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“Oh hell no, we don't talk to police”: Insights on the lack of cooperation in police investigations of urban gun violence
Abstract
Research Summary
We conducted face‐to‐face interviews with 50 young Black men, residents of high‐crime neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, individuals who had considerable knowledge about illegal gun markets and the resulting bloodshed. Our findings confirm that distressed milieus reliably fail to produce cooperative witnesses as a result of the cumulative impact of anti‐snitching edicts, fear of retaliation, legal cynicism, and high‐risk victims’ normative views toward self‐help.
Policy Implications
Disadvantaged communities of color typically have low fatal and nonfatal shooting clearance rates in part as a result of poor witness cooperation. Diminished clearance rates have also been shown to intensify minority residents’ claims that officers do not care about keeping them or their neighborhoods safe. Respondents’ accounts identify three overlapping areas instructive for informing public policy: (1) reducing gun violence so that high‐risk individuals live in objectively safer areas, (2) using intermediaries to launch grassroots campaigns countering pro‐violence and anti‐snitching norms, and (3) improving police–minority community relations.
... Other researchers have found negative attitudes toward the police reduce the willingness of victims to report crimes (Kwak et al., 2019;MacDonald, 2001). More specifically, negative police interactions, unjust police responses, and unfavorable views of the police heighten non-reporting behaviors for African Americans (R. K. Brunson & Wade, 2019;Kwak et al., 2019;Sered, 2014;Slocum, 2018). On the other hand, Slocum (2018) observed that irrespective of the nature of prior contact with the police, victims of personal crimes, such as robbery, sexual assault, and aggravated assault, attribute their reasons for not reporting are due to the fear of retaliation. ...
... ocedural injustice, and other negative interactions erode legitimacy and likely reduce the reporting of victimizations (J. M. Gau, 2015;J. Gau & Brunson, 2015;Yoon, 2015). Adverse direct and indirect experiences with the police create opportunities for the transmission of legal cynicism and negative attitudes toward the police (R. K. Brunson, 2007;R. K. Brunson & Wade, 2019;Rosenbaum et al., 2005), which results in a collective internalization among African Americans of trauma through shared experiences (Pryce et al., 2021). ...
... pts embodying legal estrangement were evident across respondents, with thematic analyses revealing that not only in-the-moment negative police interactions were voiced as reasons to not engage the police, but also an extensive array of vicarious experiences, passed-through-the-generations norms that discourage police reporting (R. K. Brunson, 2007;R. K. Brunson & Wade, 2019;Kwak et al., 2019;Rosenbaum et al., 2005;Slocum, 2018). Police engagement, as a form of help-seeking, is a dynamic process that involves complex behaviors (Xie & Baumer, 2019) that are guided by both situational contexts and perceptions of the police. The different help-seeking and non-help-seeking pathways illustrated in the subsamples ...
... Problematically, on the one hand, people who view the police negatively are reluctant to voluntarily offer their assistance (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;Tyler & Fagan, 2008;Mazerolle et al., 2013) yet on the other, youths' regard for the police has plummeted to a decades-long low (Fine et al., 2020). Given recent declines in case clearance rates, especially for violent crime (Brunson & Wade, 2019), understanding factors contributing to youths' willingness to cooperate with the police, including reporting crimes, is crucial for enhancing public safety. ...
... Given declining case clearance rates, especially for violent crime (Brunson & Wade, 2019), understanding how to promote the public's willingness to cooperate with the police is perceived to be vital for enhancing public safety. Driven by the social psychological literature on intergroup dynamics and social identity theorizing (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), researchers are calling attention to the notion that intergroup communication should be salient for policing (Giles, Maguire et al., 2021). ...
... Considering how few studies focus on Native American people's perceptions of and relationships with police, more research is clearly necessary. Overall, to the extent that police care about enhancing public safety and conducting their jobs more effectively, especially given recent declines in violent crime clearance rates (Brunson & Wade, 2019), they must consider the lasting effects their actions may have on children. ...
Police must rely on the public, however youths’ views of police are historically low. To understand the dynamics of these intergroup relations, this study integrates two theoretical perspectives: the cognitive developmental perspective, which posits that age-graded cognitive enhancements enable children to begin critically evaluating police, and the group engagement model, which suggests that views of police impact law-related behavior. Utilizing a sample of 424 community youth (37.97% Hispanic/Latinx; 19.81% Native American), this study tested four novel hypotheses: H1) age is negatively associated with youths’ willingness to cooperate (WTC) with police; H2) age is negatively associated with normative alignment with police; H3) normative alignment is positively associated with WTC; and H4) normative alignment is more strongly associated with older youths’ WTC. All four hypotheses were supported. The article discusses the implications of both the integration of these theoretical perspectives and the findings for understanding the effects of these intergroup dynamics.
... Results from this study align with prior research (e.g., Brunson & Wade, 2019;Lee et al., 2010;Tyler & Jackson, 2014;Warren, 2010) establishing a relationship between race and police legitimacy attitudes and lend further support to findings that suggest Black individuals have less trust and confidence in the police than White individuals. This study also supports prior findings suggesting that parents may transmit police legitimacy attitudes to their children through legal socialization practices (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2015;Wolfe et al., 2017). ...
... Identification of the existence of a relationship between legitimacy attitudes and messages parents deem important to communicate to their children about the police suggests that changing the way communities view the police may promote the transmission of more positive messages about police and, ultimately, promote healthier and more collaborative relationships. When communities of color have little belief in police legitimacy, community members tend to cooperate with and rely less on police, even when individuals have been victims of crime themselves (Brunson & Wade, 2019). Individuals in communities of color may simultaneously experience under-and over-policing in which prior experience, whether vicarious or direct, has taught them that police are ineffective at addressing crime in their communities and may profile and disproportionately target them (Brunson & Wade, 2019). ...
