EARLY INTERVENTION SYSTEMS: AN EXPLORATION OF INTERVENTIONS HANDLED BY SUPERVISORS TO ADDRESS AT-RISK OFFICER BEHAVIOR

With the national conversation and media attention surrounding high-profile and critical incidents and officer misconduct, emphasis on supervision and accountability for police officers and their agencies has never been more pronounced. Early Intervention (EI) systems are a supervision and accountability tool to identify and address at-risk officers. While EI systems are prevalent throughout U.S. police agencies, limited research has been conducted in this area. More importantly, EI interventions handled by supervisors to hold officers accountable and prevent repeated at-risk behavior and misconduct have yet to be explored. The purpose of this study was to fill this critical gap in EI system literature by examining the review process and execution of EI alerts and interventions with officers.

This current study examines four critical facets of the EI process, the differences between non-EI flagged and EI flagged officers, policy requirements for the execution of EI interventions, the likelihood of subsequent EI alerts, and temporal distance between the initial and subsequent EI alert during this study period. EI system data including supervisor response memos were collected from the internal affairs unit of a large, metropolitan police agency in the southwestern United States. Results indicate that officer gender, officer tenure, and officer division were all significant for the likelihood of receiving an EI alert. Results also demonstrated that supervisor race, supervisor tenure, type of performance indicator that triggered an EI alert, time to the initial EI alert, and year of the EI alert were all significant for one or more of the policy requirements in the execution of EI interventions. Furthermore, results indicated that the type of performance indicator, time to the initial EI alert, and year of the EI alert were all significant for the likelihood of a subsequent EI alert, while officer race, supervisor tenure, type of performance indicator, time to the initial EI alert, and year of the EI alert were all significantly associated with the time between an officer’s initial EI alert and intervention and their subsequent EI alert during this study period. Finally, a discussion of limitations, future research, and policy implications are presented.