A Study on the Correlates of Metropolitan Police Victimization and Preventive Strategies

Further, documentations of police fatalities and compensation in National Police Administration were carefully collected, induced and analyzed so as to fill the void in the empirical research. The major findings of the study can be briefly introduced as follows: Violence type: 70.3 % of those police officers had experienced workplace violence, including body violence (57.8 %) and mental violence (62.0 %). Most of the violence types were verbal violence (77.3 %), pushes and squeezes (71.3 %), menaces (50.7 %), threatened to file lawsuits (44.5 %) and scratch, pull, pinch, bite (42.3 %).

Police assignment: most of the victim officers were assigned to patrol on street (35.3 %), to do vehicle stops (15.8 %), to maintain public order during protest rally (9.5 %) and to investigate crime and pursuit criminals (3.9 %). Most of the violence occurred in responding to disturbance calls (17.0 %), traffic offence and drunk-driving pursuits (14.6 & 12.5 %), controlling/arresting suspects (11.7 %), dispersing illegal protest rally (9.3 %) and dealing with fights (7.1 %).

Circumstances: most violence occurred between 20:01-24:00 (24.3 %) and 00:01-02:00 (21.2 %). Most violence occurred on the street (58.9 %) and open space (10.2 %). Violence responding: most of the police officers did not use police weapon to respond to violence, but threatened with words (23.4 %), fight back with limbs (23.4 %), and do nothing to violence against them (22.6 %).

Attacker: most of the alleged assailants were male (73.1 %), between 26 to 35 years old (30.9 %), attacking alone (54.3 %). Some attackers were under the influence of excessive drinking (35.7 %) or drug (7.5 %). The causes of attacks were unwilling to accept police pursuit (38.7 %), carrying out resist rotest (11.4 %), fleeing from arrest (10.8 %), ill feeling about police manner (9.8 %), and hostility to police (5.6 %).

Assaulters attacked police officers with words/limbs (65.4 %), things (as eggs, bottles and stones) (10.0 %), vehicles (3.4 %), rod/stick/club (1.7 %), and knifes (5.6 %). The Most of attack behaviors were menaces (42.8 %), attack with limbs (19.7 %), throwing things (6.7 %), striking with vehicles (3.4 %), and attacking with sharp materials (2.3 %). Based on the above research, the preventive strategies are derived.

It is expected that the following strategies could be apply to prevent, reduce the harm to police and ensure police’s workplace security. The major suggestions are proposed as follows: ．Lift penalties to criminals who assaulted police officers ．Fulfill police educations to strengthen law enforcement skills of police officers ．Properly arrange police assignments and put emphasis on pre-duty education ．Replace with high quality equipments to guard lives of law enforcement officers ．Build up police emergent medical treatment system and provide professional counseling and assistant system ．Carefully compensate and take care of permanently disable police officers Key word: workplace violence, metropolitan police, police victimization, situational factors, preventive strategy