King publishes on police leaders’ wellbeing pre- and post-2020

William King, professor of criminal justice, recently published a paper, "Police Executives' Responses to Social Upheaval: An Examination of Work-Related Perceptions Pre- and Post-2020," in the journal Policing: An International Journal.

King and his co-authors collected and analyzed data from police leaders who were attending advanced executive leadership training at the FBI's National Academy. The data, collected pre-2020 (and thus before the global pandemic, police protests and perceived increases in crime,) and post 2020 allowed for a comparison of attendees before and after a time of considerable social upheaval. The results indicate that police leaders who attended the leadership trainings after 2020 were more likely to express an interest in leaving their current agency, but their turnover intention was still very low.

There were no significant differences in the self-reported levels of burnout, stress or job satisfaction between the two groups. Despite a popular narrative that frames police personnel as being discontent after 2020, the results here illustrate a different profile. As a cohort, police leaders expressed a strong and stable level of job satisfaction and they did not demonstrate a significant increase in job stress despite the strains of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 protest movements. Additionally, they showed stable and low levels of burnout.

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