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Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center |
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Public Safety Officer Program
Darryl S. Wood
Turnover among the law enforcement
officers serving in Alaska Native villages has been a problem
since long before statehood, with the Village Public Safety Officer
(VPSO) program not immune from the problem: a typical VPSO will
remain employed in the program for only slightly less than two
years. This article considers the findings of a study conducted
to examine this problem. It first takes a look at just how big
the problem of turnover among VPSOs is. It then discusses the
results of a survey which investigated why some VPSOs are more
likely to leave the program than others. The main finding of
the research is that officers without strong connections of marriage,
family, or culture in the community they serve are the officers
who are most likely to terminate their employment with the program.
Providing police and public safety
services to the isolated Alaska Native villages spread across
the state is a daunting challenge. With rates of intentional
and accidental violent death much higher than those found in
urbanized areas of Alaska and the U.S. as a whole, these villages
certainly require a police and public safety presence. However,
the terrain, climate, and a lack of roads connecting these villages,
along with relatively small population sizes, have precluded
a “traditional” method of dealing with their law enforcement
and public safety needs. Instead, the VPSO program has been developed
over the past 20 years as a localized response to the broad range
of public safety needs in Alaska Native villages. VPSOs—whose
five-part task bundle includes law enforcement, fire fighting,
water safety, emergency medical assistance, and search and rescue—can
be best thought of as public safety “jacks-of-all-trades.”
The program has been heralded for its trifurcated management
structure—that is, oversight by local village governments,
regional nonprofit corporations, and the Alaska State Troopers—which
allows for local control over the day-to-day provision of services
at the village level.
Despite these innovations, the
problem of officer attrition has hindered the VPSO program in
much the same way as it affected earlier efforts at providing
police services to Alaska Native villages. Basically, those individuals
who are responsible for policing Alaska Native villages do not
have particularly long careers doing so. A study undertaken by
the UAA Justice Center, funded by the National Institute of Justice,
examined the turnover problem in the VPSO program and attempted
to isolate some of the possible reasons for the extreme levels
of turnover among VPSOs.
Data
Two primary data sources were drawn
upon to come to an understanding of VPSO turnover. Information
about turnover rates and the amount of time officers spend in
the program was obtained from lists of current and former VPSOs
published by the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The measures
of factors considered as possible reasons for turnover, as suggested
by prior research on the VPSO program and by administrators closely
associated with the program, were gathered by a self-administered
survey of 113 (out of a possible 184) current and former VPSOs.
Compared with what is found in
police agencies across the state and in the remainder of the
nation, turnover rates in the VPSO program have been, and remain,
very high (Figure 1). Consider the following points regarding
VPSO turnover rates:
• The problem of high rates
of officer attrition in the VPSO program continues a trend seen
in earlier policing efforts in Alaska Native villages. Annual
turnover rates of more than 100 per cent in pre-VPSO rural policing
programs were typical.
• The typical VPSO lasts in
a village and in the program for less than a year.
• When the turnover rate is
computed as a percentage in which the number of terminations
in a year is divided by the total number of VPSOs employed in
a year, the VPSO turnover rate has averaged 35 per cent per year
for the years 1983 through 1997. Rates using this measure have
been as high as 45 per cent per year (in 1992) (Figure 2).
• If turnover rates as the
proportion of the number of terminations in a period over the
average number of employees in a period are calculated, VPSO
rates of attrition averaged 55 per cent per year over the period
1983-1997. This rate is at least 10 times greater than what is
experienced by metropolitan police departments in Alaska and
the U.S.
For a number of reasons, the high
VPSO turnover rates are problematic. First, it costs an estimated
$6,200 to hire, train, and equip each new VPSO. In addition,
the time between when one VPSO quits and another takes his or
her place is more than four months (138 days)—a period during
which the village is without local VPSO service. Moreover, new
VPSOs will, on average, serve in a village for an additional
five months before completing the training academy.
