Towards a better understanding of police experience: An assessment of the unique shifts,crime areas,and duty assignments that officers have worked

Abstract

Using the survey data from 791 officers in a large western police department in the United States, the current study assesses how officers’ unique work experiences (i.e., shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments) vary and culminate throughout a career in policing. Findings provide a glimpse into the early socialization and work experiences of novice officers and how experiences manifest across officers as they gain years on the job. The results also show that there is particularly high variation in the career work experiences amongst the most tenured officers, which calls into question the validity of using only length of service to measure officer experience. This study closes by discussing the implications that these findings have for future research and practice.

Keywords

Police craft officer experience shift crime areas duty assignments

Introduction

Policing is often described as a “craft,” in which officers develop their abilities through apprenticeship and learning on the job (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Brown, 1988; Wilson, 1968). This process entails being repetitively exposed to unique situations and experiences from which officers establish the knowledge, skills, and judgment that are essential to performing all aspects of their craft at a high level (Bittner, 1983; Willis, 2013; Willis and Mastrofski, 2014). Gaining experience is thus a crucial element for an officer’s improvement. For example, experience is thought to play an important role in developing the abilities to effectively handle interactions with the public that entail developing suspicions, defusing potentially dangerous situations, using discretion, applying coercion, and managing occupational stressors (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brown, 1988; Forst et al., 1977; Friedrich, 1977; Paoline, 2003; Paoline and Terrill, 2007; Paoline et al., 2015; Riksheim and Chermak, 1993; Skolnick, 1966; Worden, 1989).

Despite experience appearing to be an instrumental factor in nearly every area of police practice, the detailed study of officer experience on its own has received scarce attention, and limitations are present within the limited work that does exist. First, much of what is known about how experience is acquired by officers is from ethnographic work that was published decades ago (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Brown, 1988; Muir, 1977; Wilson, 1968). Though these studies were instrumental in detailing the importance that officers place on their work experiences, there has been virtually no empirical data that has ever assessed how experiences vary and accumulate over time. Second, given that scholars have consistently conceptualized experience as an attribute that increases incrementally throughout an officer’s career through constant citizen interactions (see Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brown, 1988; Muir, 1977; Skolnick, 1966), “tenure length” and “experience” have become synonymous with one another in the literature. Evidence of this can be found in the majority of empirical research that nearly always measures experience as some form of “years on the job” (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Friedrich, 1977; Paoline and Terrill, 2007; Paoline et al., 2015; Patterson, 2002). This operationalization provides little detail into what police experience entails and how it is acquired throughout an officer’s career. The work-related elements of officer experience that are often left out of research are the unique shifts, crime area types, and the different duty assignments that officers have worked. This is because the time of day an officer works, the crime rate in the areas that they operate in, and the roles they have been assigned to (i.e., patrol, supervisor, detective, and special assignment units), exposes officers to vastly different citizen encounters.

The objective of the current study is to provide an empirical assessment of how the unique work experiences of officers (i.e., shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments) culminate and vary throughout a career in policing. Doing so not only allows for a more nuanced understanding of police experience (beyond just length of service) but it also has the potential to be an important platform for future research that aims to examine the relationship between officer experience and their behavior. With this goal in mind, the current study proceeds in the following manner. First, a review of prior literature is offered that details the importance of police experience in developing an officer’s craft and decision-making. Second, data from a large western police department located in the United States is used to assess officers’ work experiences during their careers. Finally, this paper concludes with a review of the findings and a discussion of how this study can be used to inform future research and practice.

Literature review

Police experience

The importance of officer experience has a well-established history within policing literature. A number of early ethnographic works noted how crucial work experiences were in developing the craft of policing and guiding officer discretion and decision-making (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Brown, 1988; Muir, 1977; Skolnick, 1966; Wilson, 1968). As Bayley and Bittner (1984, p. 35) put it, “How important is experience in learning to be an effective police officer? Police officers say vehemently that there is no substitute.” This is because gaining experience in policing is likened to an apprenticeship process where officers develop the skills to use the different “tools” available to them. These tools revolve around gaining competency as to the proper ways to develop suspicions, defuse situations, use coercion, and cope with the stressors of the job (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brown, 1988; Friedrich, 1977; Riksheim and Chermak, 1993; Skolnick 1966; Worden, 1989). Essentially, scholars came to understand that officers believed that experience was an instrumental factor in nearly every aspect of their craft.

