University News
WIU LEJA Professors: The Effect of COVID-19 on Police Departments
September 30, 2021
From Sept. 14, 2021 Security Magazine
MACOMB/MOLINE, IL -- More than 224.7 million people have contracted COVID-19 worldwide, and more than 4.6 million have perished as of Sept. 13, 2021. By the same date in the United States, more than 40.9 million contracted the virus, while nearly 700,000 died. In addition to the extreme health ramifications of the ongoing pandemic, COVID-19 has negatively affected industries, governments, non-governmental organizations and non-profit entities, among others, around the globe.
Western Illinois University Law Enforcement and Justice Administration (LEJA) Professor Dean Alexander, who also leads WIU's Homeland Security Research Program, and LEJA Professor Niyazi Ekici have researched the effects of COVID-19 on police departments in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Their work was recently published in the September issue of Security magazine.
"As the gravity of COVID-19 was recognized and expanded in the United States, we commenced a research project to gauge the impact of the pandemic on law enforcement agencies," Alexander explained. "Our study began with a survey of more than 200 Illinois police departments during June 2020.
Upon receiving results from 73 out of 200 departments, the pair replicated the same study in Missouri (30 police departments) and Ohio (97 police departments), respectively, with the total number of 200 responses.
"The survey results indicate that COVID-19 has significantly affected both the internal and external operations of these states' police departments," Dr. Ekici added. "These ramifications are particularly profound as they relate to safety measures and risk mitigation strategies implemented to protect police personnel and the public they serve."
According to their study, on average, 90% of the respondents from Illinois, Missouri and Ohio law enforcement said new safety measures had been deployed, including measures such as the distribution of personal protection equipment (PPE), new methodologies to interact with the public, social distancing, encouraging handwashing and use of hand sanitizer, frequent sanitizing of squad cars and cleaning police stations.
"Despite the nearly universal (94%) reporting of the use of new safety procedures, on average, only 68% of respondents believed their departments had an increased interest in their physical and emotional wellness in the states studied," Alexander explained. "There appears to be some dissonance between these two responses as one might anticipate that adoption of enhanced safety protocols would positively influence employee perceptions regarding employer concern. These somewhat inconsistent answers were proffered because, apparently, some employees perceive that their superiors are not especially worried about their health and welfare despite the fact they acknowledged that safety measures had been taken on their behalf."
The pair added that 61% of participants perceived that they were at greater risk than before the pandemic. In addition to traditional law enforcement officer safety concerns, for example, the potential for violent encounters, COVID-19 has added another layer of risk.
"Anxiety regarding disease transmission from the public or during other workplace interactions, and the practical requirements of social distancing, could reduce efficiency and effectiveness of policing to some degree," Dr. Ekici pointed out. "Operational activities used before the pandemic were not restricted by social distancing. Given the characteristics of the virus reported to public health authorities, the transmission may arise from both symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers, more so with those unmasked and unable to socially distance. Still, the ability of public health officials to share with police information about individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 aids police in taking a more secure posture with such individuals."
The survey, and subsequent study, found that Illinois, Missouri and Ohio police departments reduced public access to their facilities by 78% on average. A similar percentage lowered their use of community policing activities. Accordingly, community policing services were lessened by over 80% of the departments surveyed.
"As crime often goes unreported, as demonstrated by often significant disparities between reported crimes and crime victim surveys, the importance of community policing to capture this gap is crucial. Against this backdrop, access to police departments has declined, so that physical accessibility and connection by the public to police has dropped," Alexander and Ekici reported. "Also, less community policing means that the police's understanding of the communities they serve is diminished.
"New enforcement actions relating to face-covering orders, shelter in place orders and policing newly-designated essential and non-essential businesses are among the roles absent before the health crisis. In so doing, law enforcement has been placed in an unenviable role of enforcing pandemic-related rules opposed by some vocal constituencies," they added. "Interestingly, while facial covering has been encouraged to reduce the transmission of the virus, criminals have used them to hide their identities."
While arrests, traffic stops and investigatory stops have declined nationally, gun violence, murder, domestic violence and robberies have surged in some large cities during the pandemic, while pandemic-connected crimes (e.g., aggravated assaults, stabbings and murders of individuals enforcing the use of face coverings or those opposed to face masks) have emerged nationwide.
"The further fracturing of segments of U.S. society in recent months has also bore witness to a variety of criminal conduct: hate crimes, vehicle attacks, arson and damage to public and private property by individuals of all walks of life," the study authors noted. "All while hiring new recruits became more challenging due to the suspension of police training academies, along with furloughing and reducing staffing, budgetary pressures due to the new COVID-19 protocols in place, officer burnout, a decline in morale and heightened police scrutiny."
Comparison of Illinois, Missouri and Ohio
Compared to Illinois' 78%, the state of Missouri decreased its enforcement actions by 66%. While, on average, the decrease of law enforcement actions was 73% in these three states, Missouri's reductions in law enforcement actions appear to be aggressive compared to Illinois and Ohio. Another key difference among the states was responses to the calls for service. Accordingly, Illinois limited responses to the calls for service by 76%, while Ohio reduced only by 63%. Similarly, Illinois introduced new safety precautions for its personnel by 94% compared to Ohio's 87%. Although police departments from both states predominantly took measures, Illinois seemed to take personnel safety slightly more seriously than Ohio.
One of the other significant differences between Illinois and Ohio was officers' physical and emotional wellness concerns. In Illinois, police departments/officers appeared to be more concerned about their physical and emotional wellness compared to Ohio (75% and 61%, respectively). Lastly, Illinois significantly differed from Missouri in terms of suspending police academies or in-service training. While Illinois suspended 82% of in-service training or police academy training, Missouri suspended by 67%.
"In summary, this study shows that the consequences of COVID-19 on Illinois, Ohio and Missouri law enforcement agencies were significant," Alexander and Ekici concluded. "How long these changes in protocols and viewpoints of police will endure depending on the potency and length of the pandemic."
---
About the Authors
Alexander can be reached at DC-Alexander@wiu.edu. He has been a member of the WIU School of LEJA since 2005. His former students work at police departments, government agencies (FBI, Department of Homeland Security and State Department) and risk management firms across the United States. His teaching, research and speaking activities encompass terrorism, security and legal issues, and he has lectured in 10 countries, including to law enforcement and military officials at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. State Department and National Intelligence University events. Since publishing on terrorism in 1991, Alexander has written several books on the subject, including: Family Terror Networks (2019), The Islamic State: Combating the Caliphate Without Borders (Lexington, 2015), Business Confronts Terrorism: Risks and Responses (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), and Terrorism and Business: The Impact of September 11, 2001 (Transnational, 2002).
Ekici can be reached at N-Ekici@wiu.edu. He has been a member of the WIU School of LEJA since 2018. He teaches statistics, research methods, criminological theory, terrorism, public and private security and policing at undergraduate and graduate levels. Some of his most recent prestigious academic journal articles include "Perceptions of Generation Z Regarding Terrorism: A Cross-Regional Study (2021)," in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism; "An Empirical Test of Age-Graded Informal Social Control Theory: New Correlates of Youth Deviance (2020)," in Crime & Delinquency; "A Rule-Based Model for Victim Prediction (2020)," in International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice; "Structural Equation Modeling of Terror Perception: New Correlates of Perception Formation (2020)," in Perspectives on Terrorism and "Use of Kidnapping and Extortion as a Tool for Financing Terrorism: The Case of the PKK (2020)," in Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression;
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing
Connect with us: