Abstract
Police Officer Years of Service: Does it Play a Role In Officer Displays of Empathy?
Lipsky (2013) proposes that street-level bureaucrats may become negatively affected by the work conditions of public service, resulting in reduced levels of altruism throughout their careers. In accordance with Lipsky’s (2013) theory, it is presumed that years of service would be inversely related to displays of empathy with more years of service resulting in fewer displays of empathy. This exploratory study used Growette Bostaph et al.’s (2019) random sample of 200 domestic violence cases from 2016-2017 and identified the police officers involved in these cases to create a new sample. The author then gathered data on each officer’s years of service and used Growette Bostaph et al.’s (2019) measures of empathy to identify if empathy was displayed by the officer and the type of empathy, if applicable. Results are reported using descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis to determine if years of service predicts displays of empathy by police officers.