How, exactly, these aspects of experience and expertise are taught, learned, and applied within policing has also been the subject of prior literature. Early socialization in an officer’s career is theorized to be a particularly pivotal aspect in the process of acquiring experience (Reuss-Ianni, 1983; Sherman, 1980; Van Maanen, 1974). Once officers begin patrol work, they often are assigned to seasoned personnel who assist the young officers in learning the tricks of the trade (Brown, 1988; Van Maanen, 1974). This is an integral part of the process as it serves to help novice officers interpret their initial experiences on the street (Brown, 1988). More specifically, Bayley and Bittner (1984) contend that the learning that takes place on the job is not learning in a “classroom” sense (i.e., the pre-service academy), but is instead learning that occurs by repeatedly handling unique situations. Within these situations, officers gain repetitions in a number of tactics that are deemed effective practices to utilize during future police-citizen interactions. These tactics include learning to take charge of the situation, the complexities of the community, maintaining a calm presence, and useful strategies that can be used during each phase of a citizen interaction, which includes contact, processing, and exiting (Bayley and Bittner, 1984).

In a series of recent publications, Willis and Mastrofski (2014, 2017, 2018) note the longstanding struggle of implementing empirically supported policies, technology, and tactics into policing as officers rely heavily on their experience to drive their decision-making. This was also evident in earlier research by the authors (see Mastrofski et al., 2012) that found only 7% of officers in their sample identified scientific evidence regarding what works as being important. Meanwhile, a later study found that 47% of officers noted, “that knowledge of people, places, and customs where the officer is assigned are very important” (Willis and Mastrofski, 2014, p. 322). They used these findings as a platform to argue that those interested in implementing scientific findings into police practice must recognize, respect, and take into consideration the craft of policing (Willis and Mastrofski, 2014).

Despite scholars widely confirming that experience is something that is acquired on the street, little is known empirically about how experiences vary among officers, or how it culminates throughout a career. A reality of the job is that all officers go through a similar early career socialization process, but not all officers are exposed to the same types of experience-generating opportunities. In fact, among other things officers vary on the shifts (i.e., time of day), crime areas (i.e., high, medium, or low), and duty assignments that they work. Each of which exposes them to different citizen encounters. For example, officers working overnight are potentially more likely to come across dangerous situations that involve violence or drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, studies have contended that officers working in the daytime receive more service-oriented or order-maintenance calls for service such as traffic collisions, crowd control, or wellness checks (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brown, 1988; Walker and Katz, 2018).¹

Taken together, prior policing literature has conceptualized experience as an acquisitional process that begins early in an officer’s career, and continues as they are repeatedly exposed to unique citizen interactions. Those interactions then accumulate throughout a career and ultimately inform an officer’s distinctive skillset, confidence, attitude, and working style (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brown, 1988; Muir, 1977; Skolnick, 1966). Prior empirical examinations that have attempted to operationalize experience have proceeded to measure it as a catchall variable accounting for years on the job (Alpert et al., 2005; Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Brandl and Stroshine, 2013; Friedrich, 1977; Kaminski et al., 2004; Morabito and Doerner, 1997; Paoline and Terrill, 2007; Paoline et al., 2015; Patterson, 2002). Collectively, these studies have produced mixed findings as to the relationship between officer tenure and their behavior, which includes the decision to stop, arrest, or use force (Alpert et al., 2005; Bolger, 2015; Brandl and Stroshine, 2013; Brandl et al., 2001; Forst et al., 1977; Friedrich, 1977; Lawton, 2007; McCluskey et al., 2005; Paoline and Terrill, 2005; Paoline and Terrill, 2007; Worden, 1989). It is this current study’s contention that these mixed findings may support the notion that officer experience is much more nuanced than a blunt measure of years of tenure.

The challenge with measuring experience in this way is that it assumes all officers in a particular year of their career (or those that are grouped together within a similar amount of years) have the same “amount” of experience. In other words, it posits that all officers have had virtually the same careers whether that be in the shifts, crime areas, and the duty assignments they have worked. However, there is no empirical research to date that supports that assertion. In reality, many of these variables could potentially differ from one officer to the next. For example, an officer with 10 years of service who has spent the majority of his or her time as a patrol officer working overnight or in a high-crime area is liable to have vastly different experiences than a fellow 10-year vet who has worked as a supervisor or in an investigative capacity. Taken together, many of the factors that are potentially influencing an officer’s decision-making are not currently being captured by limiting the measurement of experience to only years on the job.

