determinants of citizen complaints against police abuse of power

Journal of Criminal Justice 28 (2000) 203–213

0047-2352/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0047-2352(00)00036-2

Determinants of citizen complaints against

police abuse of power

q

Liqun Cao

a,

*, Bu Huang

b

a

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197, USA

b

School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA

Abstract

At the macro level, little quantitative research exists about organizational determinants of the citizen com-plaint rate against police abuse of power regarding unlawful arrest/detention, illegal search or seizure, harassmentand intimidation, misuse of authority, and improper language. The current study tested Wilson’s professionalismcontrol thesis and Lundman’s organizational product thesis. Variables were identified and created from the dataof Pate and Fridell. Tobit regression analyses of the data revealed the important correlates of citizen complaintsand organizational characteristics. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed within the limitations

of the data. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Built upon the state authority, the police privilegeof using “non-negotiable coercive force” (Bittner,1970) to control citizen behavior has seldom beenchallenged in the history of the police, but its properapplication has always been “the central problem ofcontemporary police misconduct” (Kerstetter, 1985,p. 149). Ever since law enforcement agencies werefirst established in the United States, the police havebeen accused of abusing their power and using exces-sive force (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1981).After the Supreme Court case

Tennessee v. Garner

(471 U.S. 1, 1985), research into the use of deadlyforce has been abundant (see Cullen et al., 1996).Other forms of police abuse of power, in particular,nonphysical abuse of power, however, have receivedlittle empirical attention.

Police abuse of power is part of the larger conceptcalled police brutality. Police brutality, however,

may sometimes include the use of deadly force andother times, nonphysical behavior of any practice thatdegrades citizen status, “that restricts their freedom,and that annoys or harasses them” (Reiss, 1971, p.334). In this article, police abuse of power is definedfrom the perspective of the civilian and refers to theallegations by citizens regarding sworn officers’ un-lawful arrest/detention, illegal search or seizure, ha-rassment and intimidation, misuse of authority, andimproper language. In essence, as used here, policeabuse of power includes all forms of citizens’ com-plaints against the police except physical abuse.

Little quantitative information exists regardingthe prevalence of police abuse of power. One earlystudy (Chevigny, 1969) concluded that citizen com-plaints about excessive physical force constituted asubstantial proportion of all complaints filed. Fromstudies on the incidences of excessive physical force,it was estimated that such incidents are infrequent

q

This project was supported by Grant No. 98-IJ-CX-0064 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Pro-grams, U.S. Department of Justice, and by the Faculty Research and Creative Activity Fellowship at Eastern Michigan Univer-sity. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies ofthe U.S. Department of Justice. The authors would like to thank Francis T. Cullen, Stuart Henry, and Joseph Rankin for theircritical review of earlier versions of this article and Professor Alethea Helbig for polishing the language of the final version.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 734-487-7986; fax: 734-487-7010.

E-mail address

: [email protected] (L. Cao).

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L. Cao, B. Huang / Journal of Criminal Justice 28 (2000) 203–213

(Adams, 1996; Dugan & Breda, 1991; Kerstetter,1985; Klockars, 1996; Littlejohn, 1981; Pate &Hamilton, 1991; Wagner, 1980; Wagner & Decker,1993). Police abuse of power is an important topicfor both academics studying police behavior and po-lice administrators. Perceived police abuse of powermay reduce public confidence in the police, depressofficer morale, and generate conflict between policeand residents (Langworthy & Travis, 1994). Johnson(1981) argued that perceptions of police brutalityhave long been at the heart of citizen distrust of, andcomplaints about, the police. Investigations done bythe Christopher Commission (1991) revealed thatbrutality was one manifestation of the often troubledrelationship between the police and the communitythey are supposed to serve and protect. In addition,scandals and lawsuits associated with abuse of au-thority jeopardize organizational stability and conti-nuity of leadership (Chen, 1996; Kelling et al.,1988;Sherman, 1978), since the organization is at risk ofoutside interference, and the police chief is at risk oflosing his or her job.

