By Ben Grunwald, John Rappaport, Kyle Rozema

We investigate the labor market consequences of police discipline for serious misconduct. To do so, we use data on employment for all Florida law enforcement officers and on 1,818 incidents of misconduct recorded by the state licensing board between 2000 and 2016. We find that discipline increases at least sixfold the likelihood that an officer separates from their department and the likelihood that their law enforcement career in Florida ends. We also find, however, that unions protect officers from at least one-fourth of the consequences of discipline. Our results suggest that the common narrative that police officers wear a badge of impunity is not always accurate.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-55,

By Akshay Jain, Rajiv Sinclair, Andrew V. Papachristos*

Explanations for police misconduct often center on a narrow notion of “problem officers,” the proverbial “bad apples.” Such an individualistic approach not only ignores the larger systemic problems of policing but also takes for granted the group-based nature of police work. Nearly all police work is group-based and officers’ formal and informal networks can impact behavior, including misconduct. In extreme cases, groups of officers (what we refer to as, “crews”) have even been observed to coordinate their abusive and even criminal behaviors. This study adopts a social network and machine learning approach to empirically investigate the presence and impact of officer crews engaging in alleged misconduct in a major U.S. city: Chicago, IL. Using data on Chicago police officers between 1971 and 2018, we identify potential crews and analyze their impact on alleged misconduct and violence. Results detected approximately 160 possible crews, comprised of less than 4% of all Chicago police officers. Officers in these crews were involved in an outsized amount of alleged and actual misconduct, accounting for approximately 25% of all use of force complaints, city payouts for civil and criminal litigations, and police-involved shootings. The detected crews also contributed to racial disparities in arrests and civilian complaints, generating nearly 18% of all complaints filed by Black Chicagoans and 14% of complaints filed by Hispanic Chicagoans.

PLOS One May 2022

By The Police Executive Research Forum

 The U.S. Department of Justice and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) released a first-of-its-kind set of best practices for police-press interactions at mass demonstrations. The report resulted from a convening of police leaders and journalists, spearheaded by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and PERF, and supported with a grant from the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The report, “Police-Media Interactions During Mass Demonstrations: Practical, Actionable Recommendations,” proposes that police establish clear policies before, during, and after a protest event. A primary recommendation is that police agencies adopt express “arrest avoidance” procedures that direct officers to let detained journalists go quickly and that journalists be explicitly exempted from dispersal orders and curfew enforcement. The report also recommends that while credentials are an easy way to identify working members of the news media, police should also recognize those “acting as journalists in function and behavior.”  The Reporters Committee's Bruce Brown said that “With a fraught election next month, we have a unique opportunity with these best practices to both protect journalists at protests and help police serve their public safety mission. The challenge now is to get the recommendations in the hands of police departments and newsrooms around the country.”

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 40p.

By the United States Department of Justice.  Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office For the Southern District of Mississippi 

Hours after the Department of Justice announced its investigation of the Lexington Police Department (LPD) on November 8, 2023, officers chased a Black man through a field and tased him nine times. The man began foaming at the mouth. One officer pointed to a Taser probe lodged in the man’s hat and said, “Damn, one of my probes hit him in the head.” The man, who has a behavioral health disability, had been accused of disturbing a business. This was not the man’s first encounter with LPD. Earlier that year, LPD officers had jailed him for ten days for trespassing; four days for stealing a cup of coffee; and twelve days for stealing packets of sugar. Each time they arrested him, LPD unlawfully refused to release the man until he paid money towards old fines and fees he owed from misdemeanors and traffic tickets. But each arrest added more fines and fees to the ledger. By November 2023, the man— who has no job, no assets, and no bank account—owed more than $7,500. In encounter after encounter with the man, LPD violated his rights. But like countless people in Lexington, the man had little recourse. Through a combination of poor leadership, retaliation, and a complete lack of internal accountability, LPD has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law. FINDINGS The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the City of Lexington and the Lexington Police Department engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. Specifically, we find that LPD unlawfully: • Arrests, jails, and detains people who cannot pay fines or fees, without assessing their ability to pay; • Uses excessive force; • Conducts stops, searches, and arrests without probable cause, including jailing people on illegal “investigative holds” and arresting people solely because they owe outstanding fines; • Imposes money bail without justification or assessment of ability to pay; • Jails people without prompt access to court; • Violates the rights of people engaged in free speech and expression, including by retaliating against people who criticize the police; • Discriminates against Black people; and • Operates under an unconstitutional conflict of interest because LPD’s funding depends on the money it raises through its enforcement.. 

Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division, 2024. 47p.