Digital Commons Network^™

The Policing/Mediation Nexus: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of The Journey From Police Officer To Certified Mediator, Wendell C. Wallace

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

By their very nature, policing and mediation are viewed as disparate professions. However, since the inception of policing, police officers have traditionally been involved in managing and handling conflict situations and thus, mediation type interventions have historically been an important component of police work. For the most part, police officers are untrained in mediation; however, many police officers are comfortable serving as go-between for neighbors, families, and communities in conflict using their intuition. As a result of acting as a ‘mediator’ for conflicting parties, without any formal mediation training, many former and current police officers eventually engage in mediation training …

Unreasonable Traffic Stops, Sam Kamin

William & Mary Law Review

In 1996, the Supreme Court announced in Whren v. United States that a traffic stop is constitutional if there is probable cause to believe a traffic infraction has occurred. So long as the officers who stop an individual can point—even after the fact—to any violation of the traffic laws, their actual, subjective motivations for initiating a stop are legally irrelevant. Case-by-case determination of reasonableness is unnecessary in the traffic stop context, the Court concluded, because the balancing of interests has already been done. Unlike warrantless entries into homes, the use of deadly force, or unannounced warranted entries, a traffic stop …

Whom Do Prosecutors Protect?, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Prosecutors regard themselves as public servants who fight crime and increase community safety on behalf of their constituents. But prosecutors do not only seek to protect those they are supposed to serve. Instead, prosecutors often trade community safety, privacy, and even the constitutional rights of the general public to enlarge police power. Prosecutors routinely advocate for weaker public rights, shield police from public accountability, and fail to prosecute police when they break the law.

This Article will show how prosecutors often protect police at the expense of the public. This Article suggests a novel theory of evaluating the conduct of …

Understanding The Role Of Adverse Childhood Experiences On Resilience In Police Officers, Wayne F. Handley

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Police officers are subject to a variety of stressors not only from job-related events resulting from direct or vicarious trauma exposure (Andersen & Papazoglou, 2014; Brown et al., 1999; Iversen et al., 2008) but also from family and personal concerns (Burke, 1998; Page & Jacobs, 2011), and administrative pressures originating from within their own agencies (Violanti et al., 2018; White et al., 2016). Prior to their careers as police officers, individuals may also be exposed to traumatic events early in life. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are described as negative events related to emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or neglect, exposure …

Police Chases And Pit Maneuvers: Examining The Role Of Officer Conduct In Pursuit-Related Felony Murder Convictions, Margaret L. R. Dubose

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has described a police officer's decision to terminate a high-speed car chase by making physical contact with the fleeing vehicle as a "choice between two evils." Indeed, while many speed-related deaths occur on Georgia's roadways without the involvement of law enforcement, deaths also transpire when officers choose to make such contact through Precision Intervention Technique (PIT) maneuvers.

In 2015, a Georgia jury found a driver guilty of committing felony murder—a conviction which carries with it a life sentence. The victim, a passenger in the driver's speeding car, died after a law enforcement officer performed a …

1983, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Piece embraces a fictional narrative to illustrate deep flaws in our legal system. It borrows its basic structure and a few choice lines from George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like Orwell’s novel, it is set in the not-too-distant future to comment on problems already emerging in the present. The footnotes largely provide examples of some of those problems and how courts have treated them in a constitutional law context. The title (itself quite close to Orwell’s own title) is a reference to our chief civil rights statute, while the story deals with a critical threat to that …

The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha

Emory Law Journal

Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible.

Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …

Restrictive Pursuit Policies And Rising Violent Crime, Ryan Kelly

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Consequences can be a driving factor for why citizens follow laws in the United States. Financial and physical freedom is valued. Citizen’s behavior may change if police officers threaten to take these things away for breaking laws. Policymakers today are working to restrict when law enforcement officers can chase criminals for breaking the law. Suppose the ability of law enforcement to hold criminals accountable is restricted. Would this not lead a reasonable person to believe that criminals may think they are free to commit crimes? This paper will cover current trends in violent crime in both the United States and …

The Racialized History Of Vice Policing, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Vice policing targets the consumption and commercialization of certain pleasures that have been criminalized in the United States—such as the purchase of narcotics and sexual services. One might assume that vice policing is concerned with eliminating these vices. However, in reality, this form of policing has not been centered on protecting and preserving the moral integrity of the policed communities by eradicating vice. Instead, the history of vice policing provides an example of the racialized nature of policing in the United States. Vice policing has been focused on (1) maintaining racial segregation, (2) containing vice in marginalized communities, and (3) …

Qualified Immunity And The Unintentional, Or Intentional, Chill On Free Speech, Madison Heiney