Survey
The survey of current and former VPSOs
focused upon four topic areas thought to be associated with officer
turnover. First of all, the officers were questioned about their
pay and cost of living expenses. Both subjective and objective
measures appear to indicate that VPSOs are underpaid.
• Five out of six VPSOs felt
that they are not paid very well, while more than nine out of
ten had the opinion that VPSOs earn much less than the job is
worth.
• The majority (60%)
of VPSOs reported doing something to supplement their incomes.
More than 20 per cent of the officers reported using food stamps
while in the program, and 48 per cent of the officers reported
working an extra job while employed as a VPSO.
• VPSO housing is expensive;
nearly two-thirds (63%) of the VPSOs reported paying more than
one-third of their salaries toward housing. Only a slim majority
(51%) of VPSOs were satisfied with the quality of their housing.
Questions were also included in
the survey to consider the stresses and dangerous situations
VPSOs face in their job.
• In terms of the organizational
sources of stress, most of the officers surveyed were clear about
the VPSO role and the limits of their authority, but most also
reported receiving conflicting direction from their management
authorities.
• A slim majority of
VPSOs reported experiencing at least some physiological effects
of stress because of their job.
• Many VPSOs feel that
they have been placed in danger on the job. Most (80 %)
reported that they were lucky to not have been injured in some
calls for service; a similar proportion (72%) said that they
feared for their own life and safety while dealing with dangerous
situations.
• More than one-third
(37%) of the VPSOs surveyed reported being injured while making
an arrest. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of those hurt while making
an arrest required medical attention for their injuries.
• Roughly two-out-of-five
(39%) VPSOs said that at least once in their career they had
responded to a call for service in which gunshots were fired.
• Almost all (89%) VPSOs
surveyed believed that the villages they served expected 24-hour-a-day,
7-day-a-week service, and most (68%) said that the job made it
difficult to take part in subsistence activities or to spend
time alone with their families.
An additional set of questions
was included in the survey to gauge the VPSOs’
perceptions of their training and the organizational support
they received throughout their tenure.
• Although a third of
the VPSOs reported dissatisfaction with their training, a majority
(59%) of officers felt that they were well trained while slightly
more (69%) believed that the VPSO academy prepared them for the
job at hand.
• While nearly all (93%)
VPSOs reported talking to their Oversight Troopers on the telephone
at least once a month, a slim majority (55%) reported seeing
the Oversight Troopers in their village only in the case of emergency
or investigation.
• Although a majority
(63%) of VPSOs were satisfied with their office space, a similar
proportion (62%) felt that they lacked the equipment necessary
for them to do their jobs properly.
• Most VPSOs felt that
they were supported by the village they served (59%) and that
people in the village expressed their appreciation for the job
the officer was doing (60%).
The final set of questions
included in the survey examined the experiences of the nearly
two-thirds (63%) of VPSOs who are of Alaska Native heritage.
• Most Alaska Native
VPSOs served in their home village (75%) or a village where they
were related to other residents (93%).
• Serving in these locations
often forced the Alaska Native VPSOs to enforce the law against
relatives. Nearly four out of five (79%) said that they had arrested
a relative. Half as many (39%) reported making an arrest of an
immediate family member.
• Somewhat surprisingly,
a majority (57%) of the Alaska Native VPSOs surveyed felt that
they had not been pressured to be lenient toward their relatives.
• Only a slim majority
(52%) of Alaska Native VPSOs felt that it was difficult to enforce
the law against relatives.
• Slightly less than
half (46%) of all VPSOs felt that they were treated like outcasts.
• Two out of five (42%)
Alaska Native VPSOs reported being treated as if they were somehow
less Native because they were VPSOs.
Analysis
Principal components analysis
was used to reduce the large number of variables made available
by the survey into a smaller number of theoretically compelling
factors and scales that could then be reasonably compared using
multivariate analytical techniques. Treated as though they were
factors that put officers at risk of leaving the VPSO program,
these factors and scales were used in three different proportional
hazards regression models to investigate their effects when other
factors and scales were held constant. As an analytical tool
used in demographic and actuarial research, proportional hazards
regression analysis was appropriate for estimating the likelihood
of VPSOs quitting and/or being fired from the program in any
given month given the officers’ scores on the factors and
scales isolated in the principal components analysis.
