Police Effectiveness in Handling Disturbance Calls - An Evaluation of Crisis Intervention Training

• NCJ Number: 88548
• Journal: Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1983) Pages: 71-92
• Author(s): J B Pearce; J R Snortum
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 22 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: California Council on Criminal Justice; National Institute of Justice (NIJ); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined the social, psychological, and temporal dimensions of 'disturbance calls' and, in addition, provided a pre-post evaluation of the effects of crisis intervention training upon 64 El Monte, California patrol officers.

Abstract

It was found that trained officers tended to rate their handling of cases more positively than did untrained officers; furthermore, telephone follow-ups revealed that citizens gave more favorable evaluations of the service provided by trained officers compared to untrained officers. Training yielded a slight, temporary suppression of the rate of return calls to the same address, however, the rate of return calls occurring two weeks after the initial contact was not significantly lower than the rate prior to training. (Publisher abstract)