The issue of controlling police abuse of power isso important and theories about minimizing policemisconduct are widely available, although empiricalresearch in this area is surprisingly limited, particu-larly at the organizational level. After extensive re-view of the literature on police brutality and citizencomplaints, West (1988) commented that most of theprevious research has been descriptive and devoid ofquantification. Griswold (1994) echoed that senti-ment and called for additional quantitative research.Heeding these calls, this study filled this gap prima-rily through reanalysis of data collected in 1991 byPate and Fridell (1993). It attempted to test the Wil-son professionalism control thesis (1968) and theLundman organizational product thesis (1980).

Theory and hypotheses

Police abuse of power warrants special scrutinysince it illustrates fundamental conflicts that arise frompolicing in a democratic society. Who will police thepolice is of a perennial concern to both the public andthose charged with civic oversight. Given the impor-tance of the issue of improving the police and commu-nity relations, many theories have been proposed forcurbing the damaging behavior of the police.

Wilson (1968) advocated a thesis of policeprofessionalism. Within this thesis, he identified twomodels for controlling police misconduct: the profes-sional model and the bureaucratic model. Theprofessional model works by ensuring that only thebest-trained, most honest candidates are employed as

police officers. The bureaucratic model depends onissuing and enforcing rules and regulations throughclose supervision of police officer activities.

Lundman (1980) criticized professionalism as acontrol on police misconduct. He suggested that pro-fessionalism, by focusing on the individual officer,ignored the social and organizational correlates ofmisconduct. In addition, it was an obstacle to citizencontrol, since by definition a professional was onewho had special knowledge and skills that the aver-age person lacked. Lundman (1980) proposed an or-ganizational product thesis, which maintained thatmost police misconduct was a product of organiza-tional deviance, so that what needed to be controlledwas not the individual officer’s behavior, but organi-zational climates. The public had a right to spell outthe criteria and insist on their application throughcompetent police administrators or through the civil-ian review board. Police departments had differentrates of citizen complaints, and the differences variedwith the particular departmental characteristics. Ci-vilian review boards were an effective alternativemethod of curbing the police brutality.

Both theses point out various ways that law en-forcement officers’ abuse of power can be reducedby departmental policies and practices. No empiricalstudies so far, however, have tested these theses di-rectly. Reiss (1971) conducted a classic participationanalysis of police use of force. Others have studiedthe extent and nature of citizen complaints (Adams,1996; Decker & Wagner, 1982; Dugan & Breda,1991; Kerstetter, 1985; Lersch, 1998; Lersch &Mieczkowski, 1996; Littlejohn, 1981; Pate & Hamil-ton, 1991; Wagner, 1980; Wagner & Decker, 1993).Griswold (1994) carried out a multivariate analysisof the factors on the disposition of complaints. Ker-stetter et al. (1996) studied the impact of race on theinvestigation of excessive force allegations againstpolice. Lersch and Mieczkowski (1996) investigatedthe characteristics of the officer and citizens involvedin complaints. Lersch (1998) tested the conflict the-ory on citizen complaints. All these studies are veryinformative and helpful in understanding police bru-tality at the individual level, but few of them have in-vestigated police abuse of power as defined in thisstudy and none of them has examined the issue at theorganizational level.

At the organizational level, empirical research hasnot been undertaken either about the nature of theabuse or about the efficacy of proposed solutions.Studies on citizen complaints have focused on a lim-ited number of jurisdictions and the measures usedhave not been consistent across studies (Dugan &Breda, 1991; Dunham & Alpert, 1995; Lersch, 1998;


205

Pate & Hamilton, 1991; Wagner & Decker, 1993;Walker & Bumphus, 1991). Deadly force and exces-sive physical force received more attention than otherforms of police brutality. In addition, many of thesestudies used a noncausal comparison approach to testthe citizen complaints and various characteristics ofindividual officers. Sherman (1980) proposed thatmore research at the organizational level was needed,since theoretically the macro level of explanationought to be the most powerful. Wagner and Decker(1993) also argued that citizen complaints were mostappropriate to be studied at the macro level ratherthan the micro level when considering efforts to stempolice behavior perceived offensive by citizens.

