ABSTRACT

Police organisations have a wealth of experience in responding to emergencies, but COVID-19 is unprecedented in terms of the speed, scale and complexity of developing doctrine and its implementation by officers. The crisis also threw into sharp relief the fact that police policy and, crucially, practice are always implemented within wider social, political and economic contexts. Using online survey data collected from 325 police officers based at forces operating across different UK contexts (cities, conurbations, towns and rural areas), we seek to understand officer experiences and perceptions of policing COVID-19. In particular, we examine whether (internally) organisational climate and (externally) the UK government’s response to COVID-19 were important to (a) officers’ support for police use of force at times of emergency, (b) officer’s support for procedurally just policing at times of emergency, and (c) their health and well-being; and whether identification and perceptions of self-legitimacy mediate the associations between these variables. We show that a positive organisational climate was associated with less support for police use of force, more support for procedurally just policing and increased police officer health and well-being. Our results, however, suggest potential negative correlates of police officer self-legitimacy: higher levels of self-legitimacy were associated with poorer police officer health and well-being and increased support for police use of force. These results have important implications for our understanding of police officer well-being and police officers’ commitment to democratic modes of policing when faced with policing a pandemic.

摘要

警察组织在应对紧急情况方面拥有丰富的经验，但 COVID-19 在制定学说及其由官员实施的速度、规模和复杂性方面是前所未有的。这场危机还使警察政策以及至关重要的实践始终在更广泛的社会、政治和经济背景下实施的事实更加突出。我们使用从英国不同环境（城市、大都市、城镇和农村地区）行动的 325 名警察收集的在线调查数据，试图了解警察对 COVID-19 警务的经验和看法。特别是，我们检查（内部）组织氛围和（外部）英国政府对 COVID-19 的反应是否对 (a) 警察在紧急情况下支持警察使用武力很重要，(b) 警官在紧急情况下对程序公正警务的支持，以及 (c) 他们的健康和福祉；以及对自我合法性的认同和认知是否调节了这些变量之间的关联。我们表明，积极的组织氛围与减少对警察使用武力的支持，更多地支持程序公正的警务，并提高警察的健康和福祉。然而，我们的结果表明警官自我合法性可能存在负相关：较高水平的自我合法性与较差的警官健康和福祉以及对警察使用武力的支持增加有关。这些结果对我们理解警官的幸福感以及警官在面对流行病警务时对民主警务模式的承诺具有重要意义。