Similar, different or somewhere in between? The police officer and citizen views on police misconduct

Abstract

This study examined if the police and citizen views of police misconduct are similar, different, or somewhere in between with the three sets of survey data: the Klockars (Police corruption in thirty agencies in the United States, 1997. ICPSR version. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999) data, the data administered to police officers from 2009 to 2010 in Texas, and the student survey data collected from 2013 to 2017 at the three 4-year public universities located in Midwestern and Southern regions of the United States. Results showed that the views of police officers were similar but also different on certain misconduct by their rank. Middle- and high-rank officers seem to share some common ground on assessments of police misconduct, but their views were significantly different from the views of line officers. Interestingly, line officers’ perceptions of the seriousness of police misconduct were somewhat similar to the views of university students. However, their perceptions of police misconduct differed by their academic majors, CJ majors vs. non-CJ majors. The results demonstrated the existence of a significant gap in the assessments of police misconduct provided by students and police officers.