The paucity of empirical research on police abuseof power at the organizational level is partially due tothe lack of national data. At the individual level, po-lice abuse of power is a low-visibility act (Pate &Fridell, 1993). From the police standpoint, citizencomplaints concerning the abuse of power may bedue to the fact that subjects have been arrested for le-gitimate offenses or have considered the potential ofwinning big lawsuits. Not all recorded complaints arelegitimate, although studies on citizen complaintsindicate that citizens do not file complaints simplyfor personal revenge motives (Russell, 1978). Thisis particularly true when there are obstacles to citi-zen complaints, such as personal fear of reprisal,complex and cumbersome filing procedures, andmost significantly, the possibility of criminal prose-cution for making false reports (National AdvisoryCommission on Criminal Justice Standards andGoals, 1973). Bayley and Mendelsohn (1969) ob-served that the willingness to file a complaintseemed to be a function of what happens to people.

At the organizational level, the decentralized na-ture of American law enforcement places responsibil-ity for data filing and maintenance at the municipallevel. Many police departments do not collect or keepinformation on police abuse of power (for a detaileddiscussion see West, 1988). Not all citizens who havebeen subjected to police abuse of power file formalcomplaints that end up in the police department. As aresult, analysis of official records may reflect “the re-porting philosophy of the individual agency and overallconscientiousness of the individual agency” (Lersch,1998, p. 82). Citizen complaints, therefore, shouldonly be looked upon as a “barometer of police perfor-mance” (Wagner & Decker, 1993), as one importantindicator of public perception of the agency (U.S.Commission on Civil Rights, 1981), or as “a valuablesource of management information” (Skolnick & Fyfe,1993, p. 231).

With these aspects in mind, the data collected by

Pate and Fridell (1993) were reanalyzed. The datawere designed to be a comprehensive national surveyof law enforcement agencies on the official recordsof police abuse of power. They contained informa-tion on the police abuse of power as reflected by po-lice department records. Pate and Fridell’s ownstudy, however, only provided comparisons of sim-ple percentages and bivariate analyses. Theories andhypotheses were not tested against each other in themultiple variant analysis. Pate and Fridell (1993) at-tempted to cover a much wider variety of topics,from citizens’ complaints about physical force, to in-ternal complaints about physical force, to verbalabuse of power, and to litigation.

The current study, in contrast, focused on citizencomplaints against police abuse of power in the areasof unlawful arrest/detention, illegal search or seizure,harassment and intimidation, misuse of authority,and improper language. Complaints about police useof excessive physical force were excluded from thisstudy. This study was further limited to complaintsabout city police departments because municipalitiesemploy the majority of police, most citizens havecontacts with the police at the city level (Crank,1998; Langworthy & Travis, 1994), and it is also atthis level that most complaints are generated (Pate &Fridell, 1993). Compared with the centralized policesystems in noncommon law societies worldwide,American law enforcement is highly decentralizedand is accountable locally (Langworthy & Travis,1994; West, 1988). It was, therefore, most appropri-ate to examine citizen complaints against the policeat the municipal level.

Both Wilson (1968) and Lundman (1980) sug-gested that organizational behavior and characteris-tics were potentially related to the citizen complaintrate against the police, therefore, the current researchtested their theories. From Wilson’s professionalismcontrol thesis, a number of testable propositions werereduced, and included in the following two sets ofhypotheses.

Hypothesis 1:

Psychological exams taken beforeadmission to a police academy, the length of aca-demic training, and field-training officer programstend to reduce citizen complaints concerning policeabuse of power.

Police socialization begins at the police academy,and it continues in field training and throughout anofficer’s career. In the professional model, Wilson(1968) advocated hiring the best-qualified officers asa control, as did Alpert and Fridell (1992). Their ar-guments were more rhetorical than empirical (seeBowker, 1980; Sherman, 1980; Swanson, 1977).This study tested the hypothesis empirically.

206


Hypothesis 2:

Increasing the number of in-servicetraining programs on the use of force, strengtheningthe reporting requirement on the use of force, institut-ing a written policy on the use of less-than-lethalweapons, initiating a clinic requirement for filingcomplaints, and supervising closely are negativelyrelated to the citizen complaint rate.

The second set of hypotheses targeted the bureau-cratic model in controlling police abuse of power.Wilson (1968) and Goldstein (1977) advised policeagencies to strengthen institutional training specifi-cally to prevent improper conduct. More recently,Alpert and Fridell (1992) called for competent train-ing to minimize the police use of excessive force.The current study tested the effectiveness of these in-service training programs and regular reviews in re-ducing police brutality.

