Law enforcement officers are the primary individuals called and who respond to situations of heightened concern. They make split-second observations and decisions based on how best to react to given safety situations and those involved. Characteristics of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), if not properly understood and reacted to, may quickly…

Police officers are front-line mental health responders who make daily decisions regarding persons with mental illness. However, little is known about what mental health training (MHT) states require from their future police officers. This study aims to evaluate the emphasis placed on MHT for police recruits across the United States. Specifically,…

University campuses could become leaders in developing alternatives to policing for managing public health and safety, yet, nearly all campuses rely on campus or local police to respond to mental health emergencies. Herein, we present the available evidence for campus mobile crisis intervention teams (MCITs) as an alternative to policing, consider…

Highly publicized interactions between law enforcement officers (LEOs) and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have raised questions about LEOs' training related to ASD. In the present study, 157 LEOs participated in ASD-specific training and completed pretest and posttest surveys of autism knowledge, confidence, and self-monitoring.…

In recent years, some school districts across Allegheny County have made noteworthy changes to school policing. While some districts have sought to reduce or eliminate reliance on police, a growing number of other districts in the county have, with community support announced expanded police presence and in some cases have decided to arm police.…

Previous research has shown that teachers' informal learning in social networks is of great importance for their professional development. Participation in social networks is often characterised by knowledge exchange between employees with the aim of dealing with work-related challenges or improving the work practice. In this study, attention was…

While research consistently finds that increases in a school's SRO/police presence correspond with increases in the rate of school referrals of student disciplinary incidents to law enforcement agencies, direct evidence of distributional concerns across various student subgroups is scant. Drawing on data from the 2017-2018 School Survey on Crime…

Research and news stories document harmful, racialized encounters between campus police and minoritized populations. However, little is known about how campus police officers perceive racial dynamics in their work. As part of a critical case study of campus police at one historically white private university, theories of racial ideology guided the…

Sequential lineups are one of the most commonly used procedures in police departments across the USA. Although this procedure has been the target of much experimental research, there has been comparatively little work formally modeling it, especially the sequential nature of the judgments that it elicits. There are also important gaps in our…

The topic for this study was police cadet perceptions of learning using video simulators. The main research question for this project was: "How are video simulators perceived by police cadets as a learning method at the police academy?" The participants for this qualitative study were 16 recently graduated police cadets from an anonymous…

Person descriptions often lack the level of detail necessary to assist in the apprehension of a perpetrator. To date, it is not clear how person descriptions are obtained by frontline police officers. Worldwide, many police forces now use body worn video (BWV), which provides a unique opportunity to examine how frontline police officers gather…

The diagnostic feature-detection theory (DFT) of eyewitness identification is based on facial information that is diagnostic versus non-diagnostic of suspect guilt. It primarily has been tested by discounting non-diagnostic information at retrieval, typically by surrounding a single suspect showup with good fillers to create a lineup. We tested…

School Resource Officers (SRO) are sworn-in police officers; however, while performing the job functions of an SRO they must adhere to the Memorandum of Understanding between SRO and the school in which they are employed. This study explored the perceptions of school administrators on the job functions of SROs within a particular school and how…

Inspired by fears of school shootings and supported by substantial federal funding, the number of school resource officers (SROs) on our nation's K-12 campuses has increased exponentially. The consequences of this sea change have yet to be fully evaluated. What we do know suggests cause for concern. Specifically, SROs' presence may be contributing…

This qualitative study documents incidents of discrimination and violence among LGBTQ + youth experiencing homelessness along with their adaptation strategies. Using intersectionality theory, this analysis is based on individual interviews conducted with 17 LGBTQ + youth experiencing homelessness aged 17 to 25. According to their stories, LGBTQ +…