Police officers’ attitudes toward citizen advisory councils

The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of sheriff deputies’ perceived legitimacy of their agency’s citizen advisory council (CAC).

The authors obtained survey data from 567 sheriff deputies in a southeastern state. The authors first asked whether respondents knew their agency had a CAC, and then asked those who responded affirmatively a series of questions about the legitimacy of the council. The authors then ran an ordinary least squares regression that included organizational justice, self-legitimacy and public scrutiny as independent variables predicting perceived legitimacy of the CAC.

Deputies who perceived greater organizational justice from command staff were significantly more likely to perceive the CAC as legitimate.

In response to strained police/community relations, reform advocates have urged the police to embrace a more democratic style of policing, including allowing for more citizen oversight of agencies. The study sheds light on how line-level officers perceive such oversight.