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At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
PubMed2002

Work-related acute injuries from mandatory fitness training in the Swedish Police Force.

Acute injuries in the Swedish Police Force from on-duty fitness training were selected retrospectively from the Information System of Occupational Injuries (ISA) at the National Board of Occupational Safety and Health and, if having caused a sick-leave exceeding 2 weeks, to the Labour Market Insurance (AMF Insurance). The latter included injuries from 1995 only. During the seven-year period 1992 to 1998, 920 injuries (80 % in males) from fitness training involving police officers were reported to the ISA-register. The total incidence was 1.6 for policemen per 10 000 hours of exposure and 2.2 for policewomen, which is 1.4 times higher than in men. Around 50 % of the injuries occurred in team and contact sports, with a slightly higher percentage for males, 54 % versus 49 % in females. The percentage of injuries from self-defense training was twice as high as in women than in men, 29 % versus 15 %. In 1995, 42 of the 72 injuries in males and 6 of the 21 injuries in females caused more than 14 days of sick-leave and were announced to the Occupational No Fault Liability Insurance. The major part, 32 of 48 injuries, came from team or contact sports (mainly floorball and soccer). Six policemen incurred injuries that were classified with a degree of disability ranging from 2 to 5 %. The total cost for medical treatment and production loss for the 48 injuries was Euro 248 448 and 99 336, respectively. Team and contact sports accounted for 89 % of the costs and 77 % of the production loss through sick-leave.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Sleep disorders and daytime sleepiness in state police shiftworkers.

Police, who work shifts, participate in both risky and delicate tasks. The authors investigated sleep habits, prevalence of sleep disorders, sleepiness on the job, and hypnotic drug intake (Benzodiazepines, Zaleplon, Zolpidem, or Zoplicone) in a population of Italian state police officers. This study was conducted with self-administered questionnaires. The investigation focused on the difference between 540 non-shiftworkers (413 males, 127 females) and 575 shiftworkers (483 males, 92 females). All individuals were between 20 yr and 39 yr of age. In shiftworkers, there was a higher prevalence of difficulty in initiating sleep; in addition, these individuals had a sleep latency that exceeded 20 min, and they experienced early awakenings. No significant differences in daytime sleepiness and drug intake existed between the 2 groups. Self-evaluation of the number of hours that individuals slept each night and during a 24-hr period revealed that shiftworkers required more sleep. The results indicated that shiftworkers experienced a lower quality of sleep than non-shiftworkers, but the former did not report increased daytime sleepiness or increased hypnotic drug intake (i.e., Benzodiazepines, Zaleplon, Zolpidem, or Zoplicone). Shiftworkers seemed to compensate for the poor quality of their sleep by sleeping for a greater number of hours during 24-hr periods than the non-shiftworkers. Perhaps the aforementioned compensation resulted from a prolonged recovery from shiftwork effects.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed2002

An analysis of 'looked but failed to see' accidents involving parked police vehicles.

Drivers who collide with a vehicle that is parked on the hard shoulder of a motorway or dual-carriageway sometimes claim not to have seen it before the collision. Previous research into vehicle conspicuity has taken such 'looked but failed to see' claims at face value, and concentrated on attempting to remedy the problem by making vehicles more conspicuous in sensory terms. However, the present study describes investigations into accidents of this kind which have involved stationary police cars, vehicles which are objectively highly conspicuous. Two laboratory studies showed that experienced drivers viewing a film of dual-carriageway driving were slower to respond to a parked police car as a 'hazard' if it was parked directly in the direction of travel than if it was parked at an angle; this effect was more pronounced when the driver's attention was distracted with a secondary reasoning task. Taken together with the accident reports, these results suggest that 'looked but failed to see' accidents may arise not because the parked vehicle is difficult to see, but for more cognitive reasons, such as vigilance failure, or possession by the driver of a 'false hypothesis' about the road conditions ahead. An emergency vehicle parked in the direction of travel, with only its blue lights flashing, may encourage drivers to believe that the vehicle is moving rather than stationary. Parking at an angle in the road, and avoiding the use of blue lights alone while parked, are two steps that drivers of parked emergency vehicles should consider taking in order to alert approaching drivers to the fact that a stationary vehicle is ahead.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed2002

The influence of belief that a car crashed on witnesses' estimates of civilian and police car speed.

