Columbia Police Dept. participates in national officer survey
According to a new survey, a vast majority of law enforcement officers believe their job has become more difficult in light of high-profile officer-involved shootings and rising racial tensions across the country.
The Pew Research Center surveyed nearly 8,000 officers from departments that employee more than 100 officers. It is one of the largest surveys ever conducted with a nationally representative sample of police.
The survey revealed 75 percent of officers believe recent incidents have increased tensions between police and blacks in their communities, and 72 percent said officers in their department are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons.
The Columbia Police Department was one of the departments surveyed by the researchers. Chief Ken Burton said he hasn’t looked through the entirety of the survey results, but he said the initial numbers are “scary.”
“Frankly, I don’t know why people that are applying are applying because it’s a pretty thankless job,” Burton said. “But we still have people coming in the door and wanting to do it for all the right reasons and so we continue to hire.”
CPD currently has 19 vacancies, though that number is fluctuating with officers out with injuries, retirements and new hires in the academy.
A shortage of officers seems to be a nationwide trend as well. According to the survey, 86 percent of the respondents said their department does not have enough officers to adequately police the community. Police who work in larger agencies (with 1,000 officers of more) are more likely than those working in smaller agencies to say that there is a shortage of officers in their department (95 percent vs. 79 percent).
CPD has changed how they recruit in an effort to bring in more applicants. They opened online testing for applicants and in the past applicants had only a few days a year they could test to apply.
“We don’t have bodies to just go out and flood places,” Deputy Chief Jill Schlude said. “But we do a lot of virtual recruiting with ads that come up when you search certain things.”
But getting those applicants into the field can be a lengthy process. Schlude said they have to apply, test, and pass background and character checks.
“When it’s all said and done you’re probably talking if everything goes as planned nine months to a year before someone is actually up and functioning as a year,” Schlude said.
The Columbia Police Department has recently put an emphasis on “community policing.” Their Community Outreach Unit (COU) is aimed at building relationships between officers and citizens in hopes of better cooperation in the future.
According to the Pew survey, 84 percent of officers at least sometimes have serious concerns for their safety. A third of officers reported having physically struggled with a subject who was resisting arrest in the last month. Last year had the highest number of police fatalities in the last five years, with 135 law enforcement officers dying in the line of duty. 21 of those officers were killed in ambush-style attacks.
The survey suggests a majority of officers think about the repercussions of using force before they use force on a subject. Burton said while there’s no evidence his officers are hesitating, he wouldn’t be surprised if they are doing it without realizing.
“My intuition tells me we have officers hesitating where they wouldn’t before,” Burton said. “We’ve seen some things on video and we’re going, ‘OK, is that the reason?’ But I don’t think any cop is going to tell you, ‘Yeah I was afraid to do that and that’s why I didn’t do it.’ They may not even know they’re doing it.”
One of the biggest disparities between officers surveyed and the public in the survey was about if the public understood the risks and rewards of police work. 83 percent of the public said they did, while 86 percent of officers believed the public did not understand.
Police and public did agree on other issues however. The majority of both groups favor the use of officers wearing body cameras to record interactions with citizens (66 percent of officers and 93 percent of the public). Also, 68 percent of police and 84 percent of the public believe the country’s marijuana laws should be relaxed.
The survey also showed only 27 percent of officers surveyed said they have discharged their service weapon while on duty, outside of required training.
