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Abstract
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To examine whether murder rates by civilians of police officers could be predicted for urban areas, a variety of demographic, environmental, crime rate, police population, and murder statistics were analyzed.
Assaults bt civilians on police officers and the murder of civilians of police officers is a matter of grave concern to administrators of law enforcement agencies. The FBI publishes an annual report that documents and analyzes each police office murdered during the year. However, no published report has yet attempted to investigate the causes and correlates of such murders.
Since previous research on this important topic is rare, it was decided to carry out an exploratory study to see whether the murders by civilians of police officers in major cities in the United States could be predicted on the basis of some general characteristics of those cities, such as the crime rate and degree of residential segregation.
Data were obtained, covering the period between 1970 and 1975, for 56 cities throughout the united states with 1970 populations above 250,000. Variables were intercorrelated using product-moment correlation. Murder rates of police officers were compared for 1970 to 1972 and 1973 to 1975 but failed to show significance as murder of police is relatively rare and fluctuates widely from year to year. Analysis using the murder rate for the entire 6-year period indicated a significant correlation with 3 urban variables: Police murder rates were higher where the proportion of blacks in the population was higher, where the proportion of population below the poverty level was higher, and where the crime index was higher. Although statistically significant, these relationships were only moderate in strength. It is suggested that variables within police forces such as age, training, racial structure, and formal education might correlate with the rates of murder and assaults. However, such data are not readily available. Collection of such data may prove useful for further research. Police murder rates in the cities studied and correlations between city variables and murder rates are presented in two tables. (jap)
Keywords: crime prediction; murder; police safety; urban area studies
Language: en |