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Law Enforcement Recruitment, Why It Matters, And Key Management Decisions, Part Two, Patrick Oliver

History and Government Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

To The Court Of Last Resort: A Prosecutorial Roadmap In The Aftermath Of State Violence In Chile And Colombia, David F. Scollan

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

A great deal of academic research and writing has been done on the most glaring examples of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, only a small cadre of authors have endeavored to identify the ‘lower limit’ of when state action qualifies as these heinous acts. This Note strives to add to that area of legal scholarship aimed at bringing instances of in-country state perpetrated violence out from the behind the veil of sovereign police action and into the spotlight to call them what they are: crimes worthy of international condemnation and punishment. Specifically, this Note unpacks two spasms of …

Criminogenic Risks Of Interrogation, Margareth Etienne, Richard Mcadams

Indiana Law Journal

In the United States, moral minimization is a pervasive police interrogation tactic in which the detective minimizes the moral seriousness and harm of the offense, suggesting that anyone would have done the same thing under the circumstances, and casting blame away from the offender and onto the victim or society. The goal of these minimizations is to reinforce the guilty suspect’s own rationalizations or “neutralizations” of the crime. The official theory—posited in the police training manuals that recommend the tactic—is that minimizations encourage confessions by lowering the guilt or shame of associated with confessing to the crime. Yet the same …

Reducing Community Violence While Protecting Civil Rights, Kami Chavis

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Policing The College Campus: History, Race, And Law, Vanessa Miller, Katheryn Russell-Brown

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The structure, impact, and historical roots of campus policing on the American college campus receives little academic attention. In fact, campus policing is often overlooked in legal analyses and research studies, including its relationship to race. Campus policing and race deserves a critical assessment from legal scholars because race is fixed to the ways the criminal-legal system presents itself on campus. The racialized implications of policing on campus are rooted in historical social and legal contexts that still exist today. However, the lack of research on campus policing is not surprising. American colleges and universities have successfully marketed themselves as …

On Warrants & Waiting: Electronic Warrants & The Fourth Amendment, Tracy Hresko Pearl

Indiana Law Journal

Police use of electronic warrant (“e-warrant”) technology has increased significantly in recent years. E-warrant technology allows law enforcement to submit, and magistrate judges to review and approve, warrant applications on computers, smartphones, and tablets, often without any direct communication. Police officers report that they favor e-warrants over their traditional, paper counterparts because they save officers a significant amount of time in applying for warrants by eliminating the need to appear in-person before a magistrate. Legal scholars have almost uniformly praised e-warrant technology as well, arguing that use of these systems will increase the number of warrants issued throughout the United …

Sheriffs, Shills, Or Just Paying The Bills?: Rethinking The Merits Of Compelling Merchant Cooperation With Third-Party Policing In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death, Stephen Wilks

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article frames the killing of George Floyd as the result of flawed business regulation. More specifically, it captures the expansion of third-party policing paradigms throughout local nuisance abatement regulations over a period of time that coincided with the militarization of policing culture across the United States. Premised on the notion that law enforcement alone cannot succeed in reducing crime and disorder, such regulations transform grocery stores, pharmacies, bars, and other retail spaces into surveillance hubs by prescribing situations that obligate businesses to contact the police. This regulatory framework, however, sustains the larger historical project of rationalizing enhanced scrutiny of …

Transforming The Minneapolis Police Department To Conform With The Rule Of Law: Reform Or Abolition, James Roth

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Helping The Helpers: The Role Of Organizational Support And Peer Influence On Police Officer Receptivity To Employee Assistance Programs, Kenneth Quick

Publications and Research

Purpose – This study aims to investigate critical differences between police officer willingness to use and recommend an employee assistance program (EAP) to a peer, including the relationship between officer perceptions of macro-level organizational support and micro-level EAP support.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 213 police officers from a large, urban police department in the Northeast United States of America is used to evaluate the relationship between officer perceptions of the EAP and the officers’ willingness to use and recommend the EAP to peers. Generalized linear regression models are used to evaluate the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) …

The Paradox Of Salvation: Police-Perpetrated Sexual Violence Against Sex Workers In The United States, Aydan Murphy-Stanley

Student Theses

This study explores how sex workers in the United States are sexually victimized and potentially traumatized by sexual violence perpetrated by police officers, as well as the paradoxical implications of this violence. A qualitative meta-synthesis was conducted to examine and integrate qualitative literature pertaining to this phenomenon. 10 databases were used to execute the systematic literature search. Only studies that utilized qualitative methodologies, are published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and examined police-sex worker interactions were included. Data from relevant studies was analyzed according to the meta-synthesis method. Police-perpetrated sexual violence against sex workers was identified as a form of sexual …