... When communities of color have little belief in police legitimacy, community members tend to cooperate with and rely less on police, even when individuals have been victims of crime themselves (Brunson & Wade, 2019). Individuals in communities of color may simultaneously experience under-and over-policing in which prior experience, whether vicarious or direct, has taught them that police are ineffective at addressing crime in their communities and may profile and disproportionately target them (Brunson & Wade, 2019). Thus, improving legitimacy attitudes-and ultimately relationships between community members and police-may increase the likelihood that individuals in these communities will rely on police in times of need and assist police in keeping their communities safe. ...
Anecdotal evidence suggests Black caregivers tend to engage in a sociocultural practice called “the Talk,” in which they equip youth with knowledge to facilitate successful navigation of police encounters. Yet, little empirical research exists examining this practice and the factors that may influence the transmission of messages from parents to youth. This study examined the types of messages parents deem important for children to understand about police, whether racial differences exist, and whether parents’ police legitimacy attitudes play a role in perceived importance. Exploratory factor analysis of survey responses from 1,056 parents identified four constructs inherent in The Talk: messages about Police Role, Compliance, Police Behaviors and Safety Behaviors. Using survey data from 948 Black and White parents, multiple regression analyses revealed that parent race was significantly related to the importance parents placed on communicating specific types of messages about the police and that legitimacy attitudes moderated these relationships. Consistent with prior findings of racial differences in legitimacy attitudes, Black parents reported less trust in the police than White parents. Black parents also placed less importance on communicating positive socialization messages about police and greater importance on communicating messages related to compliance, expectations of negative police behaviors, and maintaining personal safety during police encounters. Although legitimacy attitudes significantly moderated the relationship between parent race and message content, Black parents’ legitimacy attitudes were a weaker driver of parents’ messages than White parents’ attitudes, suggesting that additional factors (e.g., expectations of differential treatment) may motivate Black parents’ socialization practices.
... Volumes of studies provided answers about how misalignment between police behaviors and community values decreases community willingness to obey the law or collaborate on solving crimes, harming public safety (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;Tyler & Huo, 2002). As a result, the threat of legal deterrence wains and crimes often go unaddressed-or worse, addressed through community violence (Brunson & Wade, 2019;Wilkinson et al., 2009). Recognition of this science produced a significant number of policy responses, most notably that procedural justice became the first principle articulated in the recommendations produced by The Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015). ...
... In contrast, police use less force against White people who look "Whiter" (Kahn et al., 2016). At the same time that Black people are overpoliced, they also feel underprotected, perceiving that police treat their victimization experiences less seriously and are not concerned with serious crime in their neighborhoods (Boehme et al., 2020;Brunson & Wade, 2019;Jacoby et al., 2018;Smith Lee & Robinson, 2019). Indeed, analyses comparing police and census data show that police are less likely to clear (i.e., solve) crimes when they are committed against Black victims or in neighborhoods with more Black residents (Vaughn, 2020). ...
... Such efforts may assist officers in appreciating that high levels of crime in majority Black neighborhoods manifest not because of Black pathology but because of structural racism that concentrates impoverishment of all kinds of resources (e.g., employment, food, health, and mental health resources, etc.). Such efforts may counter place-based racial bias and help officers to understand that the people who live in high-crime areas are the most likely to need help while simultaneously most likely to be afraid to ask police for help because of past experiences of aggression and abuse (see, e.g., Brunson & Wade, 2019;Wilkinson et al., 2009). ...
We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that W. E. B. Du Bois articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the United States, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In this article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes that contribute to discriminatory public safety. We also identify ways in which theorizing about discriminatory public safety can be improved by appreciating the historical and sociopolitical context in which policing occurs. © 2021 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
... The most well-known of these intergroup settings involve relationships between the police and their various publics (Maguire, 2021). Unfortunately, these are sometimes viewed on both sides as "us versus them" relationships (Brunson, 2007;Brunson & Wade, 2019;. A less well-known intergroup relationship is between police leaders and the line-level officers who constitute the majority of personnel in most police agencies. ...
... These findings have implications for how criminal justice officials communicate with African-American communities. Police have had tenuous relationships with African-Americans throughout the history of U.S. policing (Bayley & Mendelsohn, 1969;Brunson & Miller, 2006;Brunson & Wade, 2019). Research has demonstrated that how police talk to African-Americans contributes, in part, to these conflicting relationships (Dixon et al., 2008(Dixon et al., , 2021. ...
... Many African-Americans feel an ongoing sense of mistrust and even trauma about how they are treated by the criminal justice system (Brunson, 2007;Brunson & Wade, 2019). Improving the language used by criminal justice officials when communicating with African-American communities is an important part of building trust and healing the sense of deeply felt trauma. ...
Police use of force against minorities, particularly African-Americans, has become a prominent national issue in the United States. In a number of controversial instances, such as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, African-Americans have died under questionable circumstances due to police use of force. These incidents have fueled the growth of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and have often resulted in large-scale protests and riots. In this paper, we examine statements made by four types of criminal justice officials – police executives, police department spokespersons, police union representatives, and prosecutors – in the immediate aftermath of 30 such incidents that occurred in 2020. We examine the language used by these officials in social media postings, news releases, and press conferences, focusing specifically on the extent to which they express empathy or sympathy toward the decedent or his or her loved ones, as well as the community at large. Our analysis reveals that criminal justice officials rarely express empathy or sympathy in the aftermath of these incidents, though there are noteworthy differences between different types of officials. Our findings are helpful for understanding how the language used by these officials, particularly the public expression of empathy and sympathy, fits into broader debates about race and criminal justice in the United States.
... These strategies include frequent stop-and-frisk interactions, in which officers check a person they reasonably belief to be suspicious for minor crimes, and high rates of surveillance through preventive patrols (Circo et al., 2020). Residents in African American neighborhoods are more likely to describe police encounters as aggressive and frequent (Brunson & Miller, 2006a, 2006bBrunson & Wade, 2019;Gau & Brunson, 2010;Weitzer, 2015). A sense of being overpoliced violates residents' sense of procedural justice (Weitzer, 2015). 1 Brunson & Wade document that these strategies of over-policing of minor crimes inspire low citizen trust, which causes a reluctance to cooperate with the police. ...