Part of the problem in controlling police brutalityis that what is and what is not brutality has not beenclearly defined by the court (Alpert & Smith, 1994;McEwen, 1997) or by many police departments. Evi-dence regarding police use of deadly force suggeststhat implementation of more restrictive policies de-creases the use of deadly force (Meyer, 1980; Sher-man, 1983). Not all police departments have writtenpolicies on the use of less-than-lethal force (Mc-Ewen, 1997) or mandatory reporting systems on theuse of force, so it is expected that those with writtenpolicies and mandatory reporting systems will havefewer citizen complaints. In addition, close supervi-sion of officers’ behavior tends to reduce citizencomplaints. The five variables mentioned in Hypoth-esis 2 measured Wilson’s bureaucratic model that po-lice misconduct can be controlled by the issuance andenforcement of rules and by close supervision.

From Lundman’s organizational product thesis,two sets of testable propositions were deduced andincluded in the following.

Hypothesis 3:

Establishing civilian review boardsreduces the citizen complaint rate.

Controlling police use of excessive force throughcivilian review boards was widely hailed as a cure bya number of scholars (Goldstein, 1977; Lundman,1980; Reiman, 1985). West, for example, stated thatthe closed system (or bureaucratic model of control),where police investigate the police, is contrary to“the rules of natural justice and is, by definition, im-perfect” (1988, p. 108). Some researchers, however,doubt the effectiveness of civilian review boards(Langworthy & Travis, 1994), and their empirical ef-ficiency has yet to be determined by data.

Hypothesis 4:

The composition of a police depart-ment’s personnel is related to the citizen complaintrate. The larger the proportion of females and African

Americans in the department is, the higher the educa-tional level of police department personnel is, and theolder the average age of the officers is, the lower thecitizen complaint rate becomes.

Individual-level data provided evidence thatwomen officers tend to reduce the likelihood of vio-lence in police-citizen encounters (Grennan, 1987).They initiate fewer detentions, make fewer felonyand misdemeanor arrests (Sherman, 1975), and aresignificantly less likely to have citizen complaints(Lersch & Mieczkowski, 1996). Individual-level dataprovided conflicting evidence regarding minority of-ficers. Minority officers were found to be less antag-onistic to the public and displayed greater ties to thecommunity than their White colleagues (Berg et al.,1984), though they were also more likely to producecitizen complaints (Lersch & Mieczkowski, 1996).Gender and racial issues are at the core of the crimi-nal justice system (Browning & Cao, 1992; Brown-ing et al., 1994; Cao et al., 1996; Henderson et al.,1997), therefore, the current study tested these asso-ciations at the organizational level.

In addition, ever since August Vollmer, a policechief and reform advocate at the turn of the century,the education of police officers has become an in-creasingly important issue. Recent decades have seena concerted effort to raise the educational level of po-lice recruits. The federal government has expendedmillions of dollars on law enforcement education (fora detailed discussion see Jeffery, 1990). It is arguedthat college-educated police officers are more sensi-tive to citizens, can communicate better, and aremore effective (Hoover, 1989; Skolnick & Fyfe,1993). As for the relationship between age and com-plaints, past research indicated that average serviceyears is negatively related to the citizen complaintrate (Langworthy & Travis, 1994; Lersch & Miecz-kowski, 1996; Sherman, 1980). These two hypothe-ses were tested in the model.

Finally, the model controlled for the environmentin which police work. Police action is only situation-ally justified (Manning, 1997). It is expected thatpopulation size and arrest rate are both positively as-sociated with citizen complaint rate. Population sizeis highly correlated with ethnic diversity and widerstratum in cities, and the number of arrests reflectsconfrontational encounters police officer have. Bothtend to increase the possibility of citizens’ com-plaints. In carrying out their tasks as police officers,“police intervention means above all making use ofthe capacity and authority to overpower resistance”(Bittner, 1970, p. 40). As long as some members ofsociety do not comply with the law and resist the po-lice, the imposition of force on unwilling individuals


207

will remain an inevitable part of policing (Skolnick &Fyfe, 1993).

Methods

Sample

Pate and Fridell’s survey in 1992 is by far thelargest and most complete survey on citizens’ com-plaints against police misuse of force. They usedstratified sampling techniques to survey all state,county, and local police agencies. For the presentpurpose, only data on municipal police departmentswere utilized. The response rate of their survey was72.4 percent for city police departments (for a de-tailed discussion of the sample procedure see Pate &Fridell, 1993). Schafer’s norm was used to handle themissing data (Schafer, 1997).