The authors performed 2 experiments investigating the influence of the belief that a vehicle crashed on witnesses' estimates of the vehicle's speed. In Experiment 1, participants saw a video of a civilian car being driven, after which they were assigned to 1 of 2 conditions. The 1st group was told that the vehicle subsequently crashed; the 2nd group was not told that the vehicle crashed. The results indicted no differences between the 2 groups on a number of factors, including estimates of the vehicle's speed. Experiment 2 was identical except that the video showed a police car using flashing lights and sirens. Participants who had been told that the car had crashed overestimated speed, the likelihood of a crash, and the likelihood of someone being killed. Participants who were not told that the vehicle crashed estimated the speed of the vehicle accurately. Confidence in their estimates of speed was not significantly different between the 2 groups. Results are discussed with regard to police investigations of road accidents.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed2006

Peep show establishments, police activity, public place, and time: a study of secondary effects in San Diego, California.

An empirical study was undertaken in San Diego, California, to test assumptions made by the government and by conservative religious policy advocates that there is a greater incidence of crime in the vicinity of peep show establishments. We asked two questions: (a) Is criminal activity in San Diego particularly acute at peep show establishments compared to surrounding control locations? and (b) Is criminal activity in San Diego disproportionately greater at or near peep show establishments between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. compared to other times of the day? The levels of crime activity and the expenditure of police resources were examined by measuring the number of calls-for-service (CFSs) to the police within a 1,000-ft. area on either side of the peep show establishments and comparably-sized control areas beyond the immediate 1,000-foot area. A more focused late-night (2 a.m. to 6 a.m.) analysis was also undertaken. The results showed no reliable evidence of differences in crime levels between the control and test areas, nor was there any evidence of disproportionately greater amounts of crime within the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. time period in the areas surrounding the peep show establishments. We concluded that San Diego does not have a problem with crime at the peep show establishments generally, nor is there a heightened problem with crime during the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. period. We discuss the implications of assuming that peep show establishments are associated with negative effects in the community and the possibility of viewpoint discrimination against sex communication.

Aggression↗
PubMed2000

Perceived job image among police officers in Singapore: factorial dimensions and differential effects.

The authors examined the perceived job image of police officers in Singapore and its differential effects on their work-related attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit). The authors obtained data from questionnaire surveys and focus-group interviews. Perceived job image consisted of 4 dimensions: (a) prestige, (b) integrity, (c) competence, and (d) nonroutine job nature. Results of hierarchical regression analyses suggested that the first 2 dimensions of the perceived job image construct were salient in affecting the police officers' work-related attitudes.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The accuracy of medical records and police reports in determining motor vehicle crash characteristics.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the accuracy of police, emergency department, and ambulance records in describing motor vehicle crash (MVC) characteristics when compared with a crash investigation report (CIR). METHODS: This study was a retrospective record review. Sixty-three motor vehicle crash (MVC) patients transported to a university hospital emergency department via ambulance and also reported in a crash investigation record (CIR) during the period January 1993 to December 1995 comprised the study population. The crash characteristics analyzed were occupant position (OP), restraint use (RU), air bag deployment (AD), type of impact (TI), ejection (EJ), and external cause-of-injury code (EC). The accuracies of the police report (PR), the emergency department record (EDR), and the ambulance report (AR) for each patient were compared with the CIR by computing percent agreement, with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for each variable and for each data source. RESULTS: Overall average agreement was 92.9% for PR, 89.7% for EDR, and 80.7% for AR. The overall average agreement for each variable was 98.9% for EJ, 92.1% for AD, 91.5% for OP, 90.5% for EC, 77.2% for RU, and 76.2% for TI. For all but one variable (RU), 95% CIs overlapped between data sources. CONCLUSIONS: The accuracy of data sources used to determine crash characteristics varies. Using a CIR as the standard, the PR was the most accurate. Inaccuracies occurred most frequently for RU and TI. Researchers and clinicians need to be aware of these inaccuracies.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed2003

U.S. consumer crash test results and injury risk in police-reported crashes.

Consumer crash test programs provide comparative information on the crashworthiness of new vehicles which, in turn, should predict the performance of the same vehicles in real-world crashes. However, the detail and quality of available information from tests and real-world crashes differ widely, so identifying meaningful relationships between crash test results and real-world crashworthiness can be difficult. Despite these data limitations, studies in the late 1980s and mid-1990s reported positive correlations between dummy injury measures from the U.S. New Car Assessment Program (USNCAP) and real-world fatality rates. More recent analyses of results from Australian crash tests and real-world crashes also have found positive correlations. This article considers relationships between recent U.S. frontal crash test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and USNCAP, and real-world crash injury risk estimates computed from police-reported crash data from three U.S. states. The frontal crash test results include dummy injury measures by body region from both IIHS offset tests and USNCAP full-width barrier tests plus measures of structural performance from the IIHS offset tests. Individually, results from the full-width and offset tests were not significantly correlated with the real-world injury risk estimates. Stronger relationships were found when a combination of overall ratings from the full-frontal and offset tests was used. However, the current results find only weak correlations between both full-front and offset frontal crash test performance and the real-world injury risk estimates. These weak relationships likely reflect the lack of detail and fundamental difference in injury information in police crash reports compared to that used in deriving crashworthiness ratings from the crash tests.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed2006

Determining older driver crash responsibility from police and insurance data.

