Violence against by police officers and their use of force in the line of duty: An event-based approach

This project addresses violence against police officers and police officers' use of force in the line of duty. It examines the causes of violence against police officers and their use of force, and addresses the following research questions:

• What makes police officers vulnerable to violence victimization?
• What makes police officers use force in certain situations?
• Why does one risky situation escalate into violence and another not?
• And to what extent does own victimization or use of force influence the chance of victimization or use of force by direct colleagues?

To address these questions, the project adopts an event-based approach of violence against and use of force by police officers. Drawing upon rational choice theory, lifestyle theory, and routine activities theory, the event-based approach combines individual characteristics and behavior, presence of guardians, time spent in risky settings, event-related circumstances, and officer interactions to understand the occurence of violence against and use of force by police officers in the line of duty. The project further engages with the contagious nature of violence victmization and use of force.

To answer these questions, the project adopts a quantitative methodology that combines:

1. a systematic literature review and/or quantitative meta analysis of the literature;
2. an incidence density case-control study;
3. a case-crossover study; and
4. network autocorrelation models.

Throughout the project police recorded data of occupational accidents involving use of violence against police officers in the line of duty, police recorded data of use of force by police officers, and duty roster and police personnel data are combined with officer-specific event-realted data elicited through quantitative structured interviews and map based activity interviewing.

The project involves close collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Leiden University, and the Belgian Police.