How engaged are community members in how justice is administered in communities across the landscape of the U.S.? This is a very complex question, with the myriad answers equally so. Much of the solution to this question is based upon society’s perception of the status quo in their community in comparison to how justice appears to exist and play out in other communities. It also considers the individuals within the community, their engagement with, and their acceptance of the conditions of their communities. In other words, community is at the center of the issue of society’s viewpoint.

Several general gauges to how society is functioning within a community may offer a clue as to the residents’ willingness to engage in processes related to the delivery of criminal justice. Some examples (in no particular order) of these general gauges or statements regarding community involvement are listed below.

PERCEPTION OF THE POLICE

There are many ways for people to obtain information in the modern world. Fifty years ago, an item that today would make instant headline news, might not be heard about in nearby communities for days, if not weeks. It took longer for the interest groups of that time to gain basic information and to develop strategies for dissemination of the incident or the news in order to inform their constituents. Today, through the wonders of technology, images of active incidents in progress, crime scenes, police behaviors and more, can be uploaded and viewed by tens of thousands of viewers in seconds, and potentially millions in a day or two. Through social media and the evening news, these video clips are often shown without context and can be widely misinterpreted. There can be no mistaking there are certain incidents which involve excessive uses of force. Such examples further expand the distrust of police, their tactics, and the operational motives of some officers. When this occurs, the social contract between the police and the community is quickly eroded.

Repairs necessary to regain trust are difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to achieve. At the extreme, calls for defunding the police may occur. This phrase may have many interpretations, carrying varying implications. What may be intended as taking practical steps to move money from the police budget in order to address concerns around their priorities and taskwork which is more sociological- or mental health-based, is translated by some in the community to mean “take away the entire police budget.” In many cases, redistribution of some funding, as well as assignment of duties involving mental health to dedicated mental health staff, makes good sense. While there is evidence that, in some communities, abolishment of the police force was in fact the intended consequence, the near-immediate uptick in crime statistics in some locations demonstrates the need for a continued police presence of some sort.

Even the uniformed appearance of police has, to some degree, alienated certain parts of the community. A stated goal of police agencies is their ability to be “approachable” by those whom they represent-the community. People should feel comfortable in approaching an officer for help, directions, or during contacts for other reasons. Changes in uniform design and wear has, to some extent, interfered with achievement of this goal. Considering the fact that police are responding rapidly to serious, sometimes violent, calls for service such as active shooters in schools or businesses, highly-charged domestic violence incidents, and other situations, their personal protective devices have changed. Uniform duty belts were originally designed to carry firearm holsters, ammunition pouches, and handcuffs. The defensive equipment and preparedness of the officer has evolved to also include carrying a portable radio, collapsible baton, chemical agent, patrol knife, flexible handcuffs, and other elements for service and protection. Add to this the weight of soft body armor (SBA), which also includes a ballistic plate made of ceramic or steel. Officers began to suffer debilitating back injury in large part from carrying these items mostly around the belt. Some officers have transitioned to suspenders to better support the heavy weight of defensive equipment on the belt. Other departments have moved to external body armor patterned to mimic or take the place of the upper uniform garment. The external body armor package has many pockets, holders, clips and loops which permit items normally carried on the belt to move to the chest area. In the view of some fearful community members, this has created an “aggressive” or “militaristic” look which, in their minds, make the police less-approachable by the citizenry (Norris, 2017).

APATHY AND MORALE

If enough people within a community make the decision to withdraw from processes such as voting, this step alone can have a resounding effect upon the quality of criminal justice services they should expect in return.

On the law enforcement side, many factors cause front-line responders to suffer from low morale and apathy (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2018). The combination of frequently being dispatched to dynamic, rapidly changing and often dangerous situations, is a contributing factor. A feeling of constantly being disrespected may stem from police having to often interact with the public immediately after the officer has responded to a difficult or gruesome call. It can also come from the addition of legislative mandates that seem to at times hinder police response and effectiveness. Officers may endure death threats as well. The officer may feel as though they never have adequate personnel, equipment or direction to carry out basic enforcement tasks safely and efficiently. They may also react harshly as a result of fatigue brought on by mandatory overtime requirements. These conditions, and others such as sleep deprivation, may lead to psychological burnout and low morale (James, 2024). It can also lead to an “us versus them” mentality of front-line officers and even first-line supervisors, which can be corrosive to the relationship between the police and their community.

