other sworn law enforcement officers, especially for drunk driving. In many of the police

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

DUI arrest cases in this study, however, the drunk driving officer did something in terms of the

incident events that led to being arrested. For example, many of the police DUI arrest cases

involved traffic accidents (51%) often resulting in victim injury (24.1%) or fatalities (4%).

Arrested officers are known to have lost their jobs as sworn law enforcement officers in less than

one-third (29.8%) of the police DUI arrest cases.

Drug-related Police Crime

Drug-related crime by sworn law enforcement officers tends to spawn all sorts of other

kinds of police misconduct and police crime. Personal use of drug does not seem to be the

primary problem in drug-related police crime. Drug-related police crime often involves drug

trafficking, facilitation of the drug trade, and shakedowns of citizens most often associated with

the trade of cocaine and crack. Taken together, cocaine and marijuana account for over one-half

of the drug-related police crime arrest cases. Well over one-half of the drug-related police crime

arrest cases were also profit-motivated police crime.

Violence-related Police Crime

Policing is often violent. A major problem identified in this study, however, is officer-

involved domestic violence. There were 961 cases of officer-involved domestic violence.

Approximately one-third of the cases involving a sworn law enforcement arrested for officer-

involved domestic violence are known to have resulted in the arrested officer losing his or her

job as a result of the arrest. When the victim is currently involved (i.e., current spouse, current

boyfriend/girlfriend), the arrested officer is less likely to be convicted than when the victim is

somebody else in officer-involved domestic violence arrest cases. The simple odds of an officer

losing his or her job after being arrested for a crime relating to officer-involved domestic

violence are greater when the relationship with the victim is more distant. Serious concerns

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

regarding compliance with the gun and ammunition prohibitions of the Lautenberg Amendment

(1996) to the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 for persons convicted of qualifying crimes of

domestic violence are raised by officer-involved domestic violence arrest cases in this study.

There is no exception to the gun prohibition in the federal statute for sworn law enforcement

officers who have been convicted of qualifying misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.

Profit-motivated Police Crime

Most of the profit-motivated crimes occurred at the street-level and involved patrol

personnel. These crimes are more like street crimes than white collar crimes. The most common

most serious offense charged in the profit-motivated police crime arrest cases were unclassified

thefts (16%), false pretenses (theft by deception) (12.5%), drug offenses (11.9%), robbery (6.4%)

thefts from buildings (5.8%), and extortion or blackmail (5.3%). More than two-thirds of the

sworn law enforcement officers arrested for profit-motivated crime lost their jobs (67%) and

more than half of the profit-motivated arrest cases resulted in conviction (57.4%). The single

largest predictor of job loss in profit-motivated police crime arrest cases is when the profit-

motivated crime is also drug-related.

Conclusion

Cases in which sworn law enforcement officers act as criminals—whether dealing drugs,

or driving drunk, or sexually molesting a vulnerable citizen—strike a direct blow to the law

enforcement enterprise and the essence of what it means to be a law enforcement officer: protect

and serve. These cases threaten to undermine public trust in both the authority and legitimacy of

state and local law enforcement organizations, and the work of law-abiding sworn officers who

go about their job selflessly, efficiently, and professionally every day. Police crime as a topic

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

worthy of empirical study however is not clearly understood, and would probably best be

described as untapped or at the very least not sufficiently explored.

The contrast between the topic's substantive weight and comparatively light coverage

within the scholarship is mostly due to an absence of suitable data. The traditional sources of

data and methods of study, whether official statistics, self-report surveys, or direct observations,

either do not exist in any usable format or are ill-equipped to identify, count, or provide the basis

for empirical analyses of instances in which police perpetrate crimes themselves. These cases

have thus far escaped large-scale empirical scrutiny, but they are intrinsically newsworthy

events. Those in the news media need to identify stories that will be of interest to their audience,

and cases of police crime typically include storylines that are clearly newsworthy. This project

utilized a methodology designed to capitalize on the newsworthy character of police crime,

identify these events, and subject them to analyses that have thus far been impossible. Given the

previous unavailability of data and the relative absence of empirical studies dedicated to the

topic, our work should be considered exploratory. The primary aim was to uncover cases of

police crime arrests and to provide the basis for what we hope will become an important

contribution to the establishment of a more substantive and useful line of research on the topic.

Implications for Policy and Practice

The findings of the current study have several direct implications for policy and practice

in state and local law enforcement agencies. First, employing law enforcement agencies should

have written policies to compel mandatory disclosure whenever a sworn officer is arrested for a

crime, as well as whenever a court issues an order of protection against a sworn officer. Second,

it is imperative that employing law enforcement agencies implement a policy of conducting

annual criminal background checks of all current sworn personnel to ascertain if any sworn

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

officer has been arrested or convicted of any crime. The practice of conducting annual criminal

background checks on every sworn law enforcement officer employed will ensure compliance

with the gun and ammunition prohibition provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment (1996) to the

federal Gun Control Act of 1968. Third, law enforcement agencies should have written policies

in place regarding standard agency responses to when a sworn law enforcement officer is

arrested, and the policy should address procedures for both situations where a sworn officer

employed by that agency is arrested as well as when the agency effectuates the criminal arrest of

a sworn law enforcement officer employed by some other law enforcement agency. Finally,

many arrested officers experience an unraveling of their lives, and mental health problems can be

present in some instances. Early intervention and warning systems should be utilized to track

instances of officers being arrested and officers should be referred to employee assistance

programs when appropriate.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Acknowledgements

Adam Watkins provided statistics expertise. Hannah Brewer, Michael Buerger, Melissa

Burek, Chris Dunn, Judith Leary, and Brooke Mathna provided technical expertise. Dan Lee,

Dennis Giever, Paul McCauley, and David Myers offered early encouragement.

The following graduate student research assistants at Bowling Green State University

worked on this project: Evin Carmack, Paige Crawford, Jacob Frankhouser, Maria Gardella,

Breanne Hitchens, Jessica Kirkpatrick, Krista Long, Matthew Roberts, Dennis Roehrig, Andrew

Rudnik, Adam Sierra, Scott Stevenson, Erin Thomson, Natalie Todak, Georgianna Whitely, and

Mallorie Wilson.

The following undergraduate student research assistants at Bowling Green State

University also worked on this project: Christy Adams, Warifa Azeez, Joelle Bridges, Zachary

Calogeras, Vincent Crews, Natalie DiChiro, Charles Eberle, Rachel Fettinger, Madeline Fisher,

Joanna Hanson, Breanne Hitchens, Ryan Hunter, Tanya Korte, Theresa Lanese, Mariah Lax,

Raven Ory, Tiffany Pleska, Ashley Roberts, Taylor Szalkowski, and Mallorie Wilson.

This project was made possible through the guidance of Chief Information Officer John

Ellinger and assistance from numerous Information Technology Services staff at Bowling Green

State University, including Adam Arthur, Chad Brandeberry, Kyle Butler, Patrick Enright, Chad

Fletcher, Michael Good, Danee Gunka, Lauren Hall, Matthew Haschak, Katrina Horvath, Margo

Kammeyer, Clinton LaForest, Bridget Place, Nick Rodgers, Thomas Shuman, Andries Smith,

Chris Wammes, and Deb Wells.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

INTRODUCTION

Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers who are

given the general powers of arrest at the time the offense was committed. These crimes can

occur while the officer is either on- or off-duty and include offenses committed by officers

employed by state, county, municipal, tribal, or special law enforcement agencies. Anecdotes

and journalistic investigations indicate that police officers commit various criminal offenses

including larceny/theft, drug trafficking, driving while intoxicated, domestic assault, and

predatory sex offenses (see, e.g., Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert, 1998). Further evidence of the

crimes committed by police is also contained in the reports of several independent commissions

on police misconduct (Knapp Commission, 1972; Mollen Commission, 1994; Pennsylvania

Crime Commission, 1974).