Police Killings As Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Ekow Yankah

Journal Articles

The widely applauded conviction of officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd employedthe widely criticized felony murder rule. Should we use felony murder as a tool to check discriminatory and violent policing? The authors object that felony murder—although perhaps the only murder charge available for this killing under Minnesota law—understated Chauvin’s culpability and thereby inadequately denounced his crime. They show that further opportunities to prosecute police for felony murder are quite limited. Further, a substantial minority of states impose felony murder liability for any death proximately caused by a felony, even if the actual killer was a police …

Reimagining Public Safety, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, abolitionists were repeatedly asked to explain what they meant by “abolish the police”—the idea so seemingly foreign that its literal meaning evaded interviewers. The narrative rapidly turned to the abolitionists’ secondary proposals, as interviewers quickly jettisoned the idea of literally abolishing the police. What the incredulous journalists failed to see was that abolishing police and prisons is not aimed merely at eliminating the collateral consequences of other social ills. Abolitionists seek to build a society in which policing and incarceration are unnecessary. Rather than a society without a means of protecting public safety, …

Law Enforcement Recruitment, Why It Matters, And Key Management Decisions, Part One, Patrick Oliver

History and Government Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Police Officer Attitudes About The Importance Of External Procedural Justice, David Borchardt

Theses and Dissertations

External procedural justice has been found to have a relationship with cooperation, compliance, and police legitimacy. Extant methods to increase external procedural justice during police-citizen interactions have been met with mixed results. Fair policing from the inside out proposes that organizationally just treatment of officers will lead to external procedural justice during encounters between officers and citizens. Police organizational justice, comprised of the dimensions of distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice, has been found to have a relationship with external procedural justice, however, the majority of research has been conducted using overseas samples. The minority of work …

When Police Volunteer To Kill, Alexandra L. Klein

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection, yet states continue to struggle with drug shortages and botched executions. Some states have authorized alternative methods of execution, including the firing squad. Utah, which has consistently carried out firing squad executions throughout its history, relies on police officers from the jurisdiction where the crime took place to volunteer to carry out these executions. This represents a plausible-and probable method for other states in conducting firing squad executions.

Public and academic discussion of the firing squad has centered on questions of pain and suffering. It has not engaged with the …

"Defunding" The Criminality Of Mental Illness By Funding Specialized Police Training: How Additional Training And Resources For Dealing With Mental Health Will Be Beneficial For All Sides, Margaret Ahern

Journal of Law and Health

The momentous public outcry for police reform is the result of police encounters ending fatally, which is notably sixteen times more likely for individuals suffering from mental illness in the United States. These horrific incidents highlight the systemic failings of traditional police departments training and its failure to provide officers with the necessary skills to de-escalate crisis situations involving the vastly overrepresented mentally ill population involved in the United States justice system. This article demonstrates that effective police training involving crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques equip police officers with knowledge and skills that enable them to contrive more positive outcomes …

Making The Impractical, Practical: A Modest And Overdue Approach To Reforming Fourth Amendment Consent Search Doctrine, Augustine P. Manga

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

At some point in your life, you may have a personal encounter with a police officer. During that moment, you may feel utterly powerless, especially if you do not know your rights. One important right that police are not required to inform people of is their right to deny an officer’s request to search their property. Forty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court made its position clear in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte that requiring law enforcement to provide citizens with this warning would be “thoroughly impractical.” Since then, the relationship between law enforcement and society—especially communities of color—has gradually deteriorated, and states …

Police Or Pirates? Reforming Washington's Civil Asset Forfeiture System, Jasmin Chigbrow

Washington Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture laws permit police officers to seize property they suspect is connected to criminal activity and sell or retain the property for the police department’s use. In many states, including Washington, civil forfeiture occurs independent of any criminal case—many property owners are never charged with the offense police allege occurred. Because the government is not required to file criminal charges, property owners facing civil forfeiture lack the constitutional safeguards normally guaranteed to defendants in the criminal justice system: the right to an attorney, the presumption of innocence, the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, …

Police Officer Years Of Service: Does It Play A Role In Officer Displays Of Empathy?, Rachel Jeffries

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In the 2019 National Crime Victimization Survey, only 52.2% of domestic violence (DV) incidents were reported to the police (Morgan & Truman, 2020). With significantly low reporting rates, policing agencies may be asking themselves what they can do to encourage victims of DV to come forward and report their victimizations. Research on DV victims’ perceptions of police response suggests that, when police provide empathy-like responses to victims of DV, there are numerous benefits for the victim and the policing agency (Birdsey & Snowball, 2013; Johnson, 2007; Stephens & Sinden, 2000). Thus, empathy could be a central component to improving reporting …