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The Eastern City Gun Project: Exploring Contextual and Operational Variables

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology volume 29, pages 10–21 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

To maintain public safety and improve system response, a strong need exists for understanding the contexts of and police response to weapon-related incidents as well as socio-economic variables of individuals involved. This paper was focused on exploring these contexts and routine police activities by creating and analyzing a weapon-related database at the local level. The findings, although limited due to the explorative nature of the study and the quality of case files, shed some interesting light on the effects of environmental and operational variables on gun incidents and expose certain issues that need to be resolved before further and more accurate understanding of gun crimes at the local level can be achieved.

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Notes

  1. The analysis results reported are based on statistical significance at the .10 level. The .10 significance level was used because of the nature of the data, i.e., limited number of cases with sufficient values for analysis and the use of many dummy and ordinal variables, which make it difficult to reach statistical significance at the traditional .05 level (Runyon and Haber 1991). The use of a .10 significance level also decreases the chance of making a Type II error, i.e., stating there is no difference when in fact there is one (Blalock 1979). Type II error is a concern for this study because, as previous research suggested (Weisburd 1998), acceptance of the null hypothesis of no effect would lead to the police not to appreciate certain potentially important relationships in gun cases.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially funded by Rowan University. The author wishes to thank Professor Stanley Yeldell and ten student research assistants for their assistance in collecting and entering the data and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

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  1. Department of Law & Justice Studies, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ, 08028, USA

    Allan Y. Jiao

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  1. Allan Y. Jiao
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Correspondence to Allan Y. Jiao.

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Jiao, A.Y. The Eastern City Gun Project: Exploring Contextual and Operational Variables. J Police Crim Psych 29, 10–21 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-013-9117-y

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