... A sense of being overpoliced violates residents' sense of procedural justice (Weitzer, 2015). 1 Brunson & Wade document that these strategies of over-policing of minor crimes inspire low citizen trust, which causes a reluctance to cooperate with the police. This unwillingness to cooperate in turn leads to low clearance rates of murder cases (Brunson & Wade, 2019). The result, sociologist Andrea Gordon notes, is a situation in which residents in African American neighborhoods often experience an over-policing in terms of surveillance and social control, and an under policing in terms of emergency services and redress for serious crimes, such as homicides (Smyton, 2020). ...
Violence interrupters (VI) operate as mediators after gang-involved shootings to stop retributory shootings. While some cities, like Chicago, have seen initial success, other cities, such as Boston, Newark, and Phoenix have seen little or mixed effects. This is the first evaluation of the Washington DC intervention. I use an interrupted time series model to measure the impact the intervention had on the rates of assaults with a gun using DC Crime Incident data. Recognizing that the Covid-19 pandemic is an important confounding event, I also run two time-series control models, a location control, and an outcome control. My findings indicate that the program was not effective in reducing gun violence.
... This means that beyond their own experiences, youth take into account the visual cues of neighborhoods, what others say about specific locations, and media reports on area crime and violence to inform their own feelings about 'place'. International research demonstrates that youth perceptions then shape their responses such that vigilance in certain neighborhoods and within certain locations in neighborhoods is normalized as a mundane, routine activity (Brunson and Wade 2019;Kurtenbach et al. 2021;Stodolska, Acevedo, and Shinew 2009). ...
... In contrast to prior research (Brunson and Wade 2019;Carr, Napolitano, and Keating 2007;Rengifo, Pater, and Velazquez 2017), youth presented a more nuanced perception of police that was dependent on personal connections and experiences. Our findings on perceptions of police may differ from other qualitative research due to the study location of Boston, as opposed to other locations in the U.S. or around the globe that may have more well-known police corruption scandals, as well as because of the characteristics of the youth we interviewedthose involved in youth centers. ...
The central objective of the present study is to contextualize youths’ perception of neighborhood safety from a youth-centered perspective of native born and immigrant youth living in a police-defined ‘hot spot’ neighborhood in Boston, U.S.A. Using the concept of street efficacy and lifestyles-routine activities theories, focus groups were conducted with teens, and photovoice was used to elaborate on perceptions. Youth described neighborhood offenders, capable guardians, and steps they took to reduce themselves as targets, consistent with lifestyles-routine activities theories. Results showed that although youth were aware of violence and victimization in their neighborhood, they displayed high street efficacy, or confidence, in the way they discussed their daily routines and navigated their lives. Youth generally felt they had the power to stay safe, but there were cultural dimensions to safety. Youth also described a nuanced relationship with police depending on situational context as well as personal and vicarious experiences. Study findings point to the need to address system-level barriers to safety, improve relationships among residents, youth, and police and to further investigate the cultural dimensions of youth perceptions of neighborhood safety.
... The literature on legal cynicism suggests that there is a spatial component to it, such that neighborhoods with higher levels of legal cynicism tend to have more negative attitudes toward law enforcement, lower levels of crime reporting, and higher crime rates (Carr et al., 2007;Hagan et al., 2018;Kirk & Matsuda, 2011). Current literature on legal cynicism finds that legal cynicism is most prevalent in predominantly Black neighborhoods, likely due to the concentration of poverty, crime, and police surveillance in those neighborhoods (Brunson & Wade, 2019;Kirk & Papachristos, 2011). ...
... Research has shown that legal cynicism has two primary sources that affect how Black Americans in particular perceive law enforcement and the criminal justice system. First, Black citizens have more frequent and negative direct experiences with law enforcement, ranging from disrespect, mistreatment, racial profiling, and other forms of police misconduct (Brunson & Wade, 2019;Carr et al., 2007). Second, Black citizens perceive that law enforcement agents are ineffective at preventing, responding to, and solving crime. ...
Research on the impact of police violence on citizens' willingness to call the police has yielded mixed results, with some studies finding strong effects and others finding none. We contribute to this literature by examining whether calls for service declined in the aftermath of the killing of Samuel DuBose by a University of Cincinnati Police Department officer in 2015. We employ an interrupted time series design, treating the DuBose killing as an exogenous shock that may have altered the trend in calls for service from 2014 to 2016. We gathered data on 911 calls and crime incidents from the Cincinnati Police Department, to which we appended block group-level demographic data from the American Community Survey. We find a substantial unconditional effect of DuBose's killing on the level of calls for service in all neighborhoods, especially in majority Black neighborhoods. The size of these effects is reduced substantially after introducing controls; nevertheless, the effect of the DuBose killing is still significant in calls for service in all block groups and for majority Black block groups. We conclude by calling for increased research on the community-level impacts of police violence.
... There is a consistent finding, however, that shooting victims are often uncooperative with the investigation of their own shooting (Cook et al., 2019;Hipple et al., 2019b;White et al., 2021). Several general factors explain a lack of victim cooperation with the police, including a belief that the policing system is inefficient and illegitimate (Tyler, 2004), embarrassment (Kaiser et al., 2017), a "no snitching" culture in some citizens (Clampet-Lundquist et al., 2015), a fear of retaliation from offenders (Papp et al., 2019), and a stated goal of retaliation against known rivals and offenders (Brunson and Wade, 2019;Jacobs and Wright, 2006). ...
... Locations and neighborhoods that experience the most gun-related violence also have the lowest level of cooperation. Witnesses who lived in economically disadvantaged areas were less likely to cooperate with a police investigation, and there were several historic and normative factors for their lack of cooperation (Brunson and Wade, 2019;Kirk and Papachristos, 2011). For example, an extended experience of being "over-policed", "under-policed", or the subject of aggressive policing resulted in the public having a cynical view of the police. ...
