Document Type

Article

Abstract

Most discussion of the police–public relationship focuses on the public’s lack of trust in police. Our research suggests that police trust in the public is another important factor in this relationship and that addressing trust concerns on both sides may improve it. We conducted two studies of police trust in the public. The results suggested that the more police trust the public, the more constructive risks they take in performing their jobs. Based on our results, we highlight the importance of reciprocity and attempting to simultaneously increase both police and public trust to improve their relationship. Measures developed for these studies may inform future research on police trust in the public and develop interventions to improve it.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/23794607251384491

Rights

© The Author(s) 2025. 

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.

APA Citation

Wise, R. A., Mayer, R. C., & Mourtgos, S. M. (2025). Police–public trust: Toward a more complete perspective. Behavioral Science & Policy, 11(2), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/23794607251384491

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