Surveying Police Officers

Abstract

In 2013, the Chicago Police Department launched a broad new initiative aimed at resetting its relationship with the community and reforming the way it did business internally. Externally, the newly-arrived police chief could see that the relationship between the police and many poor and minority communities was broken. Internally, the organization needed modern leadership and management, a better personnel system, and a better-functioning disciplinary process. As one contribution to understanding the success or failure of this effort, I conducted a survey of Chicago police officers. The survey was designed to test a theory of organizational effectiveness called “procedural justice.” This approach promised to be useful for understanding police officers’ views the department’s internal and external problems. This chapter describes the development of the survey, how the data was collected, and a little of what I found.