Brian N. Williams

Representing Blue Representative Bureaucracy and Racial Profiling in the Latino Community

This study examines whether the presence of Latino police officers reduces the racial disparity in traffic stops in divisions in which they work. Specifically, the link between passive and active representation for ethnicity in the context of racial profiling is tested. This context allows one to examine this link within an organization that relies heavily on socialization. It is found that the presence of Latino police officers increases the racial disparity within the division in which they work. This finding seems to suggest that the pressure to “represent blue” weighs heavily on Latino officers and may affect their professional attitudes and behaviors.

(Co)-Contamination as the Dark Side of Co-Production: Public value failures in co-production processes

Abstract Co-production is associated with the expanding role that citizens and other third-party actors assume in the development and delivery of public services. While there are benefits to co-production, there are also challenges. This study draws from the marketing literature on value co-destruction to describe the processes in co-production of public services that can negatively affect public values from regular producers and users. We refer to this public value failure as co-contamination. Two case studies are used to explore some of the ‘dark sides’ of co-production. Our analyses reveal the co-contaminating aspects of this process and offer implications for public managers.

The co-production of campus safety and security: a case study at the University of Georgia:

Campus safety and security is a salient issue and an area of increasing concern facing educational institutions in the United States. Yet little is known regarding ongoing efforts and resulting difficulties to co-produce campus safety and security. This article contributes to the literature on co-production by examining student and campus police officer perceptions of the professional–service user relationship in the context of campus safety and security. Findings suggest that demographic and contextual factors shape user and professional perceptions of their relationship in different ways, and that these perceptual differences affect efforts to co-deliver services. Points for practitioners This article describes the views of university police personnel and students regarding the co-production of safety and security on a research university campus in the United States. Data gleaned from the research illustrates that while police officers and students may have differing views of one another and their roles in co-production, they agree that public safety would be served by opportunities for police and students to meet one another and have personal interaction outside of formal, law enforcement-driven situations. This suggests the value of well-developed engagement strategies, as well as the potential benefit of harnessing ‘teachable moments’ during which police and the student population can learn about one another.

Appraising the appraisal process Manager and patrol officer perspectives

While research shows that performance appraisals are important both as management tools and for their ability to shape organisational commitment and performance, researchers have also noted a ‘pervasive dissatisfaction’ (Coutts and Schneider, 2004: 68) with appraisals in policing. The standardisation of performance appraisal systems across local government departments in the United States may contribute to this dissatisfaction. Standardised forms may be difficult to adapt to diverse officer positions, and to the overall goals of police departments and agencies. This paper uses appraiser and appraisee survey data from a police department in a mid-sized southern city in the United States to examine whether standardised performance appraisal systems in local government meet the needs of local police departments and agencies. Findings suggest that it is important to tailor appraisal forms and systems by including officers and managers in the development of job-specific rubrics and training modules.

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South:

This article situates pesticides as technologies marked by both continuities and discontinuities from previous modes of agrarian racism in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, a plantation region of the United States South. Attention to the historical-geographical specificity of pesticide intensification, I argue, provides the means to understand pesticide intensification as a mode of what I term agro-environmental racism. Anti-Black racism shaped the politics of pesticides, underpinning policies and material practices that were destructive of both the environment and human welfare in the Delta and beyond. The structures and ideologies of plantation racism helped position the Delta as one of the most pesticide-intensive sectors of U.S. agriculture during the mid-20th century—a particularly consequential period for both the intensification of pesticides and the formation of contemporary environmentalism. Pesticides were defended by agro-industrial interests as technologies supporting agricultural production—and particularly that of cotton, the most pesticide-intensive commodity crop. Simultaneously, they were figured as technologies crucial to a normative way of life. Although pesticides were articulated without explicit mention of race by the 1960s, I argue that the freedom struggle activism of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union and Fannie Lou Hamer provide context necessary to explain the pesticide politics of the Delta’s plantation bloc. These mobilizations to enact more just, sustainable, and livable geographies were an indictment of a plantation politics which put the health of cotton and profitability of plantations above all else.

Community-centred police professionalism A template for reflective professionals and learning organisations with implications for the co-production of public safety and public order

Earlier studies suggest that community policing requires a shift in the guiding philosophy and supporting organisational structure of law enforcement. This shift encompasses police professionalism and police professionalisation. The prevailing model invests ‘know-how’ in officers and rarely rewards ‘learn-how’ behaviour with citizens that facilitates community involvement and community change. Consequently, the traditional or ‘pure’ professional model has led to a distancing of the police from the community. When considering natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and related challenges of post 9-11 America, the insular nature of the traditional professional model presents a tremendous obstacle to achieving the needed levels of community-police integration, collaboration and problem solving in the co-production of public safety, public order, emergency management and homeland security. This paper explores the historical origins of this breach, sketches the nature of police professionalism in typical present-day law enforcement, and offers a template for a community-centred model of police professionalism that better aligns with the contemporary and future challenges facing local law enforcement agencies in the United States and other countries. From the community-centred template, the paper outlines key implications for individual police professionals, police organisations and agency-community relations in the co-production of public safety and public order.