Policing in a Pandemic: a Commentary on Officer Well-being During COVID-19

The Intrinsic Association of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among Chinese Police Officers During COVID-19: Evidence From Network Perspective

BACKGROUND

The current study aimed to identify the core posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and to explore the longitudinal predictive relationships of these symptoms among Chinese police officers during COVID-19. Identifying the important symptoms of PTSS could help with informing future research to alleviate police officers' psychological problems.

METHODS

In this study, a two-wave on-line investigation (4 months interval; T1 and T2) was conducted with a sample of 891 Chinese police officers who completed the Chinese version of PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Cross-sectional network and cross-lagged panel network (CLPN) analyses were adopted.

RESULTS

The results showed that: (1) The most central nodes all belonged to the hyper-arousal and the negative cognition and emotion alteration clusters in both T1 and T2. (2) The strongest positive predictive paths were apparent from symptoms in hyper-arousal cluster to symptoms in negative cognition and emotion alteration cluster and intrusions cluster.

CONCLUSIONS

Hyperarousal is the core symptom cluster among police officers during COVID-19, and it positively predict negative cognition and emotion alteration symptoms and intrusions symptoms over time. Future research could focus more on these symptoms and examine their role in the onset and development of PTSS in police officers following traumatic events.

Factors Influencing Occupational Stress of State Security Forces During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

Objective

The aim of this review was to assess the factors influencing the occupational stress of state security forces during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

We conducted a scoping review using the Pubmed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, adhering to the PRISMA statement standards and the guidelines for narrative syntheses.

Results

We included a total of 26 studies. The prevalence of stress varied from 22% to 87.2%. Factors that may have influenced the stress levels of police officers during the pandemic include not having basic personal protective equipment, having little or no rest periods between tasks, long working hours, fear of contagion to themselves or others, pressure to maintain law and order, emotion regulation and preparedness, sex, marital status, work experience, age, presence of chronic underlying illnesses, family-work conflict, lack of psychological support, and others. The long working hours, the fear of infecting themselves or others, the pressure to maintain law and order, sex, and age are the six main factors evaluated for more studies.

Conclusion

Organisational, situational, and personal factors may have influenced the stress levels of police officers during the pandemic, and measures need to be taken to minimise their impact.

Associations Between MMPI-3 and Psychosocial History Findings Obtained in Preemployment Evaluations of Public Safety Candidates

The present study evaluated the validity of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 (MMPI-3) scores among police (n = 1,294), correctional officer (n = 190), dispatcher (n = 205), and firefighter (n = 237) candidates using psychosocial history data collected with the Psychological History Questionnaire (PsyQ) at a private practice in the Northwestern United States. MMPI-3 scale elevations at T score cutoffs specified in the MMPI-3 User's Guide for the Public Safety Candidate Interpretive Reports (Corey & Ben-Porath, 2022) were examined. Consistent with previous research using the MMPI-2-RF, MMPI-3 T score means were lower and less variable in this public safety preemployment context relative to the normative sample. In addition, MMPI-3 scores were meaningfully associated with a number of aggregated scale scores derived from PsyQ data, particularly in the behavioral/externalizing domain. To address limited research on preemployment personality testing among female police candidates and the absence of research among nonpolice public safety occupations, Cohen's q was used to compare validity coefficients across male and female police candidates and across police and correctional officer, dispatcher, and firefighter candidates. Differences were minimal, with all statistically significant effects being small in magnitude, indicating the MMPI-3 correlates identified with police candidates replicate to other public safety positions.

Concerns about COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Law Enforcement Officers: Prevalence and Risk Factor Data from a Nationally Representative Sample in the United States

Scant research exists on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among law enforcement officers, hindering health messaging development for officers and, by extension, the communities they serve. This paper’s goal was to address this gap by providing the necessary data to better under hesitancy to guide training and policy interventions for officers. The objective was to conduct the first nationally representative survey of officers on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and its correlates. We collected data from February 2021 to March 2022 on officer COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and examined their responses in terms of sociodemographic factors, health status, and job characteristics. We found that 40% of officers were COVID-19 vaccine hesitant. We found that officers with higher education, older officers, officers with more law enforcement experience, officers who received recent health checkups, and commanders (compared to line officers) were less likely to be COVID-19 vaccine hesitant. Critically, officers working in law enforcement agencies that provided masks for COVID-19 protection were less likely to be COVID-19 vaccine hesitant (compared to agencies not providing masks). Ongoing research is needed to understand how evolving attitudes and barriers toward vaccination change over time for officers and to test messaging to better align officers with health guidelines.