The occurrence of police crime should be a concern to police executives, scholars, and

the general public. Police crimes damage both the occupational integrity of police and the

legitimacy of the employing police agency. But, surprisingly little is known about the crimes

committed by law enforcement officers. There are no comprehensive statistics available on the

phenomena, and no government entity collects data on criminal arrests of police officers in the

United States (Anechiarico & Jacobs, 1996; Barak, 1995; Kane, 2007). There have been very

few studies that provide specific data on the nature and prevalence of police crime. Reiss' (1971)

classic field research found that officers commonly engaged in on-duty crime, mostly bribe-

taking and petty thefts; but, no other large-scale observational studies attempt to determine the

prevalence of police crime. Scholars have instead been more likely to broach the topic within

the context of more general studies on police corruption or misconduct (Fyfe & Kane, 2006).

Some studies use officer surveys to identify police attitudes toward misconduct or to measure

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

their propensity for criminal behavior under particular scenarios, but these methods are unlikely

to produce valid data on actual police crime because police tend to maintain a code of silence or

provide socially desirable responses to sensitive questions in regard to their own criminal

behavior and/or the criminal behavior of fellow officers (Fishman, 1978; Maguire & Mastrofski,

2000; Maguire & Uchida, 2000).

The lack of statistics and empirical studies on police crime is problematic. First, more

comprehensive data could be used to develop policies to deter police crimes and/or mitigate

damage to police-community relations in their aftermath. Second, data on the correlates of

police crime could provide information on the relationship between police crime and more

general forms of police deviance including corruption, discrimination, and other forms of abuse.

Third, an expansion of this line of research would provide information on the role of police

culture and socialization processes, particularly if these data include both on-duty and off-duty

crimes committed over the course of the career. Scholars have yet to fully pursue these

questions because we lack any sort of comprehensive statistics on the types of crime committed

by police and when and how often they commit them. These exploratory data are necessary to

advance the understanding of police crime.

This study is a quantitative content analysis of archived records consisting of news

articles and court records reporting the arrests of police officers during the years 2005-2011. The

overall purpose of the study is to identify and describe crimes committed by police officers.

Three distinct but related research questions guide this research study. First, what is the

incidence and prevalence of police officers arrested across the United States? Second, how do

law enforcement agencies discipline officers who are arrested? And, third, to what degree do

police crime arrests correlate with other forms of police misconduct?

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The research questions relate to different aspects relevant to the study of police crime and

police integrity more generally. The crimes committed by police officers that are identified and

described in this study encompass the broad nature of crime in general and range from the

mundane to the most serious, a situation that reflects what Ross (2001) observed as the

multidimensional character of police crime. The wide array of criminal offenses committed by

police officers also obviously varies in terms of the research questions identified above,

including the frequency with which they occur, the frequency and types of discipline imposed,

and the degree to which they are associated with other forms of misconduct.

The study of off-duty police misconduct and crime has been complicated by a debate on

whether these concepts include acts committed while an officer is technically off-duty. Several

policing scholars emphasize the occupational origins of police crime and focus on those acts that

occur on-duty under the guise of police authority (Barker & Carter, 1994; Foster, 1966;

Stoddard, 1968) and during the course of an officer’s normal work activities (Barker, 1978;

Ross, 2001). Kappeler et al. (1998) argue that many off-duty crimes should not be considered

police crimes because they do not involve some aspect of an officer’s occupational position to

carry them out. This situation begs questions as to whether off-duty misconduct arises from

specialized law enforcement training, skills, and knowledge, or even prevailing occupational

norms that may serve to legitimize such behavior.

Fyfe and Kane (2006) make a compelling case for the inclusion of off-duty acts in their

study of career-ending police misconduct, an argument that also applies to police crimes. First,

the job provides officers unique criminal opportunities that can be taken advantage of either on-

or off-duty. Second, police officers are more likely to engage in either on- or off-duty crimes in

part because they believe their status as sworn law enforcement officers affords them some

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

degree of exemption from prosecution (see Reiss, 1971; Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, & Todak,

2014). Third, most jurisdictions grant full law enforcement powers to off-duty sworn law

enforcement officers and permit them to carry service weapons. These factors make it difficult

to distinguish between on- and off-duty police behavior because “the knowledge, gun, and badge

that comes with being a police officer” often facilitates the off-duty crimes of police officers

(Mollen Commission, 1994, p. 30). Other studies have raised concerns about the off-duty gun-

involved misconduct of sworn officers (e.g., Commission to Combat Police Corruption, 1998a,

2001a, 2001b, 2010; Fyfe, 1980, 1987, 1988; Kane & White, 2009; Stinson, Liederbach, &

Freiburger, 2012).

The current study demands a conceptual framework that reflects both the broad range of

offenses committed by law enforcement officers and the generalized nature of our research

questions. Thus, the contents of our report are organized within a conceptual framework that

incorporates five key types of police crime:

 Sex-related Police Crime

 Alcohol-related Police Crime

 Drug-related Police Crime

 Violence-related Police Crime

 Profit-motivated Police Crime

The remainder of this report is organized around these five key types. We provide data

pertinent to the three broad research questions within each area, as well as additional data that

further describes the nature and character of police crime both in general and within each of the

five types. The conceptual framework serves to organize data that describes a phenomenon that

encompasses a wide range of criminal behavior. The framework also allows for the presentation

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

and discussion of data specifically focused on answering the stated research questions; but also,

the wealth of data collected on police crime as part of this project that does not readily fit under

one or more of the specific research questions. The latter part of this section introduces the

problems associated with these different types of police crime in sequence. Likewise, the

Literature Citations and Review section of the report presents overviews of the relevant research

literature organized in terms of the five key types of police crime. The Findings portion of this

report also incorporates the same conceptual framework and organizing themes. The final

section of the report discusses our findings and implications of the study both within and across

the key types of police crime.

Statement of the Problem

Scholars have struggled with the task of measuring police integrity because there are

virtually no official nationwide data collected, maintained, disseminated, and/or available for

research analyses (see, e.g., Anechiarico & Jacobs, 1996; Collins, 1998; Kane, 2007; Klockars,

Kutnjak Ivkovic, Harver, & Haberfield, 1997; Kutnjak Ivkovic, 2003; Sherman & Langworthy,

1979; Stinson, Liederbach, & Freiburger, 2010). Complicating the matter is the reality that

police officers are largely exempt from law enforcement because there is a reluctance to enforce

the law against fellow officers (Klockars, Kutnjak Ivkovic, & Haberfield, 2006; Reiss, 1971).

As a result, researchers have resorted to a variety of methodologies in their efforts to learn more

about the nature and extent of police crime, corruption, and misconduct. These include surveys

(e.g., Barker, 1978; Greene, Piquero, Hickman, & Lawton, 2004), quasi-experiments (e.g., Fyfe

& Kane, 2006; Kane & White, 2009, 2013), sociological field studies (e.g., Reiss, 1971;

Sherman, 1978), investigation reports of independent commissions (e.g., Christopher

Commission, 1991; Knapp Commission, 1972; Mollen Commission, 1994; e.g., Pennsylvania

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Crime Commission, 1974), analyses of internal agency records (e.g., Fyfe & Kane, 2006; C. J.

Harris, 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Kane & White, 2009, 2013; Liederbach, Boyd, Taylor, &

Kawucha, 2007), and analysis of criminal justice system records (e.g., Collins, 1998; Kutnjak

Ivkovic, 2005).

These various methodologies have thus far failed to produce systematic, nationwide data

on police crime. These lines of literature do make clear, however, that the phenomenon covers a

wide range of criminal behavior that is difficult to generalize. Ross (2001) was among the first

to recognize the multidimensional nature of police crime. He developed a taxonomy that in part

distinguished the phenomenon in terms of four bipolar distinctions of police criminality.

Likewise, Stinson (2009) developed a typology of police crime as a means to both organize data

on the wide range of acts committed by police officers and to distinguish various types of police

crime. Stinson’s typology of police crime is incorporated in the current study. The section

below includes a statement of the problem associated with the five types of police crime

including: (a) sex-related police crime, (b) alcohol-related police crime, (c) drug-related police

crime, (d) violence-related police crime, and (e) profit-motivated police crime.

