Chief’s Corner: F-bombs harm everyone

When I went through the police academy, I was taught that for some people, profanity was the only vernacular that they would understand.

Fast-forward, and now we have several studies that demonstrate the negative effects of profanity on people’s perceptions of the police or the reasonableness of a use of force. When viewing the exact same actions, people are more likely to find something unreasonable if profanity is involved.

Researchers recently provided a deep dive into this particular issue and found that officer profanity significantly reduces public perception of the reasonableness of force. [1] In the experiment, 234 participants watched the same use-of-force dashcam videos — some with clean language and others with heavy profanity inserted via captions. In both a domestic violence arrest and a warrant arrest scenario, viewers rated the profane versions as substantially less reasonable, regardless of the force level. The effect held even among participants likely to be tolerant of swearing (i.e., college students) and remained statistically significant after controlling for age, race and gender.

There is a big difference between an officer cussing at someone in a demeaning or disparaging way and using profanity as an expletive during a high-stress incident. The former is addressed with discipline; the latter should be handled differently. Still, both are harmful to the officer, the agency, and the profession. While using an F-bomb in a life-or-death situation is understandable, it is never optimal.

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It is up to us as leaders to address this issue and follow the research. Police leaders should do a few things to work on changing the culture:

1. Explain why it is bad for the officer to use profanity (use the research in a digestible format to back this up)
2. Have a discussion about this topic and work through all the issues.
3. Use scenario-based training to weed out the undesired behavior.
4. Address slip-ups through coaching and remedial training.
5. Reinforce professional responses to a tough situation.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Share them below.

Reference

1. Martaindale MH, Sandel WL, Duron A, Blair JP. (2023). “@#%$!: The impact of officer profanity on civilians’ perception of what constitutes reasonable use of force.” Police Quarterly, 26(2), 194–212.

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