Police Unions and the Police Role

We studied the relationship of police unions to several dimensions of the police role while controlling for characteristics of the department, its external environment, duty assignments, and the demographic characteristics of police officers. We also examined the relationship between these variables and the role outcomes. Questionnaire data were collected from 830 randomly selected rank-and-file police officers from 15 urban police departments. Our findings support our hypothesis that unionization is related to greater emphasis on the law enforcement component of the police role. There also are significant relationships between organizational tenure, duty assignment, geographic location, and variation in the way police roles are performed. Our findings also include significant relationships between various characteristics of the department's environment, characteristics of the department itself, duty assignments, demographic characteristics of police officers and the satisfaction of police officers with their jobs, community relations, and departmental personnel practices.