After the incident: measuring organizational (internal) police demand

Abstract

Recent studies have sought to estimate the amount of time consumed by police responding to emergency calls for service. And yet, we know that reactive deployed resources represent only part of what police actually spend their time on. After the police clear the scene of an incident, a number of activities will be undertaken, such as reviewing CCTV footage and interviewing suspects, which are immensely time consuming. This paper outlines a novel method for measuring the time consumed on these post-incident activities using individual time estimates from a sample of Dutch detectives nested within eight frontline police teams. We present this novel method, inclusive of preliminary findings and a breakdown of the variance at each level of the data. In addition, we present the current and potential merits this method holds for police practice.

Publication
Police Practice and Research