This study aimed to determine the extent to which older drivers can be considered responsible for their crashes, to identify key factors in those crashes for which older drivers have been judged responsible, and to assess the extent to which older drivers' extra crash responsibility contributes to the road toll. Insurance claims from the State of Tasmania, Australia, for 1998-2002 were linked with police records for crashes involving drivers aged either 41-55 years or 65 years or older. Insurance and police data sets contained independent judgments of crash responsibility. There was a high level of agreement between the two sets of judgments, with older drivers judged around 1.5 times more likely to be responsible for their crashes than middle-aged drivers and, conversely, older drivers were around 0.6 as likely to be absolved from crash responsibility. It was concluded that older drivers' additional crash responsibility while valuable in explaining "what went wrong," currently makes only a small contribution to the overall road toll.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed2005

International research and local authorities: interplay between research and police agendas in the field of drug abuse and AIDS.

International study of drug use and HIV derives much of its value from affording investigators opportunities to compare similar behaviors in contrasting cultural contexts. In these contrasting cultural contexts, people entrusted with conducting police work and minimizing crime have ways of conducting their business that may or may not interfere with research on illegal or socially disapproved behaviors. Two cases illustrate interactions between well-meaning researchers and local authorities. In both, investigations benefited from having laid groundwork for local endorsement of study activities. Research on marijuana smoking in Costa Rica enjoyed strong cooperation from the Ministry of Health, but not so strong from the Ministry of Security because of a fledgling office of Narcotics. Studies of HIV risk among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Valencia, Spain, encountered no problems with police but noted dangers of low drug enforcement. Five principles of preparing for international research may help investigators to anticipate some varieties of contextual obstructions to research outside the United States.

Behavioral Research↗
PubMed1991

Occupational health management of police officers involved in the Piper Alpha disaster.

The Occupational Health Management of Police Officers involved in the Piper Alpha Incident is described with reference to the factors likely to cause either physical or psychological distress and the measures taken to overcome these. Once the enormity of the Piper Alpha Disaster became apparent with the realization that the recovery of the bodies would extend over a period of months, the problems of maintaining the physical and mental health of the Police Officers involved assumed prime importance.

Accidents, Aviation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Police as contributors to Healthy Communities: Aiken, South Carolina.

In Aiken, South Carolina, community policing has led to numerous innovative programs that have contributed to a healthy community. The MOMS and COPS (Managing Our Maternity System with Community Oriented Policing System) program has played a significant part in the county's 50% decrease in infant mortality since 1989 and contributed to Aiken's designation as an All-America City in 1997. Other programs include a mentoring program for at-risk teen girls; instant crime reporting with donated cellular phones; seminars for seniors to alert them to scams and common crimes; demolition of unsafe homes; free installation of smoke detectors; a child ID program; and parental education on child brain development.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Collaboration with police officers within a partial hospital program.

After an incident of violence in an urban community mental health center, city police officers were hired to provide extra-duty coverage to one of its satellite programs. The boundaries between clinical and security functions were not clarified initially, leading to unclear expectations regarding roles and responsibilities when handling patient dyscontrol episodes. The relationship between the clinical staff and the police developed over the course of a year, in three distinct phases, into one that is mutually supportive and beneficial. This experience is described, with an aim of identifying the challenges and advantages of participating in this type of collaboration. A conceptual framework for this interprofessional system is presented.

Community Mental Health Services↗
PubMed1998

Negative mood regulation expectancies predict anger among police officers and buffer the effects of job stress.

This study investigated links between occupational stress, negative mood regulation expectancies, coping, anger, and distress. Participants were 56 police officers from two small, urban departments. They filled out the Negative Mood Regulation (NMR) Scale, as well as measures of police stress, coping, anger, and distress. Simultaneous multiple regression analyses revealed that high NMR expectancies predicted subjects' use of adaptive active coping strategies. High NMR Scale scores were also independently associated with lower levels of anger and distress, and anger significantly predicted distress. Results suggest that strong mood regulation expectancies buffer the effects of even high levels of occupational stress. Interventions directed toward raising mood regulation expectancies may help protect officers from the consequences of job stress. Results may also have implications for combat stress.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1996

Occupational risk factors for the first-onset and subsequent course of low back trouble. A study of serving police officers.