The Problem of Sex-related Police Crime

Sex-related police crimes encompass a continuum of acts ranging from less serious forms

of sexual misconduct to more egregious cases that involve violence, including acts that have

been referred to in the research literature as police sexual violence (Rabe-Hemp & Braithwaite,

2013). Police sexual violence has been defined to include acts that are officially recognized and

involve violence or the use of police force (Maher, 2003). Police sexual violence occurs when

the victim experiences “sexually degrading, humiliating, violating, damaging or threatening acts

committed by a police officer through the use of force, fear, intimidation, or police authority”

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

(Kraska & Kappeler, 1995, p. 93). Less serious forms of sexual misconduct include acts

whereby a police officer uses his or her position to “initiate or respond to some sexually-

motivated cue for the purpose of sexual gratification” (Maher, 2003, p. 357).

Opportunities for sex-related police crime abound because officers operate in a low

visibility environment with very little supervision. The potential victims of sex-related police

crime include criminal suspects but also unaccompanied victims of crime (Rabe-Hemp &

Braithwaite, 2013). Cases of sex-related police crime often do not involve direct forms of

violence, because police may be able to perpetrate these crimes on the basis of threats or other

forms of intimidation given their position of authority. Police sexual misconduct and cases of

police sexual violence are often referred to as hidden offenses, and studies on police sexual

misconduct are usually based on small samples or derived from officer surveys that are

threatened by a reluctance to reveal these cases. Rabe-Hemp and Braithwaite (2013) recently

identified the need for national level studies on the phenomenon.

The Problem of Alcohol-related Police Crime

A second type of police crime explored in this study is alcohol-related police crime. In

August 1998, the (New York City) Commission to Combat Police Corruption released a

comprehensive report on the misconduct of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers. The

Commission found that a significant number of cases arose out of misconduct that occurred

while the officers were off-duty. A large number of the misconduct cases analyzed by the

Commission to Combat Police Corruption involved off-duty officers who were intoxicated

(Commission to Combat Police Corruption, 2004). The most prevalent charges in these cases

were driving under the influence and cases where officers had consumed enough alcohol to be

considered unfit for duty. The Commission to Combat Police Corruption report indicates the

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

magnitude of alcohol-related problems among NYPD officers and suggests that these problems

primarily involve both the off-duty consumption of alcohol and cases involving police officers

who drive drunk, a phenomenon we refer to as police driving under the influence (DUI).

Following the outline of the Commission’s findings, this report describes the problem of alcohol-

related police crime in two parts: (a) police crimes that involved the consumption of alcohol, and

(b) police crimes that specifically involve cases of police DUI.

One problem for scholars interested in the study of alcohol-related police crime stems

from the fact that much of it—or at least many of the most visible cases of alcohol-related police

crime—seems to occur while police are technically off-duty (Commission to Combat Police

Corruption, 2004). Virtually all of the existing data on off-duty police misconduct and crime

describes the misbehavior of NYPD police officers. The data are based on either the findings of

independent commissions designed to investigate the city's unique cycle of police scandals or

published research derived from a data set on career-ending misconduct among NYPD officers

from 1975 to 1996 (Fyfe & Kane, 2006; Kane & White, 2009). The existing line of research

provides coverage on the off-duty misbehavior of NYPD officers, but the absence of data on the

phenomenon as it occurs elsewhere raises legitimate concerns in regard to generalizability. The

current study provides much needed data on the alcohol-related police crimes perpetrated by off-

duty police officers as these crimes occur nationwide.

Police DUI—or cases in which police are arrested for crimes associated with driving

while intoxicated—comprises the second part of our description of alcohol-related police crime.

Drunk and/or impaired driving is unquestionably an enormous societal concern (Commission to

Combat Police Corruption, 2009; Shults, Beck, & Dellinger, 2011), and evidence from anecdotes

and journalistic investigations demonstrate that some police drive while impaired themselves

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

(e.g., Castaneda, 2008; Davis, 2008; Fazlollah, 2001, 2003). Aside from anecdotes and the

reports of local journalistic investigations however, there are no systematic data on the problem

of police DUI's. There are no official statistics on the number of officers arrested for DUI-

related offenses, and only one study provides data that describe cases involving police who drive

impaired on a national scale (see Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, & Todak, 2014). Additional data

are clearly necessary to understand and mitigate the problem.

The Problem of Drug-related Police Crime

A third type of police crime explored in this study is drug-related police crime. Police

scandals during the last two decades of the twentieth century exposed dramatic cases of drug-

related corruption in several major American cities. A report of the United States General

Accounting Office (1998) outlined several different drug-related corruption scandals across the

United States during this period. The most widely-recognized scandals occurred in Miami

(Sechrest & Burns, 1992), Los Angeles (Los Angeles Police Department, 2000), and New York

City (Baer, Jr. & Armao, 1995). The scandals within the NYPD gained particular notoriety

because of both the visibility of the NYPD and the egregious crimes perpetrated by the involved

officers. Investigations into the NYPD scandal discovered widespread drug-related corruption

including police who burglarized drug dens, trafficked in stolen drugs, and robbed drug dealers

and their customers (Baer, Jr. & Armao, 1995).

Twenty years ago the Mollen Commission (1994) highlighted the role of cocaine and

crack markets in the production of drug-related police corruption in New York City. Whereas

previous scandals usually arose within the context of payoffs tied to gambling or prostitution

rackets, the Commission described how the burgeoning narcotics trade had become the source

for more “aggressive, extortionate, and often violent” corruption that “parallel[ed] the violent

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

world of drug trafficking” (Baer, Jr. & Armao, 1995, p. 76). The Mollen Commission revealed

how drug corruption tends to instigate various forms of misconduct and in some cases violent

crimes perpetrated by police, at least as these cases unfolded within the largest police agency in

the nation during the 1980s and 1990s. The patterns identified by the Mollen Commission

suggest the need for more recent data to explore the incidence of drug-related police crime since

the 1990s, and the degree to which drug-related police crime occurs within agencies across the

nation.

The Problem of Violence-related Police Crime

A fourth type of police crime explored in this study is violence-related police crime.

Crimes committed by police officers are by their nature special and deserving of scholarly

attention because the law affords police unique rights and responsibilities, including the legal

authority to use coercive force and access to weapons not available to ordinary citizens. The

police are afforded unique opportunities for misconduct and crime that potentially involve

violence including the excessive and/or illegal use of violence against criminal suspects and

other citizens. This report describes the problem of violence-related police crime in two parts:

(a) police crimes involving violence, and (b) cases in which police are arrested for crimes

associated with domestic and/or family violence.

Police use of physical force is synonymous with police violence. Sherman (1980) defines

police violence as behavior by any officer—acting pursuant to their authority and/or power as a

sworn law enforcement officer—that includes any use of physical force (including, but not

limited to, the application of deadly force), whether justified or unjustified, against any person.

Many acts of police violence are never brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities

and never disclosed to the public.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

A second aspect of the problem of violence-related police crime involves what is

commonly referred to as officer-involved domestic violence (Blumenstein, Fridell, & Jones,

2012; Gershon, 2000; Johnson, 1991; Johnson, Todd, & Subramanian, 2005; Sgambelluri, 2000;

Stinson & Liederbach, 2013; Wetendorf, 2000). The movement to recognize officer-involved

domestic violence gained momentum through the last two decades; and, incorporates provisions

of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that defined domestic violence as a national crime

problem and the 1996 enactment of the Lautenberg Amendment to the federal Gun Control Act

(18 U.S.C. § 925) prohibiting individuals—including police officers—from owning or using a

firearm if they have been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence (Lonsway &

Harrington, 2003). In 1999, the International Association of Police Chiefs promulgated a model

policy on the handling of officer-involved domestic violence cases and described domestic

violence in police families as a problem that “exists at some serious level and deserves careful

attention” (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2003, p. 2). These and other initiatives

have worked to establish officer-involved domestic violence as an important issue for police

scholars and executives as well as the general public; but, there is still a lack of empirical data on

the phenomenon.

