The Power of State Certification
Captain Rob Rodriguez , Ph . D .
During the past two decades , the law enforcement profession has faced defending itself from a national narrative suggestive of an industry that is systemically eroding the trust of the communities they serve by incidents of alleged brutality , targeting specific demographics , and leadership cover-ups . Law enforcement executives , who are on the frontlines of this heated national debate , have been working diligently to mitigate this growing perception and restore the honor of our proud profession .
As this is still a growing phenomenon , I wanted to determine if there was an external factor or mechanism to mitigate this perception ; I conducted a study to determine if there was a nexus between incidents of police misconduct and law enforcement agencies that possess state certification . Specifically , do the policies and procedures of a law enforcement agency impact whether officers engage in incidents of misconduct . For my study , misconduct was defined as violations of the policy , complaints , use of force incidents , and criminal acts . Eight Georgia law enforcement agencies , four currently possess state certification and four
that do not , participated in this study . Each agency ’ s archival data or standard historical data were analyzed to identify if any indicators would suggest if the possession of state certification presented a significant impact on misconduct incidents .
The specific data examined from these agencies consisted of the number of neglects of duty , insubordination , dishonesty or integrity violations , vehicle pursuits , use of force incidents , off-duty incidents , criminal violations , and miscellaneous violations . The number of internal / external complaints , the number sustained , and the number of complaints unfounded provided the core empirical data for my study . Interestingly , an analysis of the data uncovered that state-certified agencies had a larger number of reported misconduct incidents . Although state-certified agencies reported a higher number of misconduct incidents , this is due to the agency ’ s self-accountability culture through their adherence to the enumerated standards within the state certification program . Conversely , state-certified agencies were later determined to have a higher rate of unfounded incidents than their non-certified counterparts .
48 SPRING . 2021