Current study

The current study addresses these limitations and advances the scholarship surrounding police experience on several fronts. First, using recently collected data from close to 800 police officers, the results are used to provide a fresh empirical assessment of police experience that builds upon the ethnographic work that was published decades ago. Second, with a host of experience related survey items, subsequent analyses focus on the extent to which police experience varies across officers based on the shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments that they have worked during their tenure. Further, this study also provides a preliminary inquiry into how these unique work experiences culminate at different points in an officer’s career. Finally, it is with hope that this project can serve as a platform for future research to reimagine the measurement of police experience as well as its predictive capabilities in relation to officer decision-making and behavior.

Methodology

Data

The data for this project comes from surveys of officers from a large western police department in the United States. Though the survey was developed with help from the department’s training unit and largely focused on tapping into officers’ perceptions of danger in armed citizen situations, it also contained a host of experience related items. For example, officers were not only inquired as to how long they had been with the department, but they were also asked to identify the different shifts, precincts, and duty assignments that they had worked in while there.² Data collection began in December of 2019 and ran through April of 2021.³

The survey protocol entailed a field research director getting into contact with over 120 administrative and patrol sergeants spread out across the department’s seven different precincts to schedule days to administer it. Officers in the sample each work four consecutive days of 10 h shifts followed by 3 days off. Additionally, each shift in every precinct was assigned two squads who shared an overlap work day (i.e., the last shift of a work week for one squad and the first shift for another) which was known internally as a “double-squad” day. These double-squad days were ideal for conducting the survey for two reasons. First, it allowed for the greatest potential to survey the highest number of officers at one time. Second, double-squad days had more time allotted for briefings (30 min) compared to single-squad days (15 min). Given that the survey took an average of 25 min to complete, going on single-squad days would not have been feasible. Ultimately, the research team attended and administered the survey at over 60 patrol briefings and specialized assignment unit meetings.⁴ Taken together, the overall response rate across the precincts and specialized units was 85% which resulted in 850 completed surveys. After conducting list-wise deletion on randomly missing cases, the analyses presented below use data from 791 officers.

Experience Variables

The first experience variable in the current study is officer tenure. As mentioned previously, prior literature has accounted for officer tenure (often termed “experience”) as either a continuous variable that measures tenure in months or years, or as an ordinal variable that groups officers based on similar lengths of service. In the current study, the variable “Officer Tenure” uses the latter option and groups officers based on whether they have been with the department for 0–2 years (1–24 months), 3–10 years (25–120 months), or 11 or more years (121+ months). The decision to measure tenure as an ordinal variable was made so that variation in officers’ work experience could be examined both between and within the tenure groups. Though the original intention was to have two separate 3–5 and 6–10 year groups (based on Paoline and Terrill’s (2007) work), only 14 officers in the sample had between 6 and 10 years of tenure.⁵ Thus, the decision was made to collapse those officers into the 3–10 year group.

The other experience variables that are used in this study are the unique shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments that officers have worked during their career. The department that was sampled operated on a three-shift system. The first shift (i.e., day shift) usually began around 0500 to 0600 and ended between 1500 and 1600. Second shift (i.e., swing shift) operated from 1300 or 1400 until 2300–2400 h. Finally, third shift (i.e., overnight shift) started between 2000 to 2100 and ended 0600 to 0700. The first variable created to measure shift captured the overall “Number of Shifts Worked” during tenure (i.e., 0 = One shift, 1 = Two shifts, and 2 = All three shifts). A series of dummy variables were also created that captured the “Current Shift” that officers were working when they were surveyed (i.e., 1 = First shift, 1 = Second shift, 1 = Third shift, 1 = Other).