The Problem of Profit-motivated Police Crime

Profit-motivated police crime involves officers who use their authority of position to

engage in crime for personal gain (see, e.g., Kane & White, 2009, 2013; Stinson et al., 2010;

Stinson, Liederbach, et al., 2012; Stinson, Todak, & Dodge, 2013). The Mollen Commission

(1994) noted that greed is the primary motive behind corruption-based police crime. This is

likely true in the traditional conceptualization of police corruption in the context of, for example,

an officer accepting a bribe as payoff to refrain from law enforcement. It is less clear, however,

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

when an officer while either on- or off-duty sells drugs, shoplifts, commits burglaries or

robberies, or engages in acts of insurance fraud. Fyfe and Kane (2006) recognized this

conceptual problem and—in labeling their reconceptualization as profit-motivated police

misconduct—urged future policing scholars and police administrators to rethink the notion of

police corruption because “police corruption is not as easy to define as we formerly may have

believed” (Fyfe & Kane, 2006, p. xv). Carter (1990a, 1990b) also conceptualized drug-

motivated police corruption as characterized by a profit-driven cycle as one of two behavioral

motivations. Stinson (2009) adopted profit-motivated police crime as the fifth type of police

crime and noted that it is consistent with Ross’ (2001) taxonomy of police crime.

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Literature Citations and Review

Our review of the relevant research literature proceeds from the general to the specific.

First, we cover scholarship relevant to the conceptualization of police crime. These studies

provide definitions for the focus of our research and an identification of the features that

distinguish the phenomenon from the more general topics of police deviance, police misconduct,

or police corruption. This part of the review also outlines studies that describe and specifically

measure the more general forms of police deviance. These studies provide data on behaviors that

sometimes—but not always—involve specific violations of the criminal law by police officers.

The second portion of the review covers research literature more relevant to each of the five key

types of police crime outlined in the preceding section of the report.

The Conceptualization of Police Crime

The study of police crime has thus far been hampered by a degree of conceptual

confusion, mostly due to the tendency of police scholars to consider crimes perpetrated by

officers within studies focused on the more generalized topics of police corruption, deviance, or

misconduct. A quick review identifies the myriad of terms used to define each of these distinct

topics. Wilson (1963) defines police criminality as “illegally using public office for private gain

without the inducement of a bribe, whereas acts of corruption do involve the acceptance of bribes

(p. 190). He further distinguishes police criminality and corruption from brutality, which

includes “mistreating civilians or otherwise infringing their civil liberties” (p. 190). Punch

(2000) distinguishes “crimes committed by criminals in uniform” from acts of police

misconduct, which involve violations of administrative rules that are typically investigated and

sanctioned internally by the police organization (pp. 302–303). Ross (2001) provides a

multidimensional taxonomy of police crimes based in part on whether the act was (a) violent, (b)

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

motivated by profit, and/or (c) perpetrated on behalf of the individual or the organization.

Sherman (1978) focuses on corruption as a form of organizational deviance, and does not

distinguish between police corruption and police crime.

Scholars have tended to consider acts of law violation together with other forms of police

deviance that do not involve specific violations of the criminal law, as well as those whose legal

status as crimes tends to shift over time, such as bribery (see, e.g., Anechiarico & Jacobs, 1996,

pp. 6–7). Fyfe & Kane (2006) point out that the various forms of police deviance are not

mutually exclusive—some forms of corruption and misconduct are police crime and all forms of

police crime constitute misconduct. Crimes, however, that do not involve the misuse of

authority cannot be defined as acts of corruption (Fishman, 1978). The distinction among the

various forms of deviance is that all police crimes involve a violation of criminal statutes and are

subject to criminal prosecution, but not all acts of police corruption or misconduct violate

criminal laws (Wilson, 1963). The conceptual confusion stems largely from the failure to

distinguish specific violations of the criminal law whether or not they constitute an abuse of

authority. The current study focuses on crimes committed by police officers that involved an

arrest on at least one criminal charge to avoid this confusion and focus scholarly attention on

behaviors that have thus far remained invisible to researchers because they have often been

lumped together with more general acts of corruption, deviance, and/or misconduct (Box, 1983;

Jupp, Davies, & Francis, 1999; Kutnjak Ivkovic, 2005).

Most of what we know about police corruption and other forms of police deviance is

from the investigations of independent commissions in the wake of police scandals including the

Knapp Commission (1972) report, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission (1974) report, and the

Mollen Commission (1994) report. These investigations were not designed to investigate police

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

crimes per se, but their findings in regard to corruption and other forms of misconduct shed some

light on the crimes committed by officers. The commissions collectively demonstrated a

problem that went well beyond the usual claim that police deviance is limited to a few “rotten

pockets” of morally deficient officers, but their findings supplied only limited information on the

true nature and extent of crimes committed by officers (Sherman, 1974, p. 7; Skogan & Frydl,

2004).

The Knapp Commission (1972) acknowledged that bribe-taking and petty thefts were

pervasive. The investigation also identified small groups of officers referred to as “meat-eaters”

who “spend a good deal of their working hours aggressively seeking out situations they can

exploit for financial gain, including gambling, narcotics, and other serious offenses” (p. 65).

Twenty years later, the Mollen Commission recognized a shift in the nature of corruption

“primarily characterized by serious criminal activity” closely associated with the drug trade,

including wide-scale drug abuse and trafficking among officers (Mollen Commission, 1994, p.

17). The trend was closely tied to an explosion of crime opportunities provided by open-air

markets for crack cocaine that sprouted during the early 1990s.

Researchers have used police agency records to study officer misconduct that in some

cases includes specific violations of the criminal law. Fyfe and Kane (2006) studied the career-

ending misconduct of a sample of 1,543 New York City Police Department officers employed

during the period 1975 through 1996 (see also Kane & White, 2009, 2013). They identified

eight separate categories of career-ending misconduct, and found that officers commonly

engaged in several different types of profit-motivated crime including bribe-taking, grand

larceny, insurance fraud, burglary, petit larceny, receiving stolen property and welfare fraud.

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Officers also engaged in a wide variety of crimes while they were off-duty, including domestic

violence, driving while intoxicated, bar fights, and sexual offenses.

Discussions on the conceptualization of police crime lead naturally to debates on

appropriate responses to the phenomenon including various forms of organizational and court-

based dispositions. There is a limited body of empirical evidence in regard to factors that

influence the imposition of organizational sanctions in cases of career-ending police misconduct

based on the study of a sample of 1,543 NYPD officers employed from 1975 through 1996 (Fyfe

& Kane, 2006; Kane & White, 2009, 2013). The research demonstrated that the NYPD was

more likely to terminate employment in cases of serious misconduct where there was evidence

that an officer violated the criminal law and/or a major administrative policy. The NYPD

commonly used suspension(s) to respond to less serious forms of misconduct. The best

predictors of career-ending police misconduct were disciplinary and reliability problems at

previous jobs, prior criminal involvement, and the mean number of complaints against an

individual officer per year. Overall, the imposition of some form of organizational discipline

was most likely in cases where officers: (a) exhibited serious behavioral problems, and (b)

violated rules that “conflicted with the proper functioning of the organization” (Kane & White,

2013, p. 163).

