Assessing the relationship between officers' broad cultural attitudes and their situational perceptions of firearm danger

The focus of the current study is to assess whether officers' broad attitudinal orientations are linked with their situational perceptions of danger in various armed citizen encounters.

The authors draw on survey data from 672 officers employed at a large metropolitan police department. The police culture literature is used to inform measures of occupational stress, danger, citizen distrust, views of upper management, and role orientation in relation to how officers perceive danger across a series of scenarios involving armed citizens that varied in terms of firearm placement and citizen resistance. Along with a host of control variables, a series of multivariate models are used to evaluate the degree to which these aggregated cultural views may shape officers' situational perceptions of danger.

The results indicate that a stronger endorsement of broad attitudinal orientations involving occupational danger and citizen distrust are linked with higher perceptions of danger in armed-citizen encounters, especially as the situations become more discretionary.

Empirical research related to police culture has typically relied upon highly aggregated assessments of how officers view their occupational and organizational work environments. However, yet to be explored is whether these broad views impact officers' assessments of specific encounters, particularly those that are dangerous in nature. The findings from this study also have the potential to inform ambiguous use of force standards that are heavily influenced by officers' situational assessments of danger.