NCJ Number
100890
Date Published
1985
Length
120 pages
Annotation
After a brief description of a study of police-citizen encounters in two Chicago police districts for 14 months in 1980-81, this manual presents the codebook used to record data and instructions for the codebook's use.
Abstract
Data on police-citizen encounters were collected to explore police peacekeeping functions and their handling of mentally ill persons. Data were obtained by observers riding in police cars. Data for each shift cover the general level of activity and observers' perceptions of emotions/attitudes shown by the observed officers. Information also covers the personal characteristics, work history, and working relationships of the observed officers. The second part of the data set contains detailed information on each police-citizen encounter, including its nature, location, police actions or responses, citizens involved, and their characteristics and behavior. The codebook covers both shift and encounter data. There were 1,382 police-citizen encounters involving 2,555 citizens.