1

The largest missingdata category was the variable of arrest (Table 1).The final number of city departments included in theanalysis was 731.

The organizational approach has been productivein sociological literature and so was adopted for theanalysis of citizen complaints against police abuseof power in this study. Many variables indicative oforganizational characteristics and organizational be-

havior were created from data to test Wilson’s pro-fessionalism control thesis and Lundman’s organi-zational product thesis.

Measures

Table 1 presents the sample characteristics interms of means, standard deviations, range, and per-centages of missing data of the ten variables. Percent-age distribution of population served is also reported.

Dependent variable

Five items measuring the police abuse of powerform the index dependent variable of citizens’ com-plaint rates, they were: (1) the citizen complaint rateof unlawful arrest/detention per 1,000 sworn officers,(2) the citizen complaint rate of illegal search or sei-zure per 1,000 sworn officers, (3) the citizen com-plaint rate of harassment and intimidation per 1,000officers, (4) the citizen complaint rate of the misuseof authority per 1,000 officers, and (5) the citizencomplaint rate of improper language per 1,000 offic-ers in 1991. These items were highly correlated,therefore, an index variable of police abuse of powerwas formed. To correct the skewed distribution of thenew index, 1 was added to each item and they werethen transformed into natural log forms. The transfor-

Table 1Descriptive statistics in the analysis

Variables MeansStandarddeviation Range % Missing % Population

Citizen complaints on abuse of power

a

7.53 5.98 0–27 26.81Pre-service psych. exam .88 .33 0–1 13.13Length of academy 557.73 191.11 0–1050 19.02FTO program .80 .40 0–1 12.86In-service training

b

19.22 4.64 10–30 23.80Reporting requirement

c

8.60 5.13 4–28 8.76Written policy .92 .27 0–1 13.00Close supervision .76 .42 0–1 1.23Clinic requirement .54 .50 0–1 1.09Civilian review board .09 .29 0–1 .50Percentage with B.A./B.S. 16.90 13.11 0–100 21.20Percentage female 5.50 5.30 0–38 1.78Percentage black 4.75 7.84 0–57 1.92Average age 36.16 4.04 14–51 23.53Arrest 7.58 7.93 0–60 28.45Population served 3.15 1.12 1–4 0.00

1

5

under 10,000 residents 14.02

5

10,000 to 24,999 14.63

5

25,000 to 49,999 19.54

5

50,000 and over 57.9

a

Cronbach

a 5

.685 for this index.

b

Cronbach

a 5


c

Cronbach

a 5


208


mation reduced the effect of outliers and increasedthe likelihood of bivariate normality.

2

Unfoundedcomplaints were included in the analysis, because todo otherwise would introduce yet another police dis-cretionary decision.

3

The final index variable consistedof the above five items and yielded a reliability of .69.

Independent variables

There were thirteen independent variables derivedfrom the hypotheses: pre-service psychological exam,length of attendance at police academy, field-trainingofficer program, in-service training, reporting require-ment, written policy, clinic requirement, close super-vision, civilian review board, education, gender, race,and the officers’ average age in a department.

Pre-service psychological exam was a dummyvariable with those police departments that require apsychological or psychiatric evaluation for all pre-service officers coded as 1 and those that do not as 0.Approximately 88 percent of police departments re-quire the exam. The length of attendance at policeacademy measures the number of hours of academytraining. On average, 557 hours of police academytraining are required. The field training officer pro-gram was a dummy variable regarding whether thedepartments have a formalized field training officerprogram for recruits: those having such training

5

1,and those that do not

5

0. Eighty percent of all policedepartments implemented this program (Table 1).These three variables embrace the concept that onlythe best qualified persons are recruited, and receiveprolonged and the best available training before theybecome independent officers.

The in-service training variable assessed whetherpolice departments provide in-service training pro-grams in these areas: stop and approach, crisis inter-vention, cultural sensitivity, bilingual training, hu-man relations, victim assistance, domestic violence,suicide prevention, stress management, and commu-nity-oriented policing. This was an index variableand the Cronbach’s alpha for this index was .84. Thereporting requirement variable measured whether po-lice departments mandate officers to report incidents ofusing force (i.e., the use of electronic devices, chemicalagents, and dog attacks). This was also an index vari-able and the Cronbach’s alpha for this index is 69.

