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FAMP SABIE Oana
CCASP ROMANIA’S LOCAL POLICE. CURRENT ISSUES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

According to Kutnjak Ivkovic (2008, p. 407) police agencies are not isolated entities, they are integral

parts of the society at large. That’s why, other social factors could also be related to the way citizens
perceive the police. For example, when society tolerates misconduct of government employees and fails
to control it, police officers are more likely to be corrupt, milk calls for service, plant evidence, and use

excessive force. When insufficient resources are channeled from the state or city budget into the police
budget, the numbers of police officers will be too low, the quality of applicants will suffer, hiring processes
will be inadequate, training will be shortened, internal control will be sketchy, salaries will be low, and

equipment will be obsolete. Such shortcomings are very likely to have adverse consequences on the
public service with, and support for, the police (Doherty and Horne 2002).

Whereas the theory differentiates between diffuse and specific support for the police, as a rule, the police

literature routinely addressed either the issue of diffuse support or the issue of specific support. Broadly
speaking, the confidence-related questions addressed in the literature range on a continuum from the

very general ones, such as the level of confidence in the police or the evaluations of the job the police
were doing (e.g., Correia et al., 1996; Reiss, 1967; Walker et al., 1972), to the fairly specific ones. The
latter ranged from the ones about providing safety in the area (Brillon et al., 1984; Cao et al., 1996);

maintaining order, protecting property, and protecting against crime (Cao et al., 1996); and respecting PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015, Bucharest
citizens’ rights (Brillon et al., 1984), to the responsiveness, promptness in answering emergency calls
(Brillon et al., 1984; Cao et al., 1996), courtesy and equality in treatment (Reisig and Correia, 1997),

general demeanor of police officers (Webb and Marshall, 1995), availability of information and leisure
programs for young people, and quality of various programs (see, e.g., Brillon et al., 1984; Reisig and
Correia, 1997; Reisig and Parks, 2000). As a general rule, it seems that studies tended to rely more on

some form of specific support for the police than on the diffuse one. Heterogeneity of the questions asked
across the studies and the inclusion of both specific and diffuse questions in some of the studies make it

very cumbersome and complicated to follow the dichotomy of specific support and diffuse support in the
sections of the articles that discusses the impact of various correlates of public support for the police.

Most of the studies (Kutnjak Ivkovic, 2008, p. 410) that examine the police public support, particularly the

projects that provide an in-depth exploration of various factors related to public opinion, have been
conducted in the United States. The researchers have primarily explored the impact of the respondents’
demographic characteristics, their experience with the police, and the neighborhood effects. Compared

with the other factors, the effects of police-related variables (other than the contact with the police) and
society-wide factors have been studied relatively rarely.

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