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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociology of Law
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1568487
What Does Good Look Like? Officers' Perception of the Ideal Law Enforcer
Provisionally accepted
Stephen Bell1*
Jennifer Cliff2- 1University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States
- 2Mount Marty University, Yankton, SD, United States
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The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore how law enforcement officers describe the attributes, characteristics, and qualities that combine to form the archetype of the ideal law enforcer. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 22 law enforcement officers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and thematically analyzed. While the participating officers were candid about the traits they perceived to be ideal among law enforcers, interestingly, these officers tended to avoid topics of physicality. The bulk of the coded data revealed themes that related to personality characteristics. Findings revealed that law enforcement officers categorized their selfdescribed ideal traits of other officers into three primary themes: 1) Humanity and Emotional Intelligence, 2) Moral Courage, and 3) Resilience and Occupational Effectiveness.
Keywords: ideal, Police, Law Enforcement, humanity, moral courage, resilience
Received: 29 Jan 2025; Accepted: 10 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bell and Cliff. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Stephen Bell, University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.