Moving to crime area, measurement began with coding the reported index crimes for violent and property offenses for the 2 years prior to data collection (2018–2019). ArcGIS software was then used to overlay the department’s precincts onto a Shape file from the US Census Bureau to get the population of citizens in each precinct. From there, crime rates based on violent, property, and total offenses were created for each of the sample department’s precincts. Once ranked from high to low, the precincts with the highest crime rates (the top 30%) were labeled as “high-crime”, the middle 40% were demarcated as “medium-crime,” and the last 30% of precincts were categorized as “low-crime.”⁶ From there, coding for crime area was completed similarly to the creation of the shift variables. First, a “Number of Crime Areas Worked” during tenure variable was generated (i.e., 0 = One area, 1 = Two areas, 2 = All three areas). A series of dummy variables were also created that account for the officer’s “Current Crime Area” (i.e., 1 = Low-crime, 1 = Medium-crime, 1 = High-crime, 1 = Other).⁷ Again, this allows for an assessment of both the officer’s current crime area assignment, as well as the number of crime areas they have worked throughout their career. The remaining variables that were included are all related to different duty assignments that an officer may have worked. This included whether the officer had “Supervisory Experience” (i.e., 1 = Yes), “Investigation Experience” (i.e., 1 = Yes), or “Specialized Assignment Unit Experience” (i.e., 1 = Yes).⁸ Note that the measurement for the experience variables can be seen in Table 1.⁹

Table 1.

Coding for experience variables.

Variables	Definition
Officer tenure	0 = 0–2 years, 1 = 3–10 years, 2 = 11+ years
Number of shifts worked	0 = one shift, 1 = two shifts, 2 = all three shifts
Current shift
1st shift	0 = no, 1 = yes
2nd shift	0 = no, 1 = yes
3rd shift	0 = no, 1 = yes
Other	0 = no, 1 = yes
Number of crime areas worked	0 = one area, 1 = two areas, 2 = all three areas
Current crime area
Low-crime	0 = no, 1 = yes
Medium-crime	0 = no, 1 = yes
High-crime	0 = no, 1 = yes
Other	0 = no, 1 = yes
Supervisor experience	0 = no, 1 = yes
Investigative experience	0 = no, 1 = yes
Special assignment experience	0 = no, 1 = yes

Analytical strategy

The analyses that follow are used to assess the extent to which unique work experiences vary across officers based on the tenure group for which they belong. This also allows for a comparison of the differences between groups as well as an assessment of how these work experience culminate at different points in an officer’s career. To do so, the analyses rely heavily upon descriptive techniques, such as cross-tabulations, that examine the percentage of officers within different tenure groups who have experience working in various shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments. Kruskal–Wallis tests are also used to examine whether significant differences exist between the tenure groupings and specific work experiences.¹⁰ Together, the use of these methods will help provide a more nuanced understanding of police experience.

Results

Table 2 offers descriptive information for the full sample that is used in the current study. Starting with office tenure, over 26% of the sample had between 0 and 2 years of service. Close to 30% of the sample was in the 3–10 year group and 44% officers had 11 or more years of service.¹¹ Moving to the other experience variables, roughly a third of officers had worked either one shift (31%), two shifts (36%), or all three shifts (33%) during their career. As for the shift that they were currently working when surveyed, 30% of officers were working first shift, followed by 36% in second shift, and 27% in third shift. Further, close to 7% of the sample was assigned to a working time that fell outside of the typical three-shift structure.

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics for the experience variables (N = 791).

Variables	N (%)
Officer tenure
0–2 years	207 (26.17)
3–10 years	234 (29.58)
11+ years	350 (44.25)
Number of shifts worked
One shift	246 (31.10)
Two shifts	281 (35.52)
All 3 shifts	264 (33.38)
Current shift
1st shift	238 (30.09)
2nd shift	285 (36.03)
3rd shift	215 (27.18)
Other	53 (6.70)
Number of crime areas worked
One crime area	473 (59.80)
Two crime areas	231 (29.20)
All three crime areas	87 (11.00)
Current crime area
Low-crime	223 (28.19)
Medium-crime	342 (43.24)
High-crime	173 (21.87)
Other	53 (6.70)
Supervisor experience	93 (11.76)
Investigation experience	111 (14.03)
Special assignment unit experience	154 (19.47)

Next, nearly 60% of officers had working in only one crime area precinct type, while 29% had worked in two. Only 11% of officers in the sample had worked in a low-crime, medium-crime, and high-crime precinct during their tenure. For current area, 28% of officers were assigned to a low-crime area, while close to 22% were working a high-crime area. The modal category was working in a medium-crime area, where 43% of officers were assigned. Similar to shift, nearly 7% of officers were designated as working in an alternative area. In regards to the duty assignments, 12% officers had worked in a supervisory capacity, 14% had worked in investigations, and 19% had SAU experience.