Another recent explanation for apathy and low morale among officers and supervisors alike may be found in the phenomena known as pandemic fatigue (PERF, 2021), and is not unique only to police. Public safety and services employees including, but not limited to, firefighters, EMS, hospital staff, caregivers, mortuary workers and others have difficult duties, responsibilities, and job stressors under normal conditions. Add to these burdens three-plus years of relentless response and associated heartbreak of incurred losses emanating from the global pandemic of COVID-19 and its variants. This is not to say the features of pandemic fatigue only affect responders, because they are also found, to some degree, in each of us as everyone has had to adapt to a “new normal” brought on by a long-term global pandemic.

In extreme cases, the mental impacts on highly-functional, service-motivated persons in law enforcement became so severe that, for risk purposes, decisions have been made by administrators to take officers out of patrol duties. While such an action may be well-intentioned for the health and safety of an officer, having no psychological, family, or spiritual intervention can put a suffering officer at risk. In some cases, a “fall-back” position, inclusively created to transition the officer out of current duties and into a position which, while still able to use their talent, skills and experiences, enables them to remain part of the departmental team, may make good sense. For many officers, the psychological impacts associated with their duties or loss of a position they loved, were too severe to endure, leading them to leave employment or, in extreme cases, commit acts of suicide (National Officer Safety Initiatives, 2020).

THE GUARDIAN vs WARRIOR MINDSET

One aspect of the current perception of law enforcement officers has received consideration in response to the police better serving their communities. The emphasis for change is embodied in the guardian vs. warrior mindset.

Since the beginning of time, mankind has had to address threats to their safety and security. Some menacing behaviors (exhibited by wild animals, wartime foes, and violent criminals) rose to such magnitude that it was a family member or peacekeeper’s priority to stop any threats posed. In recent years, military members returned from theaters of conflict where the foe was not always readily identifiable in certain communities. Additionally problematic for the military members were incidents where the rules of engagement might not always be consistent with respect to one’s moral or cultural values. In response, police officers, especially those who may have previously served in the military, may be overly suspicious of civilians with whom they interact during their patrol duties (Hussey, 2020). The officer is sometimes hyper-alert to the constant potential of threat to their safety, and may thereby be constantly suspicious of a civilian’s presence in the area, or any actions or activities that are inconsistent to what the officer believes should be “normal.” By contrast, the citizen may believe the officer is intruding into private affairs without reason, violating their constitutional rights, or otherwise interjecting themselves unnecessarily into their personal lives. This leads to friction, and often, improper policing, because the officer sees the civilian population as a threat and not to be trusted. In this way:

We have veered away from Sir Robert Peel’s ideal, “‘the police are the people, and the people are the police,” toward a culture and mindset more like warriors at war with the people we are sworn to protect and serve. (Rahr & Rice, 2015, p. 1)

Law enforcement officers are responsible for the protection and safety of their constituents. The officer’s badge serves as a symbol of public trust and confidence in their abilities to be fair, unbiased and non-judgmental. They are not “at war” with the community (the exception being, in some isolated circumstances, where certain criminal factions may individually or collectively target officers). While recognizing that officers who are simply doing their job may be the target of violent individuals or extremists, one cannot argue that the police officer must always be vigilant, alert for potential confrontation, and tactically prepared. Sorting out the differences between the community protection tactics and that of training officers for survival is, foremost, a shared responsibility between the police training academies, and the departmental policies of the officer. Preparedness levels, however, must be effectively balanced with the public service mission and empathetic functions expected by the vast majority of the community served. One key to achieving this balance is situational awareness–being keenly aware of your environment at all times, and able to instantly switch from friendly and approachable, to a higher level of tactics based upon perceiving and acknowledging a threat presence. In that way, the police can contribute to the service of safety, protection and stewardship of the public peace.

THE “US vs. THEM” MENTALITY

In the civilian world, turf “wars” by street gangs or other criminal groups often mimic what is seen in military experiences. Officers operating within intense, seemingly relentless shifts in areas where criminal activity is the norm and contacts are routinely “high-risk” affairs, often believe that conditions they experience may foster an "us vs. them" attitude. This perception has been shown to reinforce police recruits being supportive of the police, and disidentifying with the rest of the population (Boivin et al., 2020). As such, this mindset often creates a dominance posture by officers, at the expense of marginalizing the populations they serve. If allowed to flourish, the “us vs. them” mentality may evolve into short-cutting or disregarding policy, alienating constituents, and, in extreme cases, extend into criminal activities or ethical breaches. Great care must be taken by police administrators for effectively managing and correcting these behaviors in order to eliminate the “us vs. them” attitude from gaining a foothold in the department’s patrol operation. To be clear, an “us vs. them” mentality has no place in civilian policing.

