Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.)

School

Psychology

Advisor

Wayne Wallace

Abstract

Every year, several line of duty deaths occur among law enforcement personnel in the United States. Risk factors, community influences, types of violence, and diverse calls for service could affect an officer’s perception of safety. Given the number of line of duty deaths, officers’ perceived safety is an important avenue for further research. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore whether a line of duty death affected the perceived safety of officers in small, rural police departments in the state of Texas. A social constructivism perspective was used to understand the world in which the participating officers lived. The three research questions addressed the meaning of perceived safety, calls for service that affected perceived safety, and how a line of duty death affected officers’ perceptions of safety. A criterion sampling process was used to select 10 officers, who elected either an oral or a written interview. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. The eight identified themes encompassed participants’ definitions of perceived safety and how these related to their lived experiences, the types of calls for service that altered participants’ perceived safety, and how hearing about a line of duty death affected the participants’ perceived safety when on calls for service. This study’s results foster positive social change and provides recommendations to leaders who might be encouraged to secure resources to increase officers’ effective coping skills, both physically and mentally, which could, respectively, increase officers’ perception of safety and ability to manage emotions after hearing of a line of duty death.

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