Police officer doesn’t come mind when most people think of pencil-pushing jobs.
Content article
Police officer doesn’t come mind when most people think of pencil-pushing jobs.
Content article
But new research from Western University found police officers increasingly are bogged down by writing reports, a problem that’s affecting officers’ moral and their ability to do proactive police work.
Police information and data collection practices – intended to provide transparency and accountability – often lead to increased paperwork, higher staffing costs and poor-quality crime statistics, according to a paper recently published in the academic journal The Irrationalities of Rationality in Police Data Processes.
“It was mind boggling to me how much time and energy was expended on paperwork and the level of frustration of these poor police officers who really just wanted to get out on the road,” said co-author Laura Huey, a sociology professor who studies policing and evidence-based policy-making.
“It became a source of stress for the officers we interviewed.”
Huey and her co-authors, Lorna Ferguson and Jacek Koziarski, were embedded with police officers from two forces – neither was identified to protect the officers’ identity – for their research.
Police officers are required to complete a wide range of reports used internally and by others, including insurance companies, government ministries and the media. In one example, the researchers describe a four-page report for automobile crashes that included questions about the tire pressures of the vehicles involved.
Completing paperwork leaves officers with significantly less time for crime prevention and community engagement, the researchers said. If police take longer to respond to calls for service, it can result in people not reporting minor crimes, which leads to poorer-quality crime statistics.
Content article
And some of the data police collect isn’t fit to be shared externally, so analysts often spend considerable time “cleaning” it up before it can be made public, Huey said.
The researchers use the term paperwork even for digital reports, though there are some police forces which still use paper reports, Huey added.
The paperwork problem has landed on the radar of police brass, many of whom are under pressure from politicians and the public to rein in ballooning budgets, the bulk of which are used to pay the staff salaries. In London, salaries made up 96 per cent of the $ 115-million police budget for 2020.
Last month, Chief Steve Williams sounded the alarm on a spike in calls for service that’s putting unsustainable pressure on the frontline patrol unit.
The highest priority calls for emergencies, life-threatening situations and serious crimes in progress increased by 27 per cent from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31 this year, compared to the same period in 2020, while urgent calls jumped 96 per cent, according to a report to the police board.
In response, Williams shuffled officers from specialty units to frontline patrol and spent nearly $ 500,000 in overtime pay this year to meet the rising demand.
Both politicians and the public should reconsider what police officers are asked to do if they want to reduce the cost of policing in their communities, said Huey, who wants to collaborate with researchers across North America to further study the paperwork issue and its impacts.
“There’s very little research that has been done on this,” she said.