What proportional hazards
regression does, in essence, is examine the relationships between
each of the individual causal variables (e.g., dissatisfaction
with training) and the effect variable (VPSO turnover) while
holding constant the values of other causal variables (e.g.,
marital status, age, dissatisfaction with pay, etc.). In other
words, it allows us to determine what the impact of each individual
causal variable is upon turnover when the values of the other
individual causal variables are held equal.
Three different proportional
hazards regression models of VPSO turnover were estimated to
determine the probabilities of officers leaving the program.
One model considered the likelihood of attrition among all VPSOs,
while the other two looked at the likelihood of turnover among
Alaska Native and non-Native VPSOs, respectively.
Across all three models (i.e.,
for all VPSOs, for Alaska Native VPSOs, and for non-Native VPSOs)
a number of factors were found to be closely associated with
VPSO turnover. In any given month:
• Officers who were
dissatisfied with their training, were, when all else is held
equal, more likely to leave the program.
• VPSOs who were unmarried
while in the program were more likely to leave the program.
• Officers who did not
work an extra job while serving as VPSOs were actually at a greater
risk of leaving the program.
Other factors were associated
with VPSO turnover in only some of the models. In any given month:
• Among all VPSOs and
among Alaska Native VPSOs, those who reported using food stamps
as a means of financial assistance had a much greater chance
of leaving the program.
• Among all VPSOs, being
of Alaska Native heritage decreased the chance that an officer
would turnover.
• Among all VPSOs, serving
in a village where other police such as Village Police Officers
or Tribal Police are stationed reduced the probability that an
officer would leave the program.
The proportional hazards
regression model for the Alaska Native subgroup generated a few
results that differed from those found for the model of all VPSOs
as a whole. During any given month:
• Alaska Native VPSOs
who served somewhere other than their home village were more
likely to turnover.
• Alaska Native VPSOs
who scored highly on a psychological scale measuring directiveness
(included in the survey to gauge the extent to which officers
were able to do their job without being ‘bossy’) had
an increased chance of quitting, or being fired from, the VPSO
program.
• Alaska Native VPSOs
who did not report feeling endangered on the job were at a higher
risk of leaving the program.
Aside from the effects of
dissatisfaction with training, being unmarried, and not working
an extra job while in the program, the only other significant
effect found by the proportional hazards regression model for
the non-Native subgroup was that the younger a VPSO was when
hired, the greater the chance of him or her leaving the program
during any given month.
With the factors considered
above held constant, other measures considered appeared to have
negligible effect upon VPSO turnover.
• Lack of contact with,
or being too far away from, an Oversight Trooper did not appear
to make VPSOs any more or less likely to leave the program.
• Dissatisfaction with
their equipment did not appear to have an effect upon the chances
that a VPSO would turnover.
• Most of the factors
associated with officer stress—role ambiguity, role conflict,
adverse health effects, difficulties with the demands of VPSO
duty, receiving injuries in the line of duty—appeared to
have little effect upon the likelihood of an officer leaving
the program.
• The perceived mistreatment
of VPSOs by the villages they served, either through a lack of
village support or through village treatment of the officer as
an outcast, also appeared to have no discernible effect upon
officer attrition.
• Because of overwhelming
agreement among the officers that VPSOs are not paid very well
and that they deserve much more salary than they currently receive,
the subjective indicators regarding VPSO pay and expenses did
not help to predict which officers would stay with the program
and which would terminate their employment.
• Among all VPSOs in
general, and specifically among Alaska Native VPSOs, the pressures
and difficulties of policing relatives did not appear to be associated
with the likelihood of an officer leaving the program.
Conclusions
As explanations, no single
perspective on VPSO turnover was any more convincing than any
other. VPSO turnover does not appear to be associated only with
relative lack of pay, with the stresses the job brings, or with
the issues surrounding the officers’ Alaska Native heritage.