The next three independent variables weredummy variables. The less-than-lethal policy wascoded for departments that have written policies forthe use of less-than-lethal force as 1 and those that donot as 0. Ninety-two percent of police departmentshave such written policies. Close supervision wascoded regarding mandatory reporting to supervisorsabout an incident as 1 and otherwise as 0. Seventy-

six percent of the agencies require such reporting.Clinic requirement for filing a complaint was mea-sured with those departments requiring as 1 and oth-ers as 0. Fifty-four of the departments have such re-quirements (Table 1).

The civilian review board was a dummy variablewith those police departments that have such boardsas 1 and those that do not as 0. Only 8 percent of lawenforcement agencies have review boards. The com-position of police departments—gender, race, andeducation—was assessed by measuring the percent-ages of female officers, Black officers, and officersholding at least B.A. or B.S. degrees. The averageage of police departments assesses the average yearof all sworn officers in each department at the time ofsurvey.

4

Finally, two control variables were arrests andpopulation size. The number of arrests refers to theaverage number of adult arrests an officer made withregard to the seven index crimes (excluding arson)plus weapon possession in 1991. Population size isan ordinal variable indicating the proximate popula-tion covered by a police department: 1

5

,

10,000residents and 4

5

.

50,000 residents. More than halfof police departments serve populations larger than50,000 residents (Table 1). The two control variableswere expected to be positively related to the citizens’complaint rate against the police (Jacobs & O’Brien,1998; Sherman, 1980).

Research design

The Tobit model was employed to conduct theanalysis, since about 23 percent of police depart-ments have no citizens’ complaints. An ordinaryleast-squares model gives inconsistent estimateswhen the dependent variable has many zero values.Tobit is frequently employed to deal with such cen-sored dependent variables because it uses two formu-las to predict values of the dependent variable—onefor cases at the limit value (zero in the current case)and another for cases above the limit (Cao et al.,1997; Johnston, 1984; Tobin, 1958). The resultsshow the jointly calculated effects.

Results

There is substantial variation in the dependent vari-able—citizen complaints about police abuse of power.To capture the variation of the citizen complaint rate,the Tobit analysis was utilized. The results of the anal-ysis are reported in Table 2. There are two equations inthe table. In Eq. (1), Wilson’s professionalism controlthesis was tested with eight variables plus two controlvariables. In Eq. (2), variables derived from Lund-


209

man’s organizational product thesis were added intothe model, and the two theses were tested together.

In Eq. (1), it was found that the reporting require-ment is positively related to citizen complaints aboutpolice abuse of power. This result contradicts the the-ory prediction, which hypothesized that the morestrict the requirement, the fewer citizen complaints.The clinic requirement significantly reduced the citi-zen complaints. Those police departments that re-quire a citizen to have clinic evidence before filing acomplaint have fewer citizen complaints. The rest ofthe variables from Wilson’s thesis were not statisti-cally significant, although length of attendance at po-lice academy and written policy were both in the pre-dicted direction of the theory. One of the two controlvariables—population served—was statistically sig-nificant in relation to citizen complaints about policeabuse of power, and the other control variable—arrestrate—was not significant. The larger the population thepolice serve, the higher the citizen compliant rate was.

In Eq. (2), five variables derived from Lundman’sorganizational product thesis were added into Wil-son’s professionalism control model. It was foundthat, controlling for departmental compositions, thereporting requirement becomes insignificant whilethe clinic requirement continues to be negatively re-lated to the citizens’ complaint rate. The other vari-ables from Wilson’s thesis remain insignificant.

Among the five variables from Lundman’s orga-nizational product thesis, the average ages of police

departments was significantly related to citizens’ com-plaints against the police. Police departments witholder average ages tend to have lower citizens’ com-plaint rates. Civilian review boards and other depart-mental components—such as percentages of females,African Americans, and those with bachelor’s de-grees—were not significantly related to the citizens’complaint rate. The control variable of populationserved remained significant. The larger the populationthe police serve, the higher the citizen compliant rate is.

