Editorial

Citation

Jennings, W. and Fridell, L. (2014), "Editorial", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-09-2014-0104

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 37, Issue 4

We would like to welcome you to the final issue of the 2014 calendar year, Volume 37, Issue 4 of Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management. This issue devotes attention toward a variety of topics germane to policing including thematics of scientific research in police training, private investigators, perspectives on policing, burglary clearance rates, an evaluation of a post-mental health crisis assistance program, policing in Aboriginal communities, physical education programs in policing, transactional and transformational leadership, spatial risk factors for felonious battery to police officers, stress and coping, organization reform, and a mixed methods approach for evaluating male and female officer stress. There is also a strong emphasis on the international nature of this issue's content with research from Canada, Finland, and Italy.

At this point in time, we would like to take a moment to update you on a couple of changes that will be taking place at PIJPSM beginning with Volume 38, Issue 1 of 2015 and going forward. First, we at PIJPSM are discontinuing some of the non-article-related content including the Perspectives on policing, the Book reviews, and Policing on the web in an effort to make additional space for more high-quality empirical articles and align ourselves with the style and format of other leading policing and criminal justice journals with regard to content. We sincerely appreciate Dr Michael Birzer's many years of service as Book Review Editor of PIJPSM and Dr J.W. Carter's many years of service as Internet Editor of PIJPSM. Their work and support for the journal has been highly valued. And, second, we are introducing what we are referring to as “state-of-the-art” reviews. These manuscripts are meant to be an up-to-date and authoritative source on a specific content area. We hope to be able to include one of these types of publications in each issue in the near future.

As always, we at Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management encourage you to submit your work for publication consideration when you believe it to be a potentially appropriate outlet.

Wesley G. Jennings and Lorie Fridell

About the Editors

Wesley G. Jennings, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences in the Department of Criminology and has a Courtesy Appointment in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida. He received his Doctorate Degree in Criminology from the University of Florida. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles, and his major research interests include longitudinal data analysis, semi-parametric group-based modeling, sex offending, gender, race/ethnicity, and the victim-offender overlap. In addition, he is a recent recipient of the 2011 William S. Simon/Anderson Publishing Outstanding Paper Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and a Lifetime Member of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Dr Lorie Fridell is an Associate Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of Criminology. Prior to joining USF in August of 2005, she served for six years as the Director of Research at the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) in Washington, DC. Dr Fridell has over 20 years of experience conducting research on law enforcement. Her primary research areas are police use of force and violence against police. She has authored, co-authored or edited books entitled: Police Use of Force: Official Reports, Citizen Complaints and Legal Consequences; Police Vehicles and Firearms: Instruments of Deadly Force; Chief Concerns: Exploring the Challenges of Police Use of Force; and Community Policing: Past, Present and Future. Recent articles and chapters on these and other research topics include “Use-of-force policy, policy enforcement and training,” “The impact of agency context, policies and practices on violence against police,” “Deadly force policy and practice: the forces of change,” and “Attracting females and racial/ethnic minorities to law enforcement.” Dr Fridell is a national expert on racial profiling, or what she calls “racially biased policing.” She speaks nationally on this topic and provides consultation and command-level training to law enforcement agencies. Publications on this topic include two books: Racially Biased Policing: A Principled Response and By the Numbers: A Guide for Analyzing Race Data from Vehicle Stops (and the companion guide, Understanding Race Data from Vehicle Stops: A Stakeholder's Guide). A recent chapter is and “Racially biased policing: the law enforcement response to the implicit black-crime association.” Dr Fridell is a Co-PI on the National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded National Police Research Platform, which is a multi-component, multi-method pilot project collecting data on law enforcement personnel and agencies at 30 sites around the USA. With the subcontract from the prime institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr Fridell is supporting three graduate students and 50 percent of the time of a post doc. Fridell's team is overseeing the national, longitudinal study of first line supervisors and is charged with implementing all Platform components in the LAPD, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Gulfport PD and St. Pete Beach PD. Dr Fridell has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on projects funded at close to $8 million; she has brought $1 million in grants/contracts to USF during her first five years on faculty. She taught previously at the University of Nebraska and Florida State University. She has received five university-level teaching awards.