Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Criminal Justice and Homeland Security (D.P.S.)

Department

Division of Criminal Justice and Homeland Security

First Advisor

Dr. Christopher Cleary

Second Advisor

Dr. Maria Haberfeld

Third Advisor

Dr. Robert Costello

Abstract

Effective police leadership is crucial to sustaining the culture shift in law enforcement. Leaders need to lead, and how the executive staff assess their leadership capabilities will determine whether they are up to the task. Police executives need to determine first what their motives are: to fill open supervisory spots? Promote the best leaders? This study and the results highlight the need to focus on the latter, identify the leadership qualities that best fit your department's needs, and work from there. A lack of oversight and inconsistent standards for police supervisors leads to poor policing and inadequate responses to significant events. Police departments should be open in their approach to leadership selection. The Federal Government should require standard practices in the police promotion arena involving written, oral, and practical exams. There is not one scandal of police corruption or brutality in the last decade where you cannot fault poor leadership and gaps in accountability. This research is vital to the progression of law enforcement transparency and accountability. This study examines the various types of police promotional testing in the United States and whether the Federal Government should mandate multifaceted exams. This study will utilize a career satisfaction survey for police officers from four different police departments to assess their sentiments regarding police promotional preparation and testing standards. These departments are similar in size, with one large and one small for each type of testing. The goal is to determine whether there is a correlation between departments that use multi-faceted promotional standards and levels of employee satisfaction. Which type of promotional process do officers tend to be more satisfied with? Multi-faceted promotional standards: • City Police—West Coast • City Police—Southwest Singularly focused promotional exams: • County Police—East Coast • State Police—East Coast This study aims to determine the impact of two promotion processes on officers' job satisfaction rates regarding their front-line supervision. Future research could more definitively link multifaceted police promotion requirements to lower civilian complaint rates. Keywords: police, leadership, front-line supervision, management, promotion process, multiple-choice exam, oral exam, job satisfaction, civilian complaints.

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