The existing research on organizational dispositions—based almost exclusively on the

experience of NYPD officers—remains difficult to interpret in regard to generalizability and how

police agencies nationwide respond to cases of police misconduct. The logical source of data on

organizational dispositions are agency records and personnel files; but, these data are not

commonly made available to researchers, the media, or the public. Kane and White (2013)

summarize some more general limitations associated with the use of agency records in the study

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

of organizational responses to police misconduct. These data are in some ways inherently biased

since they largely represent the organizational perspective on the process of discipline. Agency

records also commonly present an incomplete picture of the disciplinary process. For example,

police organizations often suggest resignation as an alternative to termination for officers

involved in serious forms of misconduct, a situation that threatens the validity of data based

exclusively on the final documented organizational disposition of these sorts of cases. Problems

associated with generalizability and an overall dearth of data are exacerbated in regard to the

issue of legal rather than organizational dispositions. We are aware of no existing studies

focused on the legal disposition of police crime cases in terms of the imposition of adverse

employment outcomes aside from those derived from data collected as part of the current project

(e.g., Stinson, Liederbach, et al., 2013, 2012; Stinson, Brewer, Mathna, Liederbach, &

Englebrecht, 2014; Stinson & Liederbach, 2013; Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, & Mathna, 2014;

Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, & Todak, 2014; Stinson et al., 2010; Stinson, Todak, & Dodge,

2015; Stinson, Reyns, & Liederbach, 2012; Stinson & Watkins, 2014). One primary goal of this

project is to describe and analyze the organizational and legal disposition of cases of police

crime, including officers arrested for crimes that related to sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, and/or

were profit-motivated.

In Garrity v. New Jersey (1967) the United States Supreme Court discussed the

difference between adverse employment actions in the nature of disciplinary investigations

against officers for police misconduct and initiation of criminal proceedings against a police

officer for the same underlying event. The Court held that a police officer is required to answer

questions truthfully in internal disciplinary investigations where the officer would be subject to

termination for failing to answer the questions, but that statements made in that context by a

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

police officer cannot then be used in any criminal proceeding against the officer because the

statements were coerced. As a result, many investigations into police misconduct that potentially

involve police crime are stymied because a decision must be made by police administrators

whether to (a) elect to gather information by questioning an officer in a disciplinary matter, or

(b) forego any questions of an officer administratively and proceed with a criminal investigation

against the officer. If the second option is elected, then the officer would be entitled to the right

against self-incrimination that is afforded to any suspect or defendant in a criminal investigation

pursuant to the Court’s holding in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). In some instances, law

enforcement agencies simply allow an officer to resign in lieu of initiation of criminal

proceedings against a sworn officer as an effort by the agency to quietly resolve a matter without

public disclosure of police misconduct.

Review on Sex-related Police Crime

The first type of police crime explored in this study is sex-related police crime.

Scholarship on the topic has been comparatively sparse. Early studies focused broadly on

behaviors that constituted police sexual misconduct and acts such as on-duty consensual sex

between officers and female adult citizens. Barker (1978) surveyed police officers who indicated

that consensual sex on-duty was quite prevalent, especially in patrol cruisers. Sapp (1994)

provided data derived from in-depth interviews of police. The study included qualitative—

sometimes lurid—descriptions of seven different forms of police sexual misconduct, including

cases wherein police spent entire shifts seeking opportunities to view unsuspecting females

partially clad or nude, the sexual harassment of crime victims and criminal suspects, and sexual

contacts between officers and underage females. Some of the behaviors described within the

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sapp study clearly involved sexual coercion rather than consensual sex between police and

willing citizens.

Kraska and Kappeler's (1995) exploratory study on police sexual violence incorporates a

wide continuum of behaviors that range from comparatively unobtrusive forms of sex-related

misconduct (e.g. voyeurism and other invasions of privacy) to obtrusive forms of sexual violence

(e.g. sexual assault and rape). Kraska and Kappeler study the phenomenon within the context of

existing police scholarship and scholarship derived from the feminist literature that more clearly

defines police sexual violence as a form of gender bias and the systematic differential treatment

of females in the criminal justice system. They identified 124 cases of police sexual violence

through both published news reports and federal lawsuits arising under 42 U.S.C. §1983

involving police accused of sexual misconduct. Close to one-third of the cases (30%) identified

involved rape and/or sexual assault. More than one-half of the cases involved strip searches.

Published news reports tended to identify more serious forms of police sexual violence, while

cases that involved strip searches and less serious acts were more likely to be identified through

the federal lawsuit data. Cases of police sexual violence were widely dispersed geographically,

and Kraska and Kappeler (1995) suggest that the cases identified in their study were likely the

“tip of the iceberg” (p. 97). They indicated that the organizational and occupational culture of

policing provides officers ample opportunity to engage in sex-related misconduct and crime, and

note the obstacles to reporting these forms of misconduct confronted by victims including the

fear of retaliation and forms of secondary victimization similar to that experienced more

generally by victims of sexual assaults (see, e.g., LaFree, 1989).

More recently, Maher provided data on police sexual misconduct derived from surveys of

both officers (Maher, 2003) and police chiefs (Maher, 2008). Surveys of officers demonstrate

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

that they believe less serious forms of sexual misconduct occur frequently, and are facilitated by

the opportunity structure provided by the job. The majority of officers indicated that they had

not been pressured to engage in acts of sexual misconduct, but, they were unlikely to report less

serious forms of the phenomenon. Surveyed police chiefs believed that less serious forms of

sexual misconduct were common and serious forms of sexual misconduct and crime were rare.

The data suggest that most police agencies do not have any written policies that expressly

prohibit sexual misconduct (Maher, 2008). Walker and Irlbeck (2002) describe cases that they

refer to as "driving while female," wherein police initiate bogus traffic stops to harass,

intimidate, and/or sexually assault female motorists.

Rabe-Hemp and Braithwaite (2013) recently published a study focused on police sexual

violence and the problem of officer shuffle, wherein police involved in various forms of sexual

misconduct and crime escape punishment and maintain their law enforcement career through

employment with another police agency. Data were derived through a content analysis of

published newspaper accounts of police sexual violence from 1996-2000. They identified 106

cases of police sexual violence. Close to one-half (41.5%) of the cases involved repeat police

perpetrators. Repeat offenders were more likely than first time offenders to victimize juveniles.

Review on Alcohol-related Police Crime

The second type of police crime covered in this study is alcohol-related police crime.

This report describes the problem of alcohol-related police crime in terms of both the off-duty

consumption of alcohol and the phenomenon of police DUI. As we previously described,

virtually all of the existing empirical data on off-duty police misconduct describes the

misbehavior of NYPD officers primarily through the reports of the Commission to Combat

Police Corruption (1998b, 2004). The Commission recommended specific policies designed to

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

mitigate problems associated with off-duty alcohol abuse, including provisions to expand the

definition of unfit for duty to include intoxicated off-duty officers and prohibitions against

carrying an off-duty weapon while intoxicated (Commission to Combat Police Corruption,

1998b). Fyfe and Kane's (2006) classification of police misconduct includes driving while

intoxicated within the category of off-duty public order crimes, but they do not provide specific

data that distinguishes misconduct that includes the abuse of alcohol. Kane and White (2009)

provide several descriptions of cases that involved intoxicated off-duty officers engaged in bar

fights, drunk driving, and personal disputes.

Despite the findings of Kane and White (2009), the lack of existing scholarship on

alcohol-related police misconduct and crime is even more acute in the specific case of police

DUI. Reviews of the empirical literature failed to uncover any scholarly research specifically

focused on the phenomenon of police DUI other than the research by Stinson, Liederbach,

Brewer, and Todak (2014) using data from the current study on police crime. Some recent

evidence indicates that officers and agencies often minimize or ignore the problem of impaired

driving among police. A Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey reported that over one-third of

responding state and local police agencies would consider police applicants with a prior DUI

conviction (Reaves, 2012). Additionally, a majority of officers responding to a survey on police

integrity said they would not report a fellow officer who had a minor traffic accident while

driving under the influence of alcohol (Klockars, Kutnjak Ivkovic, Harver, & Haberfield, 2000).

Recent journalistic investigations in Milwaukee (Barton, 2011), Denver (McGhee, 2011), and

New York City (Paddock & Lesser, 2010) reported disturbing cases in which police found to

have driven drunk were either not arrested and/or otherwise minimally punished.