BIAS-BASED POLICING

Bias is best defined as a collection of attitudes, behaviors and actions that are prejudiced in favor of, or against, one person or a group compared to another. What places implicit bias in a unique category is that it is based upon unconscious association, typically as a result of one’s life experiences and source of knowledge. People often impulsively react to or attribute certain qualities or characteristics to all members of a particular group without any rational or empirical basis, in what is known as stereotyping. Outcomes from stereotyping include labeling, which may be positive or negative depending upon the bias viewpoint taken by the individual assigning the label.

Bias has been around for many years and has been the focus of research by psychologists and sociologists interested in the subject. An example of the psychological study of bias is the research example established by Muller and Lyer, who created a famous illusion (Cherry, 2023). Look at the illusion below. Your task is to decide which of the three lines is the longer one:

It is probably your impression that the middle line is the longer of the three. In reality, all lines are equally as long. The reason you may have concluded one line to be longer than the others is that:

You are influenced by the arrows at the end of the lines even though you do not pay attention to the arrows or might even have the conscious goal not to be influenced by the arrows. You are implicitly biased by the arrows, that is, what you consciously perceive is influenced in a systematic manner by the arrows (i.e., you are biased) even though you do not intend to be influenced or might even want to prevent being influenced by the arrows (i.e., the bias is implicit). The main thing that modern research on implicit bias added to this story is the realization that people can be biased implicitly not only by arrows but also by social elements in our environments, that is, by elements indicative of the social group to which others belong (e.g., skin color). When conceived of in this manner, implicit bias is a normal behavioral phenomenon: It happens to everyone all of the time. (De Houwer, 2019, paras. 6-7)

Implicit bias involves the unconscious, unknowing differential treatment of other persons based upon a number of discriminatory factors, including but not limited to race, color, age, gender, nationality, disability and religion (Sunstein & Jolls, 2006). Arising from this are culturally-learned associations that may compete, and even conflict, with our own conscious beliefs. It is important to realize that, from the point of view of morality, the topic of implicit social bias is very controversial. Most of us do our best to demonstrate that we are free from implicit biases. This can be demonstrated by the example of when we are involved in hiring the person best suited for the job. We might take steps to show we are not influenced by social cues, and in fact would find it undesirable to do so. Others may be tempted to argue that implicit bias is overrated (and perhaps, maybe even justified). Scientists are even in disagreement concerning how implicit bias is measured, and to accurately describe what the foundational mechanisms of implicit bias are (De Houwer, 2019).

Some of the most cutting-edge work being conducted to reduce implicit bias by the police occurs at Washington State University, under the guidance of Dr. Lois James. Some critics of police responses that have led to officer-involved shootings have pushed a narrative that the police, by and large, have unconscious biases against persons of color. In carrying out her studies, Dr. James identified cognition, threat recognition and response speed in police officers suffering from fatigue (2024). She opted to conduct testing under the construct of the Harvard University-developed Implicit Association Test (IAT) on a test group of police officers selected after screening. In the study, the officers were subjected to a realistic stimulus in a high-definition use of force simulator that was designed to measure “shoot/no-shoot” decision making. This study produced results that indicated that the vast majority of officers, each with varying levels of fatigue and calls-for-service histories, indicated implicit bias against African-Americans when considering recognition of threats. An example of this was when an officer recognized a firearm in possession of a “suspect” in the simulator exercise. It also found that the officers’ delay in responding to a threat was attributed by Dr. James to cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a thought process in which information is provided that may be contradictory or inconsistent with existing information or patterns, causing a re-evaluation of the existing information (Stark, 2021, as cited in James, 2024).

When multiple numbers of a work group, workforce, agency or other collection of people engage in implicit bias, it can become institutional bias if permitted to continue. In the worst scenarios, conspiracies between two or more individuals are developed targeting individuals or groups at whom the bias is focused. In some cases, clandestine organizations or clubs are formed by like-minded individuals who are driven to intimidate or harm those who are selected as bias targets. Institutional bias has no place in any level of the administration of justice, and requires peers, supervisors, leadership, internal affairs, and the community to work toward its elimination. If the conduct rises to criminal behavior, prosecution of those involved should be certain, and if convicted, ought to be carried out swiftly and with the purpose of demonstrating that bias will not be tolerated in public safety occupations so closely linked to their communities.

Attributions

1. Figure 7.4: Community Policing by Mike Dunford is released under CC BY-NC 2.0
2. Figure 7.5: Citizens Police Review Board Meeting by KOMUnews is released under CC BY 2.0
3. Figure 7.6: Muller-Lyon Illusion by Nicholas Malara, for WA Open ProfTech, © SBCTC, CC BY 4.0