Much research explores the correlates of clearing fatal shooting incidents. It is suggested that common investigative resources and tactics, such as the number of detectives and witness interviews, may be associated with clearing both fatal and non-fatal shooting cases. This study examines the effect of a standardized list of investigative tools in the clearing of non-fatal shooting incidents. For this study, detectives from the Buffalo Police Department's Gun Violence Unit completed an “Investigative Checklist” for non-fatal shootings that occurred between November 2019 and December 2020 ( N = 234 usable cases). Bivariate correlation analysis shows a strong association between uncooperative victims and a detective conducting multiple canvases as part of the investigation. Logistic regression shows that examining a suspect's social media information, and detectives accessing patrol car reports, contributed to successfully clearing a non-fatal shooting case. An uncooperative victim was negatively associated with clearing a case. Police practitioners should be aware, based on the findings of this and other research, that a small number of investigative techniques contribute to non-fatal shooting case clearance rates. It may be necessary for police agencies to construct detective units, and focus on a narrow set of investigative tactics, in a way that improved clearance rates in non-fatal shootings.
... There exists a long history of police mistrust among communities of color (Bayley & Mendelsohn, 1968;Brunson & Wade, 2019;Holmes, 1998). In Black communities, this communal frustration has been monumentalized in song-from the soft crooning of Jim Jackson who sang "Bye Bye, Policeman" in 1928 to the unapologetic, turntable-accompanied shouts of "Fuck the Police" by N.W.A. in the late 1980s (Sullivan, 2020). ...
... For many young men, police stops are a frustratingly "regular routine" (Jones, 2014). These ecologies of mistrust undermine public willingness to cooperate with police investigations (Brunson & Wade, 2019) and perpetuate the simmering tensions between city officers and those who they have sworn to "serve and protect." A collection of essays edited by Camp and Heatherton (2016) makes the case that police aggression has been expanding amid "broken-windows" police tactics that punish citizens of urban neighborhoods for municipal neglect and urban disinvestment. ...
Curricular standards have the potential to elevate dominant ideology at the expense of marginalized perspectives. Recently, dominant narratives of police as a community benefit have been passionately challenged in the public sphere. Through a critical discourse analysis of social studies content standards of 50 states, we evaluate which narratives about law enforcement are reinforced in K–12 curricula. While police in marginalized communities are widely viewed as illegitimate, implicated in a long history of violence, and embedded in structures of oppression, we find that in social studies standards, they are conveyed as the opposite. The police are legitimate, only momentarily violent, and a functional institution abstracted from oppressive systems. We discuss the implications of this curricular dissonance for marginalized communities.
... Inequality in desire for police services may manifest as inequality in exposure to criminal justice system contact. For example, decreased desire for criminal justice system contact may result in "under" policing that harasses local residents but does not address serious crime (St. Louis & Greene, 2020:656; see also Brunson & Wade, 2019). ...
Objectives
There is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police.
Methods
We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat.
Results
Perceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat. However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men.
Conclusions
The political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.
... Although the discussion so far has focused on the ways that stereotype threat may render Black people vulnerable to excessive policing and criminal legal intervention, it may simultaneously shape Black people's perceptions of whether the police can or will protect them when they are in danger, or whether the criminal legal system operates to serve them as well as White people. Research has shown that Black people believe police do not take their personal or community experiences of crime victimization seriously and feel less safe and more fearful than White people do in the presence of officers (Boehme et al., 2020;Brunson & Wade, 2019;Clevinger et al., 2018;Duhaney, 2022;Pickett et al., 2022). This is directly relevant to understanding why Black people might resist calling police when in need of support (Desmond et al., 2016;Pickett et al., 2022), and stereotype threat is implicated in this dynamic as well. ...
Cultural stereotypes that link Black race to crime in the United States originated with and are perpetuated by policies that result in the disproportionate criminalization and punishment of Black people. The scientific record is replete with evidence that these stereotypes impact perceivers' perceptions, information processing, and decision-making in ways that produce more negative criminal legal outcomes for Black people than White people. However, relatively scant attention has been paid to understanding how situations that present a risk of being evaluated through the lens of crime-related stereotypes also directly affect Black people. In this article, I consider one situation in particular: encounters with police. I draw on social psychological research on stereotype threat generally as well as the few existing studies of crime-related stereotype threat specifically to illuminate how the cultural context creates psychologically distinct experiences of police encounters for Black people as compared to White people. I further consider the potential ramifications of stereotype threat effects on police officers' judgments and treatment of Black people as well as for Black people's safety and well-being in other criminal legal contexts and throughout their lives. Finally, I conclude with a call for increased scholarly attention to crime-related stereotype threat and the role it plays in contributing to racial disparities in policing outcomes, particularly with regard to diverse racial, ethnic, and intersectional identities and personal vulnerability factors, and the systemic changes that might mitigate its deleterious effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
... The first measures concentrated disadvantage, a standardized index of the per cent residents receiving public assistance, per cent families living below the poverty line, per cent female-headed households, percent Black population, per cent unemployed, and per cent of population under 18 (Morenoff et al., 2001). This measure reflects the established body of literature indicating residents of disadvantaged communities often do not cooperate in the reporting and investigation of crime, even in serious cases such as gunfire (Baumer and Lauritsen, 2010;Brunson and Wade, 2019;Huebner et al., 2022). The second is a standardized measure of population density (population/total square miles). ...