The next series of tables show cross-tabulations for each experience variable based on the tenure group that the officer belongs to. Conducting this analysis allows the reader to gain better insight into how officers accumulate different work experiences throughout their patrol careers, and whether exposure to different work experiences is significantly different across tenure groups. The analyses begin in Table 3, which depicts a cross-tabulation between the number of shifts an officer has worked and their tenure with the department. Looking at the tenure groups of 0–2 years, 3–10 years, and 11+ years, it is apparent that the longer an officer is with the department, the greater number of shifts they are more likely to have worked. For example, nearly 59% of officers in the 0–2 year group had only worked one shift during their patrol career. This percentage steadily decreases as tenure increases and by 11+ years, less than 9% of officers had stayed in only one shift throughout their tenure and over 60% had worked all three shifts. The most variation within groups is evident for officers with 3–10 years of tenure. Though close to half of the officers in this group had worked two different shifts during this point in their career, a sizeable portion (40%) had still only worked one shift. The Kruskal–Wallis test also reveals statistically significant differences between the tenure groups (H = 224.80, p ≤ 0.001).

Table 3.

Number of shifts an officer has worked across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 Years (N = 207)	3–10 Years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Shifts worked	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
Only 1 shift	122 (58.94)	94 (40.17)	30 (8.57)
2 shifts	75 (36.23)	109 (46.58)	97 (27.71)
3 shifts	10 (4.83)	31 (13.25)	223 (63.71)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 115.53***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

Table 4 assesses the current shift officers in the sample were working depending on which tenure group they belonged to. Among officers in the 0–2 year group, the majority were currently working second shift when they were surveyed (54%), while only 17% worked first shift. This trend was largely the same among officers in the 3–10 year group as second shift was still the modal category at close to 43%. The 3–10 year group also had the largest percentage of officers currently working third shift (i.e., overnight shift) at 35%. With that being said, officers in the 11+ year group looked vastly different than the other two. A sizeable portion of those officers (46%) were currently working first shift, and roughly 21% worked third shift. These differences between groups were also found to be significant (H = 115.53, p ≤ 0.001). Overall, the data appear to show that officers within this department predominately start their career working second shift but are most likely to be working first shift later in their careers. A possible explanation for this is that supplementary analysis found that over 87% of officers in the 11+ years group stated that they were a parent, compared to 38% of officers in the 0–2 year group, and 50% in the 3–10 year group. Thus, the schedule of day shift may be more conducive to a family lifestyle.¹²

Table 4.

Current shift across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 Years (N = 207)	3–10 Years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Current shift	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
1st shift	35 (16.91)	42 (19.95)	161 (46.00)
2nd shift	112 (54.11)	101 (43.16)	72 (20.57)
3rd shift	60 (28.99)	83 (35.47)	72 (20.57)
Other	0 (00.00)	8 (3.42)	45 (12.86)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 115.53***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

Table 5 shows the analysis of the number of crime areas that officers have worked based on their tenure group. Similar to shift, the table is a cross-tabulation of the number of different areas an officer has worked (i.e., high-crime, medium-crime, and low-crime) based on which tenure group they belong to. Looking at the 0–2 year group, nearly 99% of officers had only worked in one type of crime area. There is also very little movement of officers in the 3–10 year group as 78% had still only worked in one area. However, there is variation in the 11+ years group as the modal category shifts from having worked in one crime area (25%), to two crime areas (51%), but only 24% of officers had worked in all three crime area types. These differences between groups were also found to be significant (H = 294.34, p ≤ 0.001). Overall, it appears that as officers move later into their careers, they are more likely to have worked in more than one type of crime area.

Table 5.

Number of crime areas worked across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 Years (N = 207)	3–10 Years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Areas Worked	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
Only 1 area	204 (98.55)	183 (78.21)	86 (24.57)
2 areas	3 (1.45)	48 (20.51)	180 (51.43)
All 3 crime areas	0 (0.00)	3 (1.28)	84 (24.00)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 294.34***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

The type of crime area an officer was currently working when the survey was administered was also cross-tabulated with tenure groups. Seen in Table 6, there is actually very little discernable difference between the type of crime area the officer was currently working and the tenure group that they belong to. Across the three groups, roughly 26–31% were assigned to a low-crime area, 41–45% to a medium-crime area, and 20–24% to a high-crime area. Taken together, this provides some evidence that more tenured officers are not opting to work in lower-crime areas the same way they appear to be bidding to work first shift.

Table 6.