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Scholars have long recognized the existence of alcohol-related problems in policing and

have identified factors that seem to promote excessive drinking among police (Dietrich & Smith,

1986; Dishlacoff, 1976; Hurrell, Jr. et al., 1984; Violanti, Marshall, & Howe, 1985). Violanti et

al. (2011) group these factors in terms of (a) officer demographics, (b) stress, and (c) police

culture. Excessive alcohol consumption is certainly due at least in part to demographics and the

over-representation of young males among police officers, in particular patrol officers. Men are

more likely to have problems with alcohol than women, and alcohol use disorders are most

prevalent among 18-24 year-olds (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2008).

Age and gender have also been specifically correlated with drinking and driving. Alcohol

dependence at the age of 21 has been found to significantly predict persistent driving while

drinking episodes (Begg, Langley, & Stephenson, 2003) and young adult males have been found

to be significantly more likely to engage in driving while drinking than other cohorts (Chou et

al., 2006).

There is an extensive line of research on how stress may influence excessive drinking

among police. Abdollahi (2002) provides a comprehensive overview of this literature in terms of

factors that include (a) intra-interpersonal stressors, (b) job-related stressors, and (c)

organizational stressors. Violanti et al.'s (2011) survey of police found that stress derived from

failed interpersonal relationships increased the likelihood of hazardous drinking behavior,

especially among male officers. A number of studies attribute excess alcohol consumption to the

failure to properly cope with stress that is related more specifically to the job, including those

derived from a perceived lack of organizational support and problematic encounters with citizens

(Anshel, 2000; Ayres, Flanagan, & Ayres, 1992; Kohan & O’Connor, 2002). Leino et al. (2011)

recently explored how job-related exposure to violence and the absence of adequate debriefing

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

procedures may increase levels of drinking among police. Swatt, Gibson, and Piquero (2007)

utilize Agnew's general strain theory to explain how anxiety/depression mediate the relationship

between work-related strain and drinking prevalence among police officers.

Studies focused on the drinking behavior of police also underscore the impact of police

culture. Police culture has been referred to as essentially a drinking culture that often includes

frequent social interactions that involve the consumption of alcohol (Violanti et al., 1985).

Various occupational factors have been found to increase the risk of alcohol and drug problems

(Fennell, Rodin, & Kantor, 1981; Hingson, Mangione, & Barrett, 1981). Indeed, Macdonald,

Wells, and Wild (1999) specifically found that the existence of a drinking subculture at work was

associated with the development of alcohol problems. Lindsey and Shelley (2009) found that

police officers most at risk for drinking problems admitted that fitting in was the primary reason

they engaged in alcohol consumption. Officers may also be discouraged from reporting problem

drinking or drunk driving among fellow officers in order to uphold other widely-recognized

values shared among police including secrecy and solidarity (Banton, 1964; Skolnick, 1994).

Review on Drug-related Police Crime

The third type of police crime covered in this study is drug-related police crime. This

line of research covers three relevant issues including (a) the etiology of drug-related

misconduct, (b) the classification of drug-related misconduct, and (c) the prevalence of drug use

by police. Police scholars typically attribute drug-related corruption to factors associated with

the organization of police work and the occupational culture of police. Stoddard (1968)

emphasizes the role of police culture and the nature of police work in the causation of what he

referred to as blue coat crime. Kraska and Kappeler (1988) underscore the prevalence of on-the-

job opportunities for patrol officers to become involved in the drug trade in some fashion,

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

including lack of direct supervision, drug availability, and exposure to drug users and dealers.

The report of the General Accounting Office (1998) highlights the influence of deviant police

subcultures that both promote drug corruption and protect police who adhere to deviant

subcultural norms such as secrecy, loyalty, and cynicism about police work and the criminal

justice system. Carter and Stephens (1994) view substance abuse as primarily a “job-related

condition” among police, particularly those working undercover vice in drug-infested beats (p.

107).

Carter (1990b) provides the most often cited classification scheme for drug-related

corruption. His typology identifies two forms of drug corruption. Type 1 or traditionally-

conceptualized drug corruption involves officers motivated by illegitimate goals including

personal profit. This form of drug corruption includes the extortion and robbery of drug dealers

and the acceptance of bribes to protect them. Type 2 drug corruption is comprised of officers

motivated by organizationally-derived legitimate goals ostensibly tied to the arrest and

conviction of dealers and users. This form of drug corruption includes perjury, violations of

criminal procedure, and the planting of criminal evidence. Aside from its utility as an

organization scheme, Carter's typology demonstrates how the drug trade tends to give rise to

many different forms of police crime. The drug trade provides opportunities for personal gain

through payoffs, shakedowns, robberies, and opportunistic thefts, as well as types of misconduct

tied to drug enforcement goals and violations of the rights of criminal defendants including

perjury and the planting of evidence. Officers who are recreational drug users expose

themselves to street-level dealers and associated manipulation and coercion (Kappeler et al.,

1998). Carter's (1990b) conclusions about the impact of these markets on the nature of police

corruption closely mirror those of the Mollen Commission (1994) by noting that “the nature of

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

corruption has changed, particularly with respect to police drug users, the emergence of crack

houses as easy targets, and the frustration with drug-law enforcement associated with the

extraordinarily high volume of drug traffic” (Carter, 1990b, pp. 96–97).

Very little is known about the prevalence of drug use among police officers

(Mieczkowski, 2002). Kraska and Kappeler (1988) provide what is widely-cited as the only

empirical description of on-duty drug use by police through their study of one medium-sized

police agency. They found that 20% of the officers used marijuana on duty at least two times per

month, and that 10% had used other non-prescribed controlled substances while on duty,

including hallucinogens, stimulants, and/or barbiturates. The study provides initial evidence to

suggest that the problem of on-duty drug use by police is not limited to large urban departments,

although data derived from a much larger sample of agencies is needed to assess the prevalence

of drug use among police across various types of jurisdictions.

Official drug tests provide another source of data on the degree to which police use drugs,

but most of this evidence describes testing results from a single agency, and no entity collects

comprehensive data on the number of police who test positive overall. One journalistic

investigation reported a 1.1% failure rate (75 officers) among Boston Police Department police

tested from 1999-2006, as well as the failure of 14 Los Angeles Police Department officers drug

tested from 2000-2006. Over 81% of the positive tests in Boston involved the use of cocaine,

and police executives indicated that they believed cocaine had surpassed marijuana as the drug of

choice among police (Smalley, 2006). More recent data derived from self-report surveys of

officers in a single agency in Australia suggest that police use a wider variety of drugs including

marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy, heroine, ketamine, and non-prescribed steroids

(Gorta, 2009).

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Lersch and Mieczkowski (2005a) report results of drug tests conducted in a large police

agency in the Eastern United States in which very few officers tested positive (~ .005%).

Scholars often point out, however, that official drug tests are likely influenced by (a)

“announcement effects” and the fact that officers employed by these agencies are aware of

testing protocols (Lersch & Mieczkowski, 2005a, p. 292), and (b) the method of drug testing.

Cocaine is the most frequently detected drug based on hair analysis, and marijuana is the most

frequently detected drug based on urinalysis (Lersch & Mieczkowski, 2005a; Mieczkowski,

2002; Mieczkowski & Lersch, 2002).

Review on Violence-related Police Crime

The fourth type of police crime explored in this study is violence-related police crime.

According to Sherman (1980), police use of physical force is synonymous with police violence,

defining police violence as behavior by any police officer—acting pursuant to their authority

and/or power as a sworn law enforcement officer—that includes any use of physical force

(including, but not limited to, the application of deadly force), whether justified or unjustified,

against any person. Based on Sherman’s definition, explanations for police violence in the

existing literature have been quite varied (e.g., Alpert & MacDonald, 2001; Garner, Maxwell, &

Heraux, 2002; Griffin & Bernard, 2003; Lersch & Mieczkowski, 2005b; Manzoni & Eisner,

2006; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002; Terrill, Paoline, & Manning, 2003; Terrill & Reisig, 2003).

