Purpose

The primary objective of the current study is to examine the impact that the size of a police department and workload on a department have on response time. Secondarily, the authors look at the effect that incident-level factors such as the severity of a call for service (CFS) and community-level factors such as ethnic diversity have on police response time.

Design/methodology/approach

The current study examined CFSs data collected over a three-year period and organizational information from 26 police departments in Northeast Texas, as well as community-level information. In order to measure the effect of organizational variables, community factors and incident-level variables on police response time, the authors employed the use of hierarchical linear models (HLMs).

Findings

The results of hierarchical linear modeling indicated that incident-level factors and police department size are significant predictors of response time.

Research limitations/implications

There are two primary limitations: first, there were a lack of available organizational structure correlates such as age and differentiation. Second, the primary data set had a significant number of incomplete or repeating cases, thereby limiting the accuracy of the current study’s analysis.

Originality/value

The most unique aspect of this manuscript is that it examines how organizational factors affect police response time. Numerous studies analyzed determinants of police response time such as incident- and community-level factors, but the importance of organizational factors has not been analyzed.

中文翻译：

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检查组织和社区对警察响应时间的影响

目的

当前研究的主要目标是研究警察部门规模和部门工作量对响应时间的影响。其次，作者研究了事件级别的因素（如求助电话的严重性）和社区级别的因素（如种族多样性）对警察响应时间的影响。

设计/方法/方法

本研究调查了三年期间收集的CFS数据以及得克萨斯州东北部26个警察局的组织信息以及社区级别的信息。为了衡量组织变量，社区因素和事件级别变量对警察响应时间的影响，作者采用了分层线性模型（HLM）。

发现

分层线性建模的结果表明，事件级别因素和警察部门规模是响应时间的重要预测指标。

研究局限/意义

有两个主要限制：首先，缺少可用的组织结构相关因素，例如年龄和分化。其次，主要数据集包含大量不完整或重复的案例，从而限制了当前研究分析的准确性。

创意/价值

该手稿最独特的方面是它检查了组织因素如何影响警察的响应时间。众多研究分析了警察响应时间的决定因素，例如事件和社区级别的因素，但尚未分析组织因素的重要性。