STUDY DESIGN: A survey of occupational risks for low back trouble in two police forces discordant for one known physical stressor (wearing body armor weighing approximately 8.5 kg. OBJECTIVES: To determine the hazard for first-onset and subsequent course of low back trouble associated with occupational physical and psychosocial stressors. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Various occupational physical stressor have been associated with the prevalence of back pain, but their relationship with first-onset low back trouble is uncertain. Psychosocial factors reportedly are important determinants of chronicity. METHODS: Anamnestic data on low back trouble were collected from representative random samples of "exposed" and control forces, along with variables describing exposure to occupational physical stressors and sports results. Psychometric tests were administered. RESULTS: Occupational risk factors for first-onset low back trouble were determined from lifetables based on officers with no previous back pain history. Survival time to first onset was affected adversely by wearing body armor and, less so, by vehicular exposure and sports participation. The proportion with persistent (chronic) trouble did not depend on length of exposure since onset, but longer service was associated with recurrent episodes. Chronicity was related to distress and blaming police work. Work loss was associated with blaming work and wearing body armor. Changing to lighter duties after development of low back trouble occurred rarely. CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to occupational physical stress seems detrimental; It reduced survival time to first-onset of low back trouble. Recurrence was associated with time since onset, but persistent trouble was not. Sports participation was a risk if occupational hazards were high.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Correlation between pre-employment screening X-ray finding of spondylolysis and sickness absenteeism due to low back pain among policemen of the Israeli police force.

STUDY DESIGN: A historical prospective case/control study of the significance and correlation between pre-employment findings of L5-S1 spondylolysis and sickness absenteeism due to low back pain among police officers. OBJECTIVES: Examining the importance of pre-employment lumbar spine radiographs as a prediction of work absenteeism. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Spondylolysis is a defect in the pars interarticularis. Its etiology remains controversial, it is a common condition among young athletes, and it carries genetic predisposition. Although described mostly as an incidental radiographic finding in the adult population, spondylolysis is implicated as a contributing factor to low back pain, although the cause-and-effect relation is not clear. METHODS: One hundred and sixty-nine police officers with L5-S1 spondylolysis were identified out of 3988 examined. Incidence density of sickness absenteeism due to low back pain was calculated for the patients and the controls. The Cox's proportional hazard model was used for comparison between the two groups, controlling for possible confounding variables. RESULTS: Similar incidence of sickness absenteeism due to low back pain was found among the patients and controls. The total duration of sickness absenteeism, however, was 2.7 times higher in the spondylolysis group than the controls. Prevalence of spondylolysis is origin specific, denoting genetic predisposition to this condition. Total sickness absenteeism not related to low back pain was not significantly different between the two study groups. CONCLUSIONS: There is low predictive value of pre-employment lumbar spine radiograph as a screening tool predicting sickness absenteeism due to low back pain. Spondylolysis, however, may increase the duration of sickness absenteeism in patients with low back pain.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed2006

The impact of personal threat on police officers' responses to critical incident stressors.

The relationship of type of critical incident (CI) stressor with peritraumatic responses and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms was examined in police. Officers (N = 662) provided narratives of their most distressing CI experienced during police service and completed measures of related peritraumatic responses and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Narratives were reliably rated (kappa = .80-1.0) on seven categories emerging from a series of factor analyses of a measure of critical incident stressors. Additional analysis revealed that the classification of primary narrative features required only five categories (personal life threat, duty-related violence, encountering physical or sexual assault victims, exposure to civilian death, other). When analyzed by further collapsing these five categories into high versus low personal threat, officers whose narratives contained high personal threat reported more peritraumatic dissociation, peritraumatic emotional distress, and current hyperarousal symptoms. Results suggest that greater personal threat during a CI may place an officer at greater risk for subsequent distress.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The consequences of race for police officers' responses to criminal suspects.

The current work examined police officers' decisions to shoot Black and White criminal suspects in a computer simulation. Responses to the simulation revealed that upon initial exposure to the program, the officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black compared with unarmed White suspects. However, after extensive training with the program, in which the race of the suspect was unrelated to the presence of a weapon, the officers were able to eliminate this bias. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the elimination of racial biases and the training of police officers.

Black People↗