Gunshot detection technology (GDT) is expected to impact gun violence by accelerating the discovery and response to gunfire. GDT should further collect more accurate spatial data, as gunfire is assigned to coordinates measured by acoustic sensors rather than addresses reported via 9-1-1 calls for service (CFS). The current study explores the level to which GDT achieves these benefits over its first 5 years of operation in Kansas City, Missouri. Data systems are triangulated to determine the time and location gunfire was reported by GDT and CFS. The temporal and spatial distances between GDT and CFS are then calculated. Findings indicate GDT generates time savings and increases spatial precision as compared to CFS. This may facilitate police responses to gunfire events and provide more spatially accurate data to inform policing strategies. Results of generalized linear and multinomial logistic regression models indicate that GDT benefits are influenced by a number of situational factors.
... When Jordan stated, "I even have officers pull me over and tell me they were hoping I ran from them just so they can chase me," he expressed sentiments that have been raised by scholars, including Jones (2018) and Rios (2019), about the unregulated and unchecked nature of police contact with people of color, particularly young men. He also noted that he was scared to pull over for the police because he had heard about officer-involved shootings and sometimes could not tell the difference between an unmarked police car and a civilian car, which further highlights the legacy of police violence in the community and the everyday life of Black men (Brunson & Wade, 2019): ...
Exponential growth in order maintenance policing and associated misdemeanor sanctions have led to disproportionate consequences for people of color. Using data from qualitative interviews with individuals in the metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri, region, the current study documents the racialized and monetized nature of police contact. This work extends extant scholarship by considering how minor contact with the police shapes individual avoidance behaviors and activity spaces, places where people work and live. We consider how the combination of monetary sanctions, warrants, incarceration, and overpolicing in the region affects avoidance behaviors, particularly for people of color. Our findings suggest that the frequently unpredictable nature of police contacts and the parochial and often profit‐focused structure of policing organizations in the region leads individuals to modify the ways in which they move through the region and, for some, to isolate. Narratives reflect the need for constant calibration of behaviors and decisions, as well as the legacy that police contact and monetary sanctions can have on everyday routines.
... Historically, exposure to community violence is often prevalent in disadvantaged communities of color and socioeconomically distressed urban settings such as Chicago (Brunson & Wade, 2019;DaViera & Roy, 2020;Gorman-Smith et al., 2004). Unfortunately, one contributor to the progression of violence perpetration is the degree to which individuals are prone to report violent incidents to their local law enforcement and cooperate with the police during an investigation (Desmond et al., 2016;Huebner et al., 2004). ...
Background:
The developmental trauma theory suggests that traumatic events impede the ability of individuals to form interpersonal relationships, impair cognition, affect, and increase the vulnerability of adolescents to develop psychopathology. However, few studies have examined the applicability of this theory among African American adolescents who were exposed to community violence and adverse outcomes, including bullying victimization and somatic symptoms.
Aims:
Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to first test the association between exposure to community violence and somatic symptoms. Then, we explored whether bullying victimization mediated the relationship between exposure to community violence and somatic symptoms while controlling for gender differences and substance use (n = 622).
Results:
Results suggest that exposure to community violence is positively associated with somatic symptoms. Moreover, the association between exposure to community violence and somatic symptoms was mediated by bullying victimization.
Discussion and conclusion:
These results were consistent with the developmental trauma theory, such that trauma could increase the vulnerability for future victimization, thus, leading to somatic symptoms. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
... Although the ability to detain suspects is integral to officers' public safety mission, if applied unfairly, it has the potential to seriously threaten police legitimacy. In fact, the unrestrained use of stop-and-frisk campaigns has consistently thwarted citizen confidence in the police and residents' willingness to cooperate with criminal investigations (Brunson & Wade, 2019). Prior studies consistently demonstrate that individuals on the receiving end of oppressive enforcement strategies question whether officers are fairly exercising their law-enforcement duties. ...
Research Summary
Place‐based conditions are well‐established predictors of police behavior, but the literature lacks nuanced examinations of how place‐based factors influence officer decision making, especially by citizen race/ethnicity and from officers’ perspectives. We investigate officers’ accounts regarding how they weigh place‐based factors into their arrest decisions of Black, Hispanic, and White drug suspects in Newark, New Jersey from 2011 to 2016. Our analysis of 438 filed drug arrest reports revealed that most arrestees, especially Black Americans, became susceptible to heightened police scrutiny because of their presence in stigmatized, criminalized areas. Although place‐based stigma and individualized prohibited behavior coalesced to guide police contacts with Hispanic and White residents, officers made contacts with Black Americans based on a lower legal basis, often irrespective of their individualized behavior in stigmatized places.
Policy Implications
Officers’ differential, racialized reliance on place‐based conditions supports the need for effective, evidence‐based, community‐centered social services that reduce crime, overreliance on police, and opportunities for discriminatory policing.
... These findings contribute to past literature documenting how residents see police as being unconcerned with the structural challenges within Black communities (Payne et al., 2017). It also corroborates scholarship displaying how residents, community leaders and local organizations often leverage their relationships and community insights to handle disputes involving those who are most likely to be perpetrators and victims of violence (Brunson and Wade, 2019). However, some participants indicated a desire for neighbors to understand the challenges that police encounter while on the job (Nalla et al., 2016;Merkey, 2015). ...
This study provides insight into New York City residents' perceptions about violence after the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on information from communities in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings. In this novel analysis, we used focus group and social media data to confirm or reject findings from qualitative interviews. We first used data from 69 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with low-income residents and community stakeholders to further explore how violence impacts New York City's low-income residents of color, as well as the role of city government in providing tangible support for violence prevention during co-occurring health (COVID-19) and social (anti-Black racism) pandemics. Residents described how COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement impacted safety in their communities while offering direct recommendations to improve safety. Residents also shared recommendations that indirectly improve community safety by addressing long term systemic issues. As the recruitment of interviewees was concluding, researchers facilitated two focus groups with 38 interviewees to discuss similar topics. In order to assess the degree to which the themes discovered in our qualitative interviews were shared by the broader community, we developed an integrative community data science study which leveraged natural language processing and computer vision techniques to study text and images on public social media data of 12 million tweets generated by residents. We joined computational methods with qualitative analysis through a social work lens and design justice principles to most accurately and holistically analyze the community perceptions of gun violence issues and potential prevention strategies. Findings indicate valuable community-based insights that elucidate how the co-occurring pandemics impact residents' experiences of gun violence and provide important implications for gun violence prevention in a digital era.
