Educating the Public About the Police: The Lima PSA (Public Service Announcement) Project. Final Report

摘要

This project analyzes the impact of four televised public service announcements (PSAs) aired for three months in Lima, Ohio. The PSAs were created with the goal of educating the public about the police and informing citizens about how to behave during encounters with the police. The instructive PSAs, developed from focus groups with police officers, address frequently occurring issues, problems, and behaviors that may trigger a more aggressive police response. Specifically, the study focuses on three specific research questions: 1) Are the PSAs effective in transferring knowledge to citizens about the police. 2) Did the PSAs have an impact on resident satisfaction with the police. and 3) Did the PSAs have an impact on the behavior of citizens interacting with the police. In general, the analyses of the three waves of survey data reveal that while the PSAs effectively imparted information about how to handle disagreements with the police, they had little impact on citizen knowledge concerning traffic stops and emergency situations or on resident satisfaction with the police. Moreover, the impact assessments of the PSAs on two measures of citizen-police interaction, resisting arrest and police use of force incidents, were equally disappointing. Regardless of the model specification, the ARIMA time-series analyses indicated that the PSAs had no appreciable effect on the measures of police-citizen interactions. Possible explanations for these weak findings, as well as their implications for future research, are discussed.