Assessing legal liabilities in law enforcement: Police chiefs' views

Texas mandates 40 hours of law enforcement management and leadership traini ng biannually for police chiefs. To implement this requirement, from Octobe r 1997 to August 1999, the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Teras he ld 22 statewide training classes. During the training, we administered a su rvey on legal liabilities in law enforcement, in which 808 usable surveys w ere completed. Amassing the largest data seton legal liabilities in law enf orcement, this article reports results from that survey and documents the c hiefs' perceptions of the prevalence of civil litigation, fear of litigatio n, type of suits filed by members of the public as well as by their own off icers, and issues surrounding settlements, policy and procedure changes, tr aining, indemnification, and lawsuit prevention. The article concludes that nationwide systematic data collection should be undertaken on legal liabil ities in law enforcement so the public becomes better informed about this i mportant aspect of police work.