NCJ Number
105758
Date Published
1987
Length
57 pages
Annotation
In 1987, interviews were conducted with 796 New York City (NYC) residents and 502 NYC police officers to examine their attitudes toward police, their exposure to television (TV) police programming, and their evaluations of such programming.
Abstract
A comparison of public and police attitudes indicates that a significant proportion of the public feels that police TV shows reflect reality. The police believe much more strongly than the public that these shows are inaccurate and rarely depict real-life policing. The public believes that these shows make little impact on their image of police, and they claim they get their information primarily from the news. Police feel that TV shows are the principal source of public information on police, and that these shows hurt the police image. Police objected most strongly to shows that depict them as driving irresponsibly, violating constitutional rights, and not using weapons responsibly. The public generally had good impressions of police, but felt that negative depictions of some police behaviors were to some extent in line with their real-life impressions of police. Demographic data and the survey questionnaires are appended. Tables.