Stinson, Reyns, and Liederbach (2012) use data from the current study to identify and describe

cases that involve the criminal misuse of conductive energy devices—purportedly a less-than-

lethal alternative to firearms—so studies that describe the factors that influence police use of

force more generally during citizen encounters seem particularly relevant.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Police scholars have examined the factors that influence the use of force more generally

since the 1960s, and quantitative studies have focused on the relationship between police force

and a wide range of predictors including situational, individual, organizational, and community-

level variables. Overall, virtually all studies that compare situational factors to others such as

officer, organizational, and community-level factors have found that situational factors exert the

most powerful influence on the decision to use coercive force (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). Police

are more likely to resort to violence in encounters that include physically aggressive suspects and

citizens who resist officer attempts to control the situation. Researchers have most often

investigated the influence of situational factors in cases that involve the use of deadly force by

police (e.g., Alpert & Smith, 1999; Binder & Scharf, 1982; Blumberg, 1983; Fyfe, 1981). This

line of research has primarily emphasized the direct relationship between the level of situational

risk faced by an officer and the specific decision to employ deadly force. Situational risk refers

to the immediate scenario within which police must decide to shoot or not shoot. Did the suspect

assault the police? Was the suspect armed? Did the suspect shoot at police? These situational

factors appear to explain the use of deadly force more directly than other variables. Terrell's

(2003) research based on observational data suggests that situational factors are also the primary

determinants of the use of non-deadly force by police. He examined the relationship between

five levels of suspect resistance (none, passive, verbal, defensive, and active), and four levels of

non-lethal force (none, verbal, restraint, and impact) and found that force levels were

significantly related to levels of suspect resistance.

The review to this point has outlined prior research that examines the general use of

police force and its predictors, whether situational, individual, organizational, and/or community-

level factors. Distinctions as to whether the use of police force in a particular case will be

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

defined as “justified” or “excessive” or perhaps even “criminal” are subjective and are made

case-by-case based largely on the discretionary decisions of actors within the criminal justice

system, including police and prosecutors. Most states provide guidelines for the police use of

force in existing criminal codes, and local prosecutors may choose to prosecute police who

engage in behavior that violates the criminal law. The level of force used to complete an arrest

or otherwise protect public safety must be commensurate with the crime committed and

proportionally related to its necessity (Cheh, 1996; Klockars, 1996). Police officers who use

“excessive” levels of force may be criminally prosecuted for a range of offenses including

homicide, manslaughter, and assault. Comprehensive statistics on the criminal prosecution of

police are generally neither maintained nor available to scholars or the public, so an empirically-

based identification of the specific factors that distinguishes cases on the basis of whether force

was “justified” or “criminal” is not currently possible. One primary goal of the this project is to

utilize media-based data in order to identify and describe cases of violence-related police crime

that are distinguished by the fact that they involved the criminal arrest of a police officer(s) and

were thus defined by the system as “criminal,” at least prior to the adjudication phase of the case.

This type of police crime also incorporate cases that involve police arrested for crimes

associated with domestic and/or family violence, a phenomenon increasingly referred to in the

research literature as officer-involved domestic violence. There have been very few empirical

studies designed to estimate the prevalence of officer-involved domestic violence—all of them

based on self-administered surveys of police and/or their spouses. Johnson (1991) reported that

40% of responding officers admitted that they had behaved violently toward their spouse at least

once during the previous six months, and 20% of the spouses in a concurrent survey reported that

their spouse had abused either them or their children in the previous six months. Neidig, Russell,

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

and Seng (1992) and Neidig, Seng, and Russell (1992) reported that 41% of responding male

officers admitted that at least one incident of physical aggression occurred in their marital

relationship during the previous year, and 8% of those reported the occurrence of “severe”

physical aggression including choking, strangling, and/or the use or threatened use of a knife or

gun (Neidig, Russell, et al., 1992, p. 32). Reported rates of officer-involved domestic violence

are highest among officers who are currently divorced or separated from their spouses.

The literature on officer-involved domestic violence is filled with anecdotes that

underscore the occupationally-derived etiology of violence within police families. Factors

associated with police culture and the job that have been discussed within the context of officer-

involved domestic violence include: (a) violence exposure, (b) authoritarianism, and (c) problem

drinking. Researchers suspect higher rates of domestic violence among police most exposed to

work-related violence based on studies that document a relationship between violence exposure

and the personal well-being of police officers; and, the research literature on the relationship

between work and family and the possibility of spillover effects (Johnson et al., 2005; Mullins &

McMains, 2000). Officer surveys identify violence exposure as one of the most significant

work-related stressors for police (Gershon, 2000), and studies based on clinical trials describe

links between police stress and poor family functioning (Neidig, Russell, et al., 1992). Police

training in authoritarian styles and the regular exercise of coercive force may influence marital

interactions and promote domestic and/or family violence (Greene-Forsythe, 2000; Johnson,

1991; Johnson et al., 2005; Sgambelluri, 2000).

Police are trained to exert power and use coercive force to accomplish their goals and

gain compliance from citizens (Bittner, 1978; Skolnick, 1994). The regular exercise of coercion

and authoritarianism may spillover to the home in cases where police treat family members as

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

criminal suspects. Johnson (1991) identified a link between authoritarian spillover and high

levels of strain in police families; and, Johnson et al.'s (2005) survey of police indicates that

authoritarian spillover mediates the relationship between exposure to violence on the job and

domestic violence among police. Problem drinking is another aspect of the work-family

spillover that may contribute to the incidence of violence in police families. The research that

associates officer-involved domestic violence with problem drinking cite many of the same

occupationally-derived factors covered in the previous section on alcohol-related police crime

including (a) intra-interpersonal stressors, (b) job-related stressors, and (c) organizational

stressors.

Much of the remaining research literature on officer-involved domestic violence focuses

on the unique vulnerabilities of domestic violence victims in police families and factors that

conspire to discourage exposure of these crimes and contribute to the hidden nature of the

problem. While scholars have long demonstrated that victims of domestic and/or family

violence are often reluctant to officially report these crimes, the fact that perpetrators of officer-

involved domestic violence are police themselves creates particular problems and barriers to

reporting. First, they must consider the fact that perpetrators possess and are trained to use lethal

weapons. Second, police perpetrators are likely to know the location of domestic violence

shelters and have professional experience that can be used to manipulate the system and shift

blame to the victim (Gershon, 2000; National Center for Women & Policing, 2005). Third,

decisions to report incidents of officer-involved domestic violence are also likely influenced by

the cultural values of secrecy and loyalty, wherein police (and their families) are expected to

“never blow the whistle” and expose police perpetrators (Johnson et al., 2005; Shernock, 1995,

p. 623). Fourth, domestic violence victims in police families also may be concerned about

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

consequences associated with provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment (1996) that prohibit

police from owning or using a gun if they are convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic

violence.

Review on Profit-motivated Police Crime

The Mollen Commission (1994) found that greed is the primary motive behind police

crime that constitutes corruption. This is true if police corruption is conceptualized in the

traditional context of acts such as accepting bribes to refrain from law enforcement. It is,

however, “less clear whether officers who perform robberies or burglaries, shoplift, sell drugs, or

engage in welfare or insurance fraud during their off-duty time are engaging in a variety of

police corruption” (Fyfe & Kane, 2006, p. xv). Fyfe and Kane (2006) reconceptualized these

actions as “profit-motivated misconduct” and noted that “police corruption is not as easy to

define as we formerly may have believed (p. xv). Similarly, Carter (1990b, pp. 89–90)

conceptualized police corruption as being characterized by a “profit-driven cycle.” The

classification of some police crime as profit-motivated is also found in Ross’ (2001) taxonomy of

police crime, where the second of four dichotomous distinctions is between “economically-

motivated and noneconomically-motivated police behavior” (p. 184).

Using the same data set as Fyfe and Kane (2006), Kane and White (2013) explored the

nature of the career-ending police misconduct in the NYPD and found that the profit-motivated

cases (N = 387) included bribe-taking (18.6%), grand larceny (17.1%), insurance fraud (8.6%),

burglary (7.3%), petit larceny (7.3%), receiving stolen property (3.9%), government fraud

(3.1%), gratuities (2.6%), gambling (1.8%), illegal operation (1.8%), and other profit-motivated

misconduct (27.4%) such as extortion, robbery, abusing official resources (p. 73, Table 4.2).