Discussion

To better understand citizens’ complaints againstpolice abuse of power and the organizational covari-ates of the citizens’ complaint rate, multiple regres-sion analyses were used to study the phenomenon.The results indicate that there is some evidence thatboth organizational characteristics and organizationalbehavior are important in predicting the citizens’complaint rate.

The current findings, however, need to be inter-preted with caution. This study represents the firstquantitative effort to apply an organizational ap-proach to the study of citizen complaints against po-lice abuse of power in the areas of unlawful arrest/de-tention, illegal search or seizure, harassment andintimidation, misuse of authority, and improper lan-guage. The data were official in nature. The officialdata could be indicative of a number of departmentalcharacteristics, including filing procedures and confi-dence of residents toward the police. Addressing theissue of data quality was beyond the scope of thisstudy. The results, therefore, are only as accurate andas reliable as the data. In addition, although the sam-ple was representative and there were many policedepartmental measures, the police jurisdictions’ so-cial and economic characteristics were not com-pletely controlled for. Wilson (1968) and Sherman(1978) both argued that police behavior was part ofthe local political and social culture. In the study ofpolicing killings, Jacobs and O’Brien (1998) alsofound that city characteristics were important predic-tors. It is not clear to what extent and how these char-acteristics affect citizen complaints.

A final caution concerning the current analysis isthat the concept of police abuse of power is totallydefined from the viewpoint of citizens. It is wellknown that citizens tend to define police brutalitybroadly, while police tend to define it narrowly(Klockars, 1996). The complaints utilized by thepresent study can be better regarded as “a valuablesource of management information” (Skolnick &Fyfe, 1993, p. 231) for they may or may not reflect

Table 2Tobit analysis of complaints on abuse of power

Explanatory variables Eq. (1) Eq. (2)

Independent variablesPre-service psycho exam 1.33 1.41Length of academy

2

.00

2

.00FTO program .83

2

.25In-service training .09 .09Reporting requirement .10* .08Written policy

2

.47

2

.96Close supervision .33

2

.23Clinic requirement

2

1.54**

2

1.32**Civilian review board 1.53Percentage with

B.A./B.S. .04Percentage females .46Percentage blacks .48Average age

2

.29**Arrest .49 .05Population served 1.08** 2.20**

Intercept

2

3.13*

2

7.64**Log likelihood

2

2028.61

2

2009.27

* .01

<

p

,

.05; **

p

,

.01.

210


the actual facts. This data set, however, was the bestavailable on the topic of citizen complaints againstpolice use of excessive physical force, and it allowedthe assessment of many explanations for the citizens’complaint rate. According to Johnston (1984), esti-mates based on comprehensive models are less likelyto be biased.

City police departments were used as the unit ofanalysis. This departed from the prior literature,which concentrated on the study of police behavior atthe individual level. In contrast, by analyzing the or-ganizational covariates at the municipal level and byemploying a more appropriate statistical model, theresults, even though exploratory in nature, are robustand have contributed to the understanding of citizencomplaints and of police organizational strategies in re-ducing the complaint rate. Several points of theoreticalimportance are in order.

First, the Lundman (1980) hypothesis that the ci-vilian review board is a cure for police brutality wasnot supported by the data. The civilian review board,as an alternative external complaint review proce-dure, however, cannot be disregarded easily in the fu-ture study of police abuse of power. There may be anumber of reasons why the civilian review boardmay not function effectively as a control of police be-havior. First, police administrations in general resistthe civilian review board (Swanson et al., 1993;West, 1988), making it difficult for the civilian re-view board to function properly and effectively. Onlythe worst police departments tolerate the establish-ment of a civilian review board, and the current re-sults may have captured the historical inertia of thesepolice departments. Second, past literature further in-dicated that among existing civilian review boards,their functions, missions, formal structures, and oper-ating policies vary considerably (Walker & Kreisel,1997). Third, the variable was highly skewed and ab-normally distributed: Barely 9 percent of the policedepartments in the sample reported having civilianreview boards. For these reasons, a full evaluation ofthe effectiveness of civilian review boards in reduc-ing police brutality is yet to be determined (seeSkolnick & Fyfe, 1993 for a detailed discussion, butalso see Kerstetter, 1996).

