The rhetoric of de-policing: Evaluating open-ended survey responses from police officers with machine learning-based structural topic modeling

•Machine learning-based textual analysis is a viable tool for police survey research•Analyzing large numbers of police free-text responses provides more nuanced understanding of police perceptions of the public•Officers' attention to professionalism guards against de-policing, while attention to perceived unfair criticism increases it•The public's integrity has a stronger effect on propensity to de-police than the public's knowledge about police work

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