Robbery is a serious violent crime, yet many may not realize that police agencies often do not investigate (beyond the initial patrol response) all robberies that occur. This paper presents an in-depth study of 742 robbery reports from Seattle, Washington, focusing on those robberies not investigated beyond the initial police response (almost half the sample). As expected, investigated robberies were predictably linked to crime seriousness and injury, as well as to traditional “solvability factors,” such as whether a suspect was identified. However, a closer look at uninvestigated robberies revealed three distinct typologies: outdoor-stranger, shoplifting-turned-robbery, and residential. Recognizing that police cannot realistically devote investigative resources to all crimes, we argue that police can bolster their efforts to address these uninvestigated crimes through other evidence-based approaches anchored in prevention, problem-solving, and strategic investigation.
Texas H.B. 1540 made a first offense for purchasing sex a state jail felony. We examine Houston Police Department prostitution enforcement using monthly interrupted time-series models of 7,701 arrests from September 2015 through June 2023. The models treat COVID-19 and H.B. 1540 as separate interruptions, assess total, felony, and misdemeanor arrests, adjust for police arrest activity, and compare severity outcomes with simple assault as a nonequivalent control. A secondary analysis links arrests to incident reports and examines buyer- and seller-classified arrests in 6,997 incidents containing one qualifying prostitution arrest. H.B. 1540 was followed by an immediate felony increase and misdemeanor decline. No significant post-law level or slope changes emerged for buyer- or seller-classified arrests, and the buyer–seller contrast was nonsignificant. The evidence therefore supports a change in recorded charge severity more strongly than increased buyer-focused enforcement. Actor classifications are incident-inferred, and the follow-up cannot establish verified roles or longer-term effects.
The year 2020 marked a period of co-occurring crises in policing, as the murder of George Floyd, nationwide Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic collectively reshaped policing in the United States. While prior research has largely focused on large metropolitan agencies, less is known about how officers in smaller jurisdictions experienced these events. This study examines a mid-sized Mid-Atlantic police agency through interviews with sworn officers ( n = 22) to explore how national events were interpreted locally. Findings show that officers viewed the COVID-19 pandemic primarily as an operational disruption affecting training, fieldwork, and interpersonal development, whereas post-Floyd dynamics were described as more transformative for long-term professional identity, reductions in proactive policing, and police-community relations. Officers attributed recruitment challenges to both legitimacy pressures associated with BLM and COVID-era shifts in labor market expectations and work preferences.
A growing body of research on problem-solving in policing has built a robust empirical base for how and why problem-solving works to affect crime and disorder on the street. However, less is known about problem-solving at the organizational level where leaders navigate organizational change decisions. Through qualitative interviews, this study explores the views of U.S. law enforcement executives as problem-solvers for organizational change and how law enforcement executives confront challenges and adapt organizational policy and practice. Findings reveal three themes that law enforcement executives consider: two-way communication, transparency and accountability, and organizational structure. In addition, a model for decision-making is proposed that cycles through steps of assessing the need for change, collecting data and feedback, analysis, weighing available options, making and communicating a decision, and evaluating and revising their approaches. The results suggest a pathway to begin standardizing and institutionalizing decision-making approaches for law enforcement executives.
Recent Supreme Court doctrine rejects a narrow “moment of threat” lens in favor of evaluating police use-of-force under the totality of the circumstances. Whether expanding the temporal frame changes how reasonableness and culpability are assigned remains unclear. We test this question using a nationally stratified experiment fielded the day Barnes v. Felix was decided (N = 2,401). Participants were randomly assigned to view one of three temporally distinct dashcam clips from the Barnes incident: a four-second final frame, a thirteen-second partial-context clip, or an approximately two-minute totality-of-circumstances clip. Respondents then evaluated officer reasonableness, responsibility, criminal liability, and internal discipline. Expansion beyond the final frame reduced perceived reasonableness and increased punitiveness. However, effects were non-linear: limited additional context produced the strongest condemnation, while full context tempered reactions. Temporal framing shapes public evaluations of police use-of-force, with the direction and magnitude of effects dependent on what the selected temporal frame reveals.