Second, the composition of police departmentpersonnel is an important factor in predicting citizencomplaints. The average age of a police departmentwas negatively related to the citizens’ complaint rate.This finding is consistent with the previous researchon this relationship at the individual level (Lersch &Mieczkowski, 1996; Sherman, 1980). Age and expe-rience are important factors in handling delicate hu-man relationships. Klockars argued that “excessive

force should be defined as the use of more force thana highly skilled police officer would find necessaryto use in the particular situation” (1996, p. 8). Supe-rior skills in carrying out police duties, of course,come with years of experience. Police departments,therefore, need to recruit more mature persons intopolice service if they are serious about reducing thecitizens’ complaint rate.

Third, except for the effect of the clinic require-ment, none of the variables in the bureaucratic modelwas significant at .05 level. These variables, how-ever, cannot be regarded as irrelevant in understand-ing police abuse of power. Bureaucratic regulationsare always the starting point for significant change inorganizations, although these regulations are them-selves not enough for any meaningful change. Theregulations are necessary, but not sufficient to pro-duce change in police behavior (Skolnick & Fyfe,1993). Many entrenched informal organizations ofpolice behavior have long been observed (Bittner,1970; Crank, 1998; Lundman, 1979). The content oftraining also seems important (Fyfe, 1996). Futurestudies need to pay more attention to the applicationof bureaucratic regulations within police departmentsand the informal organization within the police. AsManning (1997) cautioned, police work in a democ-racy is messy and easily entangled with sustainingsubtle rights, since police work is fraught with theunexpected, uneven, unpredictable, and diverse. In-formal organization within the police plays a role inguiding police officers’ behavior.

Finally, the current analyses seem to providesome support for both Wilson’s and Lundman’s the-ses. It was found that both organizational behaviorand organizational characteristics are related to thecitizens’ complaint rate. Many criminologists arguedthat many theories are complementary to each otherinstead of competing against each other or becomingcontradictory to each other (Bernard, 1989; Cao &Maume, 1993; Tittle, 1989). Versed differently andwith different emphasis, Wilson’s professionalismcontrol thesis and Lundman’s organizational productthesis should be regarded as complementary, and ef-fort should be made to integrate them. It is clear thatWilson’s professionalism control thesis and Lund-man’s organizational product thesis share a core as-sumption: both recognize that the police administra-tion is capable of influencing their officers’ behavior.

In sum, as the first quantitative study of citizencomplaints against police abuse of power at the orga-nizational level, the findings reported in this articlehave established baseline information for the futureresearch in this area. It was found that organizationalbehavior and organizational characteristics are im-


211

portant covariates of the citizens’ complaint rateagainst police abuse of power. Police services arefundamentally subject to conflict and dispute (Man-ning, 1997), although it is possible to minimize con-flict and dispute through clearer organizational guid-ance and years of experience. Future study is neededto observe the application of police departmentalrules in daily operation.

Notes

1. Multiple imputation is a simulation-based approach tothe statistical analysis of incomplete data. In multiple impu-tation, each missing datum is replaced by

m

.

1 simulatedvalues. The resulting

m

versions of the complete data canthen be analyzed by standard complete-data methods, andthe results combined to produce inferential statements (e.g.interval estimates or

p

values) that incorporate missing datauncertainty. Further analysis of data without including themissing data did not change the results significantly.

2. In addition to the dependent variable, independentvariables indicating the percentages of female officers, Afri-can Americans, and officers with BA/BS degrees were pre-sented in log form to correct for skewed distributions.

3. It was very difficult to substantiate complaints againstofficers due to the high evidentiary standards. The substan-tiation rate ranged between 0 and 25 percent, with 10 per-cent or less being the norm (Pate & Fridell, 1993). It isargued that it is easier to win a civil suit than to find a com-plaint against a police officer to be merited (Griswold,1994; Sparrow et al., 1990). Skolnick and Fyfe argued that“the percentage of complaints found unsubstantiated by dif-ferent police departments usually has more to do with theprocedures for the

receipt

of complaints than with investi-gative intensity or objectivity” (1993, p. 231).

4. Officers’ average age and length of service are toocollinear to be used in the same equation. The length of ser-vice was dropped because officers’ average age is consid-ered to be a more accurate measure of both biologicalmaturity and social experiences.

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determinants of citizen complaints against police abuse of power

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