... While intensive proactive gun law enforcement in high-crime areas may reduce shootings in the short term (Koper & Mayo-Wilson, 2012;Wells, Zhang, & Zhao, 2012), the aggressive use of these tactics over time can elevate violence if residents in impacted communities become more fearful and less trusting of police (Rinehart Kochel, 2011;Rosenbaum, 2006). Such erosions of trust and legitimacy can decrease compliance with the law and willingness to share information with law enforcement relevant to criminal investigations (Brunson & Wade, 2019;T. R. Tyler & Fagan, 2010;T. ...
Introduction
Gun violence plagues many communities that simultaneous experience other threats to their health and safety. Policing strategies to address illegal gun carrying may exacerbate or even contribute to gun violence.
Methods
We conducted a mixed-methods study to understand community perspectives on gun violence, safety, and the Baltimore Police Department (BPD)’s approaches to gun violence reduction. Using an explanatory-exploratory approach – we conducted household surveys (n = 200) and then explored key survey findings with focus groups. Descriptive statistics were generated from the surveys and key themes were identified from the focus groups.
Results
One-quarter of survey respondents reported having been a victim of a gun crime, one-third reported not feeling safe in their neighborhood, and slightly less than one-half thought police would respond quickly if shots were fired. Many participants expressed distrust in police as a result of their strategies to reduce gun carrying and address violence.
Discussion
Residents in Baltimore's neighborhoods besieged by gun violence perceive the police to be ineffective in their gun violence prevention efforts. Several strategies were identified that could improve trust and reduce violence, including improving officer accountability and training, and developing tools for officers to address their own mental health and trauma.
... Recent research suggests that Black victims of gun violence are less likely than White victims to cooperate with criminal investigations (Brunson & Wade, 2019;Hipple et al., 2019) and that lack of cooperation is tied to street codes that amplify the threat of violence for those who provide information to police and prosecutors (Kwak et al., 2019;White et al., 2020;Woldoff & Weiss, 2010). These challenges to victim cooperation with criminal investigations in high-crime communities have been well-known for decades. ...
Studies find mixed results regarding the effects of race on criminal justice case processing, likely because they rarely account for the race of both the victim and offender, and few consider how prosecutorial case screening may influence later criminal justice stages. This study examines the impact of victim and defendant race on case screening, bail, and sentencing outcomes for 1,131 firearm offenses that occurred between 2015 and 2018 in St. Louis, MO. Regressions modeling the relationships between each outcome and victim and defendant race (estimated separately and as defendant-victim racial dyads) find that cases involving Black victims, alone and in combination with Black defendants, are more likely than others to be dismissed by prosecutors during case screening, whereas legally relevant factors affect bail and sentencing outcomes. The results suggest that disregarding initial gatekeeping stages of criminal justice case processing may lead to the mistaken conclusion that racial disparities do not exist.
... In addressing the poor relationship between the police and African Americans, we argue that this relationship has suffered legitimacy deficits over the years due to the mistreatment of African Americans at the hands of the police (Brunson and Wade, 2019;Gau and Brunson, 2015). We note, however, that our research participants' narratives hold important clues for improving their community's relationship with the police, and hope that scholars, researchers, police leaders, police officers, and the citizenry would embrace these findings in order to improve the relationship between the police and the Black community. ...
Empirical studies have pointed to the increasing importance of procedural justice as a tool for improving the relationship between the police and local communities. The mediating role of procedural justice continues to be embraced by scholars, practitioners, and community members; as a result, we examine in the present study African Americans’ attitudes toward the police via the interpretive lens of procedural justice policing. Using procedural justice questions found in the social-psychology literature, we interviewed seventy-seven African Americans in Durham, NC, to assess their views about the U.S. police. Our results point to the following for improving the relationship between the police and African Americans: respect for African Americans by police, police fairness in the African American community, and increased and improved interaction between police and African Americans. Notably, these findings spanned three distinct educational and socioeconomic spectrums. The implications of our findings for community relations, public policy, and future research are discussed.
... Unfortunately, the locations and neighbourhoods that experience the most gun-related violence also result in the lowest level of victim and witness cooperation. Brunson and Wade (2019) reported that witnesses who lived in economically disadvantaged areas were less likely to cooperate with a police investigation, and there were several historic and normative factors for their lack of cooperation. For example, experiencing an extended period of being 'over-policed,' 'under-policed,' or the subject of aggressive policing resulted in the public having a cynical view of the police. ...
This research contributes to the small but growing body of scholarship examining non-fatal shooting cases. This study is particularly important considering the recent increase in the number of shooting incidents in the USA, and the fact that there are often many more non-fatal shooting cases than fatal outcomes. The Buffalo Police Department developed a specific investigative unit focusing exclusively on non-fatal shootings with the expectation that this would allow one group of detectives to focus on all homicides, while the other group focused exclusively on non-fatal shootings. Data from the Buffalo Police Department included both fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents, and an interrupted time series analysis was used to determine if there was an increase in the number of cases cleared by arrest. Results indicated that the implementation of the specific investigative unit did not influence clearances for non-fatal shootings. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, the numbers of clearances for homicides in the postintervention period were significantly lower than those in the pre-intervention period. Two conclusions are offered. First, the non-fatal shooting unit was not structured in a way that mimicked a homicide unit, thus lacking the resources to clear non-fatal shooting cases. Secondly, separating investigative units created a ‘silo effect’ where the units may not have communicated enough on similar incidents.
