Date of Award

Summer 2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Sociology & Criminal Justice

Committee Director

Elizabeth Monk-Turner

Committee Member

Mona J. E. Danner

Committee Member

John P. Jarvis

Abstract

Police shootings are incidents that have lasting effects on the officers involved, the department to which they belong and the community at large, yet these events are rarely discussed holistically with consideration given to the multiple parties impacted. Given the significant impacts, officer survivability and resilience in the aftermath of a shooting incident have become a topic with which most modern police agencies are concerned. While this number of lethal incidents may seem surprisingly low, there is often a narrow focus on the shooting incident itself, with little attention paid to pre-event factors or to the long and short term post-event factors. This study utilized a case study of a single shooting incident to gain a more broad understanding of police shootings. The case study drew from multiple data sources, to include interviews with participants, departmental policies, news media, and participant observations. Paying particular attention to Goffman's theoretical concepts of stigma and impression management, thematic analyses found five central themes across participant interviews. Also of note are the concepts of near trauma and cultural competency, which emerged in various contexts but are rarely addressed in the literature.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/xaf7-7d27

ISBN

9781321316155

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