Reactiekeuzes van politieambtenaren en de kans op geweldservaringen

Response decisions of police officers and their risk of violent incidents There is a high rate of victimization of violence among police officers. Some police officers are more often victimized than others. Studies on correlates of victimization among police officers mainly focus on situational and social demographic aspects and have only been able to explain the variation in victimization to a limited amount. Very few studies were found on the role of psychological characteristics of the police officers in the explanation of different victimization risks. This study explores if response decision, a concept of the Social Information Processing model of Crick and Dodge (1994), is useful in explaining differences in victimization among police officers. Police officers (N = 815) from five police forces in the Netherlands completed a digital questionnaire based on the Social Information Processing Interview (SIP -I). Results show that victimization of verbal violence, threats and physical violence was associated with the response decision of police officers. More specifically, police officers with more negative outcome expectancies of aggressive or assertive responses were more likely to experience victimization. Police officers, who select aggressive, instead of passive or assertive responses, were more likely to experience victimization.