Week 8: On the Road Again
Hello Everyone! This past week has been a bit more eventful than usual for my Senior Project, having both a ride-along, as well as more survey responses! I am really excited to tell you all about it, so let’s begin!
First, at Prescott Valley Police Department, I had my second ride-along! This was with a different patrol officer from the first one, but they were stationed in the same patrol area, so I got to see a lot of similar sights. This time, I prepared specific questions for the officer, involving mostly his experiences as an officer and any stories or advice he had. I was able to learn a lot about the methodology most police use on the job, the specific jurisdictions that different agencies (State Trooper, Tribal Police, etc.) have, and even heard about his experience at the Police Academy. Most importantly, I even got his answers to my survey, since he was not able to complete it due to usually being on Graveyard Shift. Speaking of my survey, I am still waiting on the Prescott Valley PD responses, since my supervisor was out this week. I am really curious to see what responses I get back, and how they compare to the ones I got from Prescott PD!
Prescott Police Department was still more of the same, with the added bonus of getting more survey responses, bringing my grand total to eight currently. I will save my little analysis of these responses for when I talk about my research in the next section, and instead focus on what I am doing at Prescott PD, as there might be a change soon! I have been talking with my supervisor there on if there is anything more that I can do with my remaining time interning, and we have come up with some ideas. One of these ideas was a ride-along with a Prescott PD officer, which would definitely be very interesting, since it would both give me a new perspective on the officers I see around town so much, as well as let me note any differences between the two Prescott departments’ behavior, equipment, policies, and more! I won’t mention anything else, since this is all still tentative, and things could very easily change in the future. Still, exciting stuff may be coming!
And now, for my research. Though still a bit far from my hoped amount of 20-40 responses, I think that eight is enough to at least discuss some of the trends I am seeing, at least at Prescott PD since they are the ones I have the most responses for. First off is the time spent working at their precinct. I have received a response from each of the three brackets (0-5 years, 6-10 years, 11+ years), with currently a bias in the 11+ range. This makes sense, as they are likely people in administrative positions who have more time to answer surveys like mine. If you are curious as to why I said “likely”, it is because my survey is completely anonymous so that I can respect the officers’ privacy. Moving on, I was surprised to see that officers watching cop shows was not as uncommon as I thought. Even some of those who had said no mentioned that they used to watch these types of shows, or at least had a good enough grasp on the shows to be able to answer the next questions. What types of shows they watch/used to watch was, as expected, very mixed, though Blue Bloods was in quite a few responses. Also as expected, the responses skewed toward the inaccurate range on how they viewed the accuracy of these cop shows, though I was surprised to see a good amount had chosen “Somewhat accurate”. Finally, while I cannot mention every specific detail they thought was inaccurate or accurate, I will mention two that stuck out to me. In terms of accurate details, quite a bit of officers so far have said that the work culture the shows have presented is quite accurate, which I didn’t even realize when first making this survey. And for inaccurate details, many of them found that the constant high-stress situations that the officers were placed into was unrealistic of the day-to-day realities of the job, which is much, much more mundane most of the time. From both my experience interning as well as what I have seen in my own TV viewing, I can definitely agree with this gripe.
Overall, a week that was definitely more eventful! Sorry for my big analysis of a survey, I just thought the responses were interesting. Next week, we will, as usual, see what happens! Until then, see you all next time!
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