Instead, variables from each of these perspectives helps to discern
between the VPSOs that stay with the program versus those more
likely to leave the program. Given that no single viewpoint was
any more compelling than another, a different theoretical perspective
on VPSO turnover, one which focuses upon the reasons officers
have for remaining with the program and the connections they
have to others in the villages they serve, should be put forth.
This perspective would take into account some of the more compelling
findings from this study, including those showing that:
• Entrenchment within
the Alaska Native culture makes officers more likely to remain
a VPSO.
• The stabilizing force
of marriage has a positive influence upon the probabilities of
VPSOs staying in the program.
• Service to the officer’s
home village increases the likelihood that he or she will continue
to serve the program.
• And, although it actually
is correlated with higher levels of reported stress, service
in villages where other police (such as VPOs or Tribal Police)
are stationed gives a VPSO someone else with whom to work and
reduces the chance that he or she will leave the program.
Ultimately, it is perhaps
more beneficial to search for those things that keep VPSOs attached
to the occupation instead of looking at the things that drive
them away. Despite all the reasons for leaving, many VPSOs do
remain with the program for good reasons for a considerable amount
of time.
Darryl Wood is an assistant professor with the Justice Center. This research project was supported by Grant No. 98-IJ-CX-0035 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.
The complete report, Turnover Among Alaska Village Public Safety Officers: An Examination of the Factors Associated with Attrition, is available at the Justice Center Web Site at http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/reports/9901vpso.html.
The Village Public Safety Officer
program began formally in 1981, filling 52 positions throughout
the state. In August 2000, there were 71 VPSOs serving 70 villages.
An additional 53 villages have authorized VPSO positions which
are vacant.
VPSOs participate in an initial
nine-week training course conducted at the Public Safety Academy
in Sitka. The course covers five areas: law enforcement, fire
fighting, search and rescue, water safety, and emergency medical
services. In addition to this initial training the officers receive
yearly refresher courses conducted on a regional basis.
The program was designed to facilitate
local control over public safety services, but management authority
actually resides with three entities: the village itself, the
regional nonprofit Native corporation and the Alaska State Troopers.
Each entity has specific responsibilities with regard to the
program. The program receives all of its financial support from
the state, and all program costs are contained in a single line
item in the Alaska State Troopers’ budget. The FY01 budget
for the VPSO program is approximately $7.5 million. A portion
of this covers the cost of the troopers’ oversight administration
of the program, and the remainder goes to the regional non-profits
for the day-to-day operational costs of the program.
In addition to providing training
and some equipment, the Alaska State Troopers serve as field
supervisors of the VPSOs. Each VPSO is assigned an “Oversight
Trooper”—a commissioned Alaska State Trooper who provides
technical assistance, guidance and training from a centralized
location which may be several hundred miles away from the village.
The program calls for regular oversight visits by the assigned
trooper to provide on-the-job training. In complex situations,
including all felony cases, the VPSO stays in communication with
the trooper, taking action to control the situation until the
trooper can get to the site. VPSOs do not carry firearms on duty.
Currently there are 36 Oversight Troopers.
Although the field supervision
is provided by the Alaska State Troopers, the VPSOs are actually
employees of the regional nonprofit Native corporations—they
are paid through the corporation. Each nonprofit has a VPSO Coordinator
who administers the program for the corporation. The position
is responsible for payroll management, insurance and retirement
plans, maintenance of personnel records and the expenditure of
grant funds.
Village control over VPSOs stems
from two sources. First, villages have the choice of participating
in the program; in other words, a village cannot have an officer
imposed upon it. The other source of village control is the power
to select and terminate officers. Villages exercise ultimate
discretion over who serves as a VPSO, although hiring and firing
are generally conducted in consultation with the non-profits
and the Alaska State Troopers. The villages provide office space,
telephone service, a holding cell and any equipment not provided
by the Alaska State Troopers.