Study: 'Wandering officers' more likely to be fired again, receive violations

With violence committed by police sharply called into question the past several weeks, a new study aims to home in on a potential contributing factor in cases of officer misconduct.

Among the findings of Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport, in a paper in the Yale Law Journal, is that officers who are fired from one agency and hired by another are far more likely to get into more trouble.

.@BenGrunwald (@DukeLaw) and John Rappaport (@UChicagoLaw) examine the phenomenon of “wandering officers” and report on their prevalence and behavior. Their Article also offers insights on how to quell the spread of these law-enforcement officers. https://t.co/qaThnHnbjK pic.twitter.com/mcGw7FCSMg

— The Yale Law Journal (@YaleLJournal) April 30, 2020

Based on their look at the phenomenon of “wandering officers,” they found such officers “tend to get fired about twice as often as others and are more likely to receive ‘moral character violations,’ both in general and for physical and sexual misconduct,” Grunwald told the Washington Post.

The data included 98,000 full-time officers in Florida across about 500 agencies, spanning 30 years, according to the Post’s report.

They found that “in any given year,” about 1,100 full-time officers working in Florida — about 3% of the total — were previously fired by others agencies in the state; that fired officers are often rehired somewhere within three years; and that they often move to “smaller agencies with fewer resources and slightly larger communities of color.”

Super-excited to share an empirical paper long in the works with @BenGrunwald, which came out last night from @YaleLJournal. It's called "The Wandering Officer." It's about police officers who are fired and find jobs with other departments: https://t.co/pEhWK1Lt3o.

— John Rappaport (@JohnMRappaport) April 30, 2020

In the question-and-answer session with the Post, Grunwald speculates on the reasons wandering officers tend to get rehired, despite the risk.

It could be “lack of knowledge,” he says — no background check or an ineffective one — or that departments aren’t aware of the risk. The other possibility, he says, is “that they know they’re hiring wandering officers, they know that they’re risky and they’re doing it anyway. That could be because law-enforcement agencies are highly immunized from legal liability. And, as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, there can be a band-of-brothers ethos among police officers, where they feel that they are duty bound to unconditionally support each other.”

In relation to the phenomenon of wandering officers going to smaller departments, Rappaport speculates “that they may, in some cases, feel like the wandering officer they hired was the best available option. They may have gotten a small pool of applicants, and they might have decided that they guy who was fired from his last job was still better than the other choices.”

Police actions have come under heavy scrutiny the past several weeks following the death of George Floyd, a black man, after a white Minnesota officer kneeled on his neck for nearly eight minutes.

Many videos have appeared on social media of police using force to quell protests — including near the White House before President Trump walked to a nearby church to have his picture taken with a Bible — and they’ve led many to question the necessity of that force. Serious injuries have been reported from projectiles fired by police, including the loss of an eye.

On Wednesday, the white Atlanta officer who shot a black man, Rayshard Brooks, in the back outside a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta was charged with felony murder. Prosecutors say Brooks was 18 feet, 3 inches from Officer Garrett Rolfe when Rolfe fired and that, although Brooks had a stun gun he snatched from officers, he posed no immediate threat. They also said the officer kicked Brooks and offered no medical treatment for more than two minutes.