Who Is At-Risk? An Examination of the Likelihood and Time Variation in the Predictors of Repeated Police Misconduct

Abstract

Increasing transparency and accountability in policing is a top priority for police administrators, community groups, academics, and many others. The internal affairs process is an accountability tool designed to hold officers and agencies accountable to the citizens they serve, yet very little is known about the effect of internal investigative units on such outcomes as subsequent complaints and temporal distances between complaints. This current study examines two critical aspects of the internal affairs process, the likelihood of subsequent complaints and temporal distance between the first and a subsequent complaint of misconduct. Officers’ complaint data were collected from the internal affairs unit of a large, metropolitan police agency in the southwestern United States. Results indicate that a longer time to initial complaint and regional patrol assignment were related to a reduced likelihood of receiving future complaints. Moreover, of those officers who received a subsequent complaint after their initial complaint, more than half did so within the first year, and 94% did so within the first three years of receiving their initial complaint. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings on policy and training opportunities, supervision, mentoring, accountability, and Early Intervention (EI) systems.