Current crime area across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 years (N = 207)	3–10 years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Current crime area	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
Low-crime	64 (30.92)	67 (28.63)	92 (26.29)
Medium-crime	93 (44.93)	105 (44.87)	144 (41.14)
High-crime	50 (24.15)	54 (23.08)	69 (19.71)
Other	0 (00.00)	8 (3.42)	45 (12.86)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 34.12***

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05

The remaining cross-tabulation tables all examine how experience in different duties (i.e., supervisory, investigative, SAU) varies across the three tenure groups. Beginning with supervisor experience in Table 7, every officer in the patrol sample who had supervisory experience had been with the department for 11+ years. Within the 11+ years group, nearly 27% were either currently serving as a supervisor or had been one in their past. In Table 8, all but 13 officers who had investigatory experience were in the 11+ years group, of which over 28% had worked on an investigation unit. Further, when looking at SAUs (seen in Table 9), close to 39% of officers in the 11+ years group had experience working in a specialized unit at one point in their careers. This is compared to 0 officers (0%) in the 0–2 year group and only 19 officers (8%) in the 3–10 year group. Given the lopsided nature of all of these results, significant differences were also found between each type of duty experience and the three tenure groups. It is also worth noting that based on these tables, it is evident that more years of tenure is related to an increase in the variability there is in the different types of duty assignments they have worked.

Table 7.

Supervisor experience across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 years (N = 207)	3–10 years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Variable	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
No experience	207 (100.00)	234 (100.00)	257 (73.43)
Supervisor experience	0 (0.00)	0 (0.00)	93 (26.57)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 94.50***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

Table 8.

Investigation experience across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 years (N = 207)	3–10 years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Variable	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
No experience	206 (99.52)	222 (94.87)	252 (72.00)
Investigation experience	1 (0.48)	12 (5.13)	98 (28.00)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 84.02***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

Table 9.

Special assignment units (SAU) experience across tenure groups (N = 791).

	0–2 years (N = 207)	3–10 years (N = 234)	11+ years (N = 350)
Variable	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
No experience	207 (100.00)	215 (91.88)	215 (61.43)
SAU experience	0 (00.00)	19 (8.12)	135 (38.57)

Kruskal–Wallis Test = 124.65***.

***p ≤ 0.001, **p ≤ 0.01, *p ≤ 0.05.

To put all of these findings from duty experience into context, it is easy to see why almost no officers in the 0–2 year group had been assigned to such a role. It is typical for departments in the United States to have a civil service policy stating that an officer must have a certain amount of years of tenure before being allowed to apply for these advanced roles, such as taking a sergeant’s exam or moving into an investigative unit.¹³ A similar explanation could be posited about officers in the 3–10 year group. As mentioned before, only 14 officers in the sample had 6–10 years of tenure with the department. Therefore, it still could be the case that it was still too early in their careers for many of the officers between 3–5 years of tenure to be considered for such roles.¹⁴ Or, perhaps some officers in this group were currently working in another specialized unit that was not surveyed. Lastly, for all three duty assignment variables, the majority of officers who had these experiences were in the 11+ year group. These officers have enough tenure where they can apply for these different assignments if they so choose. In the following section, these findings are discussed at length and used to make a number of recommendations for future research and practice.

Discussion and conclusion

The unique work experiences of officers are believed to be instrumental in driving their decision-making and behavior. Recent scholarly work has even contended that officers’ reliance on the police craft can create challenges when trying to implement empirically supported policies, technology, and tactics (Willis and Mastrofski, 2014, 2017, 2018). These studies also note that in order to make the blend of craft and science smoother, police experience must be researched and taken seriously. The aim of the current study was to build upon early qualitative and anecdotal research to provide a contemporary understanding of the unique experiences that officers have (beyond years on the job), and the variation that exists both between and within tenure groupings. The key takeaways from this approach are reviewed in the coming paragraphs.

First, officer tenure was significantly associated with nearly every work experience. For example, the percentage of officers who had worked multiple shifts increased as officer tenure increased, and by the 11+ years group, over 60% of officers had worked all three shifts at some point in their patrol career. Nearly 53% of officers in this category were also currently working first shift at the time they were surveyed. As was speculated above, this may be a sign that officers who have the most tenure are bidding to work day shift as it is more conducive to having a family. Supplementary analysis revealed that over 87% of officers with 11+ years of tenure have children, which was much higher than officers in the 0–2 year group (37%) and 3–10 year group (50%).