... When any section of Jamaican society experiences either overpolicing or underpolicing, it is going to feel targeted, leading to a lowering of trust in the police. Overpolicing and underpolicing conjure in people on the receiving end the feeling that they are under constant suspicion or surveillance, a situation that African Americans are very familiar with in the United States (see Brunson & Wade, 2019;Pryce & Chenane, 2021). ...
This study contributes to the extant literature by being the first to examine the relative impacts of instrumental factors of policing (police performance, risk of sanctioning, and distributive justice) and experiences with police (personal and vicarious) on trust in the police in Jamaica. This study’s importance is enhanced by the fact that it was carried out in a region that has been understudied by policing scholars. Using cross-sectional data from a sample of Jamaicans, homeownership predicted trust in the police. In addition, distributive justice, effectiveness, and personal experiences, but not risk of sanctioning and
vicarious experiences, predicted Jamaicans’ trust in their country’s police. The implications for policing, policy, and future research are addressed.
Perceptions of law enforcement ineffectiveness, injustice, and illegitimacy are prevalent among individuals living in Black communities in the United States. Prior research links these attitudes with differential orientations toward cooperation with police. The current study used data collected from a representative sample of 522 Pennsylvania residents to measure public perceptions of police. Analyses examined racial differences in perceptions of police and determined whether normative (i.e., perceptions of procedural justice) and/or instrumental (i.e., perceptions of police effectiveness) assessments of police could explain racial differences in anticipated cooperation with law enforcement through perceptions of legitimacy. Findings revealed the presence of a significant indirect relationship between race and perceptions of legitimacy through perceptions of police effectiveness and procedural justice, as well as a significant indirect relationship between race and cooperation through police effectiveness, procedural justice, and legitimacy. Theoretical and practical implications stemming from these findings are discussed within.
Background
Urban racial arrest disparities are well known. Emerging evidence suggests that rural policing shares similar patterns as urban policing in the USA, but without receiving the same public scrutiny, raising the risk of biased rural policing going unnoticed.Methods
We estimated adult and adolescent arrest rates and rate ratios (RR) by race, rural-urban status, and US region based on 2016 Uniform Crime Reporting Program arrest and US Census population counts using general estimating equation Poisson regression models with a 4-way interaction between race, region, age group, and urbanicity.ResultsWith few exceptions, arrest rates were highest in small towns and rural areas, especially among Black and American Indian populations. Arrest rates differed between US regions with highest rates and racial disparities in the Midwest. For example, arrest rates among Black adults in the rural Midwest were 148.6 arrests [per 1000 population], 95% CI 131.4–168.0, versus 94.4 arrests, 95% CI 77.2–115.4 in the urban Midwest; and versus corresponding rural Midwest arrests among white adults, 32.7 arrests, 95% CI 30.8–34.8, Black versus white rural RR 4.54, 95% CI 4.09–5.04. Racial arrest disparities in the South were lower but still high, e.g., rural South, Black versus White adults, RR 1.86, 95% CI 1.71–2.03.Conclusions
Rural areas and small towns are potential hotspots of racial arrest disparities across the USA, especially in the Midwest. Approaches to overcoming structural racism in policing must include strategies targeted at rural/small town communities. Our findings underscore the importance of dismantling racist policing in all US communities.
Alibi believability can be affected by characteristics of the alibi corroborator, including the relationship between the defendant and corroborator, which has been studied extensively by researchers. The corroborator's certainty that they were together at the time of the crime may also influence alibi believability, but only a few studies have examined this. Another factor that may affect believability is the corroborator's cooperativeness with the police, which is yet to be studied in the alibi context. Online U.S. participants recruited from CloudResearch ( N = 280) acted as mock jurors and evaluated a mock arson case where the defendant used an alibi defence. The alibi corroborator's relationship to the defendant (brother/neighbour), the certainty that they were together at the time (65%/100%) and cooperativeness with police (cooperative/uncooperative) were manipulated between participants. The participants were evenly split when it came to verdict ( p > .05) but were more likely to vote guilty when the corroborator was a brother rather than a neighbour ( p < .01) and when the brother was uncooperative versus cooperative ( p < .05). As expected, alibis were more believable when they were corroborated by a neighbour rather than a brother and when the corroborator was 100% certain that they were together versus 65% certain ( p s < .01). Alibis were also more believable when the corroborator cooperated than when he was uncooperative ( p < .01). Cooperative (vs. uncooperative) corroborators led to more positive defendant and corroborator views on all six character trait measures ( p s < .01). Implications and future directions are discussed.
Legal socialization is the process by which individuals develop values, attitudes, and behaviors related to the law and legal authorities. Legal socialization also includes beliefs about procedural justice, police legitimacy, and legal cynicism. To date, few studies have examined the legal socialization processes of transgender women, a worrisome omission given high rates of police contact, arrest, harassment, and violence among transgender women, particularly transgender women of color. This study examines transgender women's experiences with and perceptions about the police, including experiences of procedural injustice and how they impact police legitimacy and cynicism, among a racially diverse sample of transgender women living in Chicago. Participants described undergoing a secondary legal socialization process after beginning to transition. The study also documented strategies transgender women use to prevent police contact and arrest.
The police have the unique capacity to preempt and deter violence and to reduce the use of firearms in violent encounters. But overly aggressive policing tactics have contributed to a fraught relationship with low-income minority communities in which gun violence is heavily concentrated. Increased resources should be devoted to policing gun violence, but efforts of this sort must be targeted and disciplined. Effective policing requires a focus on the places and people that are at greatest risk; and there is a strong case for police agencies to increase the resources devoted to investigations of all criminal shootings, not just homicides. Successful policing of gun violence requires a productive working relationship with victims and their neighbors, which can be facilitated through observing community policing principles and respect for residents’ interests.
Objectives: This study examined the effects of crime severity and relational distance on bystanders’ willingness to report crime and provide a statement to police.