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Stinson and colleagues found that profit-motivated police crime is a quantifiable variable

that helps explains the nature of police crime across the life course of officers’ law enforcement

careers in a variety of contexts at nonfederal law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Whereas less experienced police officers are more likely to commit violent crimes, those officers

who commit profit-motivated crimes are more likely to be experienced officers late in their

policing career and more likely to be supervisors and/or administrators (Stinson et al., 2010).

Likewise, crime by policewomen is most often profit-motivated (Stinson, Todak, et al., 2013).

Crime by school resource officers typically is not profit-motivated police crime (Stinson &

Watkins, 2014). Profit-motivated police crimes are more likely to be committed while on-duty

and less likely to be committed while an officer is off-duty (Stinson, Liederbach, et al., 2012).

Statement of Rationale for the Research

The purpose of the current research project is to promote police integrity by gaining a

better understanding of police crime and agency responses to officer arrests. The study is

providing a wealth of data on a phenomena that relates directly to police integrity—data that

police executives did not previously have access to because they did not exist in any useable

format.

The first goal of this research is to determine the nature and extent of police crime in the

United States. Objectives for this goal are to: (a) identify and describe the incidence of officers

arrested during each year in the study period; and (b) identify and describe the prevalence of

officers arrested over the course of the study period.

A second goal of this research is to determine what factors influence how a police

organization responds to arrests of officers. Objectives for this goal are to: (a) identify, describe,

and analyze the severity of crimes for which police officers are arrested and determine whether

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

severity of crime influences employment outcomes; (b) identify and analyze the level of

urbanization for each employing police organization by using a 9-level urban-to-rural continuum

scale to determine whether an agency’s degree of urbanization or rurality influences agency

response and employment outcomes; (c) identify and analyze the geographic location (region,

division, and state) for each employing police organization to determine whether geographic

disparity influences agency response and employment outcomes; (d) identify and analyze length

of service and age of arrested officers to further investigate whether age in years and/or years of

service influence agency response and employment outcomes; and (e) identify and analyze

criminal case outcomes for each officer arrested to determine whether this factor influences

agency response and employment outcomes.

A 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. Objectives for

this goal are to: (a) identify and analyze whether the arrested officers in our database were also

named individually as a defendant in any federal court civil actions pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983

during the life course of their law enforcement careers; and (b) inform police practitioners and

policymakers of strategies derived from the project’s findings that could improve early

intervention systems and other internal controls to better identify problem officers and those at

risk for engaging in police misconduct – including engaging in police crime creating potential

agency exposure to civil liability – and its correlates.

The rationale for the current study evolved from long-standing obstacles associated with

the collection of data on police crime. The underlying reasons for the current study reflect the

ongoing lack of empirical data on the crimes committed by police—a situation that relates

directly to the limitations of previous methodologies used to collect data on the phenomenon.

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Researchers have resorted to a variety of methodologies to learn more about the nature and

extent of police misconduct, corruption, and/or crime; but, empirical scholarship has usually

incorporated one or more of the following: (a) officer surveys, (b) agency records, and (c)

sociological field studies. Studies that utilize one or more of these methodologies have clearly

contributed to the knowledge base on police crime, but the methodology used in the present

study offers clear advantages in terms of both the scope and quality of potential data on police

crime. The first part of this section provides a brief overview of those limitations by method.

This overview is followed by a concise description of the advantages of our methodology. These

advantages provide the basis of and rationale for our research on police crime.

Limitations of Surveys, Agency Records, and Field Research

Surveys have been perhaps the most commonly utilized method to collect data on the

closely related problems of police corruption and police misconduct. Since the phenomena of

police crime, police corruption, and police misconduct are analogous and sometimes

overlapping, some survey research does provide limited insight into the measurement of police

crime. There are two primary limitations associated with the utilization of surveys in regard to

the study of police crime, corruption, and misconduct. The first problem relates to gaining

access to police organizations to collect data on these issues. Researchers have long reported

problems in gaining access and maintaining access to law enforcement agencies for research

purposes (see, e.g., Kutnjak Ivkovic, 2005; Lundman & Fox, 1978, 1979), so researchers have

been afforded comparatively few opportunities to openly ask police officers about their

perceptions of or tolerance for various forms of misconduct—let alone their perpetration of

actual criminal behavior (Barker, 1978; Kutnjak Ivkovic, 2003). In fact, none of the survey

research reported in the literature directly measures police crime. Rather, the studies measure

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

correlates of police crime and tend to indicate the level of tolerance for such misconduct within

some police agencies (see, e.g., Fishman, 1978). The second limitation of surveys in regard to

the study of police crime involves validity and problems associated with the propensity to

provide socially desirable responses to inquiries about misconduct, wrongdoing, and/or criminal

behavior. There are some indications that police administrators and other police personnel may

be less than truthful in responding to surveys by exaggerating (Maguire & Uchida, 2000). There

are obvious problems associated with asking police officers to complete questionnaires with

items on the nature and extent of police offending, because it is widely assumed that officers will

maintain a code of silence and fail to disclose the nature and extent of police crime through a

survey format (Fishman, 1978).

Researchers have also utilized agency and other official records to study issues associated

with police misconduct, corruption, and crime. This line of research includes numerous cross-

sectional studies based on small single agency samples of police officers. More recently, Fyfe

and Kane (2006) provide longitudinal data on the misconduct and crime of police based on

official agency records derived from the NYPD. The NYPD data compared the personal and

career histories of all 1,543 NYPD officers who were involuntarily separated from the NYPD for

cause from 1975 to 1996 with a random sample of their police academy classmates. The study

methodology offers unique opportunities to describe and measure police misconduct and crime

from single agencies over comparatively long time periods. Studies based on agency records

have two primary limitations. First, similar to officer surveys, these data require difficult to

obtain access to a police organization. Most police agencies are obviously reluctant to disclose

official records of officer misconduct and crime to researchers. As a result, studies based on

agency records almost invariably describe the misbehavior and crime of officers from a single

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

police agency, a situation that leads to issues in regard to the generalizability of studies based on

data from a single police agency. A second limitation of using agency records is that they result

from a filtering process within the organization that created the records. That is to say, agency

records are the version of events from the perspective of the organization.

Reiss' (1971) classic research on the behavior of police officers in Chicago, Boston, and

Washington DC stands as the only published study that utilized field observations to specifically

describe various forms of police misconduct and crime. Reiss found that roughly 20% of

observed police engaged in on-duty crime, not including assaults and syndicated crime. Most of

the observed police crime was limited to thefts. Large scale observational studies of police are

costly and difficult to conduct, so only a small number have been completed (Bayley &

Garofalo, 1989; see, .e.g., Black & Reiss, 1967; Frank, Novak, & Smith, 2001; Liederbach,

2005; Liederbach & Frank, 2003; Mastrofski et al., 1998). Small scale observation studies are

nonsystematic and often involve ride-along observations in one single agency. Field

observations are also limited by the danger of reactivity, wherein officers may alter their

behavior because of the presence of a civilian observer. Reactivity poses clear problems in the

collection of observational data on police misconduct, corruption, and/or crime.

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

METHODS

Data for the current study were collected as part of a project commenced in the year 2004

designed to locate cases in which sworn law enforcement officers had been arrested for any type

of criminal offense(s). Data were derived from published news articles using the Google News

search engine and its Google Alerts email update service. Google Alerts searches were

conducted using the same 48 search terms developed by Stinson (2009). The Google Alerts

email update service sent a message each time one of the automated daily searches identified a

news article in the Google News search engine that matched any of the designated search terms.

The automated alerts contained a link to the URL for the news articles. The articles were

located, examined for relevancy, printed, logged, and then scanned, indexed, and archived in a

digital imaging database for subsequent coding and content analyses. The present study focuses

on the identification and description of the cases in which police officers were arrested during

the years 2005-2011.

Coding and Content Analysis