As for crime areas, it does not appear that officers are self-selecting to work in a specific crime area, given that the percentage of officers working in low-crime, medium-crime, and high-crime areas was relatively stable across the three tenure groups. This is interesting as one could posit that similar to shift, officers who have more years of tenure would bid to work in low-crime areas where there is a reduced chance of being involved in dangerous situations. Further, officers who had supervisory, investigative, or specialized assignment unit experience were heavily concentrated in the 11+ years group. In other words, years of service appears to be positively linked to the variation that exists in duty assignment experience. Finally, statistically significant differences between tenure groups were found for every other experience-related variable.

A second set of takeaways comes from looking at the variation within the different tenure groups. For instance, there is very little deviation in the work experiences of the most novice officers who have 0–2 years of tenure. The majority of officers in this group had only worked one shift (59%), and nearly all of them were assigned to a shift that incorporated working at night (83%). Only one officer in this group had experience working in any of the duty assignments outside of patrol, though this is largely due to department civil service standards that mandate an officer must have 3 years on the job to be eligible to apply for these positions. Evidence of officers beginning to branch out into other unique experiences was found for those in the 3–10 year group. An increasing number of officers in this group had worked in multiple different crime areas (22%) and had worked in either a SAU (8%) or investigate unit (5%). The most within-group variation was found for officers with 11+ years of service. For example, close to 39% of officers had worked in an SAU capacity at some point in their career and 28% had served in investigations. Collectively, these findings support the notion that as an officer gains more years on the job, they are increasingly likely to be exposed different unique work experiences. However, there is a noticeable amount of variation in the work experiences of officers with 11+ years of service. This calls into question whether using tenure alone is a good isolated measure of experience for officers within this group, as they are more likely to have been exposed to vastly different experiences from one officer to the next.

The study of officer experience is still in its infancy and there are a host of areas upon which future research can build. To improve the measurement of experience moving forward, researchers may want to consider including similar unique work experience items to go along with tenure in their analyses. They may also seek to include items related to attitudinal orientations. Doing this would allow for further assessment of whether officers who subscribe to different cultural elements (i.e., proactiveness, dangerousness, and citizen distrust) cluster within specific assignments.¹⁵ Future research should also consider conducting in-depth qualitative interviews that ask officers about the different work experiences that they have had and how it impacts their view of the police craft. This would be valuable in identifying the types of work experiences that are especially impactful (both positively and negatively) on officer mindset and behavior. They may also be helpful for identifying specific types of experiences that officers are exposed to but are in need of further resources to improve their comfortability (i.e., mentorship, training, and counseling).

Relatedly, research on officer experience that involves longitudinal data could help uncover whether exposure to a certain experience early in a career predicts the later career trajectory of the officer. This could also be especially fruitful if factors related to officers’ personal lives were considered as well. For example, turning points in an officer’s life (i.e., getting married or having children) could be important predictors of the types of assignments that they apply for and work in (i.e., day shift, less dangerous units). Moving in these directions would assist researchers in disentangling officer experience, and it could provide clarity to the relationship between experience and officer behavior. If specific work experiences are found to have a significant relationship with desired behavioral outcomes (i.e., decreased use of force, fewer complaints), departments could consider structuring themselves to make sure officers have exposure to those experiences.

As with every study, there are a few limitations worth noting. First, given the size of the department in this sample and its geographic location, some of these findings may not be generalizable to smaller or international departments. For example, a smaller department is likely to have fewer opportunities for officers to work in duty assignments other than patrol. Therefore, future research should consider assessing the variation that exists in officers’ work experiences in small, rural, and international agencies. A second limitation was the inability to measure crime area at a micro-level. Though the precinct level is appropriate for analysis (see Klinger (1997) for more information), it is possible that measuring the crime rate of the numerous squad areas that were nested within the department's precincts may have produced a more precise measure of crime area experience. Unfortunately, researchers were only able to obtain data related to the squad area that the officers were assigned to when they filled out the survey, rather than all of the squad areas that they had worked in their tenure. The final limitation of the current study is that there was too much missing data to assess how much time officers had spent in different work assignments. Having this data in the future would allow researchers to examine whether both exposure and length of time in different work experiences matter in relation to officer decision-making and behavior.

To close, the study of police experience is especially pertinent during the current period of civil unrest in America and the United Kingdom, which has generated widespread calls for police reform. Gaining a deeper understanding of what officer work experience entails may have the potential to inform policymakers as they go about bringing change to policing. This study takes a much-needed step towards that goal.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Logan J. Somers

Notes

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