The Effect of Patrol Strategies on the Public’s Perceptions of the Police

• In Event: Innovative Methods for Exploring the Spatial Distribution of Crime in Small Geographic Units

Abstract

The present study employs a novel experimental strategy to explore how an individual’s perceptions of the police can be impacted by officers’ use of different patrol strategies (i.e., bicycle patrol, foot patrol, vehicle patrol, mounted patrol, etc.). Using an experimental methodology, I present participants with sets of images and ask them to rate each image on a number of different dichotomous variables, such as approachable versus not approachable, aggressive versus not aggressive, and accountable versus not accountable. The structure and composition of these images will allow for all potentially spurious factors (i.e., officers’ body positioning, facial expression, etc.) to be controlled. The experimental design will also allow for order effects to be minimized in order to ensure that the effect of the different patrol strategies will be able to be observed in isolation. This is the first known study to use an experimental methodology to measure how cosmetic factors of different patrol strategies can impact an individual’s perceptions of the police.

Author

• Rylan Simpson, University of California, Irvine