Immigrants: The View from a Police Officer’s Car

• In Event: Policing Diverse Societies: Using Macro to Micro Perspectives to Examine Issues in Policing

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical analysis of survey data measuring the perceptions of police officers about immigrants in Cyprus. Given the influence of the British Policing in the creation of the Cyprus national police, this study seeks to test the attitudes and perceptions that are dominant among police officers who work for the Cyprus National Police with regards to issues such as immigration and crime and identify whether the structure of a police force is related to certain police stereotypes about immigrants.

For the purpose of this paper we relied on a quantitative survey which measured police officers’ perception of their profession as well as attitudes towards the community policing model, immigrants and crime etc. The survey was administered to police officers employed in a random representative sample of police stations across Cyprus, primarily focusing on the capital area of Nicosia; officers were offered answers on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Considering that police officers attitudes and perceptions have received little attention in Cyprus, we also discuss the policy implications of this study with regards to issues such as community policing strategies in a multicultural society.

Author

• Nikolaos Petropoulos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY Graduate Center