Examining Officer Activities and their Influence on Resident Perceptions During a Hot Spot Policing Project in Tucson, Arizona

This thesis addresses two research questions: how are police officer activities in high crime areas influenced by training on procedural justice?, and how do differences in the activities among trained and untrained officers help explain changes in the perceptions of residents about police procedural justice and police legitimacy? Written activity logs used by police officers during a hot spots policing project in Tucson, AZ were transferred to a database and coded for the types of activities officers were taking part in. Surveys administered to residents before and after the project were used to create scales for procedural justice and police legitimacy. These data revealed that police officers trained in procedural justice emphasize different principles in their activities than untrained officers. Procedural justice trained officers did not speak to as many citizens as officers who did not receive additional training, nor did they engage with the community as much, but they did perform more foot and high-visibility patrols. The findings also reveal that resident perceptions are minimally affected by such training and their perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy are not significantly hurt. Based off these findings, recommendations for moving forward with procedural justice training include emphasizing how the department would like to see their officers behave and making clearer objectives part of the training. Future research should focus more on better understanding how resident perceptions can be influenced by officer activities.