Methods: A sample of 1,438 adults in the U.S. completed a factorial vignette survey. Participants read three crime scenarios and indicated their willingness to report and provide a statement to police. Crime severity (major harm or minor harm), bystander relationship to the perpetrator (family member, friend, or stranger), and bystander relationship to the victim (family member, friend, or stranger) were manipulated across scenarios. Multilevel models were estimated.
Results: Crime severity increased the willingness to report, whereas a close relationship with the perpetrator decreased it. However, a close relationship with the victim attenuated the effect of relational distance to the perpetrator on the willingness to report. Crime severity and relational distance did not influence the willingness to provide a statement, with one exception.
Conclusions: Crime severity and relational distance influence bystanders’ willingness to report, but do not appear to influence the willingness to provide a statement. The willingness to report and provide a statement are related, but may be distinct dimensions of the willingness to cooperate.
Sometimes a police officer can only stop a fleeing suspect by striking or shooting him. When is it morally justified to use such force rather than let the suspect go? Beginning with deadly force, this article disentangles key considerations. First, it distinguishes justifications for force that are premised on a liability or forfeiture from justifications premised upon lesser-evils considerations. Second, it unpacks the distinct interests the state might claim in subduing suspects, from adjudicating suspects, to punishing criminals, to preventing crime. Drawing these distinctions shows that the state’s interests are weaker than they first appear, rarely sufficient to outweigh the individual’s strong interests against force, and many suspects are not liable to the force to which they are subjected. Ultimately, we conclude (perhaps unsurprisingly) many legally permissible uses of force are morally unjustified. Finally, we turn to ways our analysis can be extrapolated to nondeadly force.
Violence interrupters (VI) operate as mediators after gang-involved shootings to stop retributory shootings. While some cities, like Chicago, have seen initial success, other cities, such as Boston, Newark, and Phoenix have seen little or mixed effects. This is the first evaluation of the Washington DC intervention. I use an interrupted time series model to measure the impact the intervention had on the rates of assaults with a gun using DC Crime Incident data. Recognizing that the Covid-19 pandemic is an important confounding event, I also run two time-series control models, a location control, and an outcome control. My findings indicate that the program was not effective in reducing gun violence.
This paper analyzes the impact of the pandemic (from 2020 to 2021) on levels of trust and legitimacy of the Chilean police (Carabineros) by the population in the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile. Based on a pseudo-panel method and a cohort fixed-effects regression model that controlled for unobserved time invariant heterogeneity, we found a significant increase in police legitimacy during the pandemic (on average, 63%, among the adult residents of the region, based on the police legitimacy index comprising six perceptual variables). Evidence suggests that the perceived performance of the Carabineros during the pandemic served to recover the trust of citizens, at least temporarily, even when this intervention entailed the enforcement of anti-popular measures.
Monograph explores Acoustic Gunshot Detection Systems and best practices in law enforcement.
Objectives: Reporting an incident to police is a key event in the criminal legal process. The current study centers types of disability and how this may shape victim and third-party reporting while considering well-known correlates. Methods: Using the National Crime Victimization Survey (2016–2020), the current study examines police reporting in incidents involving victims with disabilities compared to victims without disabilities. This study not only considers whether the victim reported, but also third-party reporting to the police. We also explore the reasons why individuals with disabilities did not report incidents to police. Results: Incidents involving victims with cognitive disabilities were less likely to be reported to the police by the victim. There were no statistical differences in third-party reporting for any of the forms of disability considered. Notably, in incidents involving both Deaf/Blind victims and victims with physical disabilities, victims were more likely to cite perceptions of police ineffectiveness as a reason for not reporting. In incidents with victims with physical or cognitive disabilities, fear of reprisal from the offender was a more salient concern. Conclusions: This study underscores the importance of examining the victimization experiences of marginalized populations and their willingness to engage with the criminal legal system.
Purpose
While public support for and cooperation with the police has been deemed vital for police effectiveness, what shapes such support and cooperation has not been fully examined. The purpose of this study is to explore three perspectives on public cooperation with police simultaneously: (1) police legitimacy, (2) legal cynicism, and (3) neighborhood norms.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this study came from a survey conducted with 408 residents across three neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan, in 2009. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to assess the relationship between the three groups of theory-based predictors, representing police legitimacy, legal cynicism, and neighborhood norms, and the dependent variable of cooperation.
Findings
The findings partially support the legitimacy model, as trust in police, but not perceived obligation to obey, predicts cooperation with police. This study provides strong support for the legal cynicism and neighborhood norms perspectives. Specifically, residents who have higher levels of legal cynicism and who report a stronger anti-snitch neighborhood subculture report being less inclined to cooperate with the police.
Originality/value
This study is the first to compare the relative influences of three major perspectives on public cooperation. Future studies should continue to analyze competing theories in explaining public cooperation with the police and determine if findings from this study are applicable to locations outside Detroit.
Differential treatment under the law has historically been the case for African Americans. The current study theorized that the War on Drugs, which was waged disproportionately in majority Black communities, had the unintended effect of making drug use riskier for Black men by limiting the supply of drugs to high-risk populations who commit far more serious and violent criminal offenses. A subsample of the Add Health data containing Black and White male survey participants were compared with respect to drug use, violence, and criminal justice involvement. Drug use was found to be less prevalent, overall, for Black men but its association with violence was greater for Black men than White men. Differential legal treatment for violence and drugs was found to be greater for Black men than White men and had diminishing returns for deterring violence and negative returns for drugs by predicting greater use. Accounting for differential legal treatment did not significantly reduce predicted racial disparities in violence or drug use. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Subcultural codes against compliance with the police, or “snitching,” have factored prominently in public and law enforcement discourses related to urban violence and crime prevention. However, scholarship on these issues focuses almost entirely on the United States. This study investigates attitudes toward compliance with the police and perceptions of snitching among a sample of a Black youths who reside in socially and economically marginalized neighbourhoods in Toronto. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews, I examine how perceptions of community safety and experiences with policing have impacted young people’s willingness to report crimes and comply with police investigations. Contrary to popular discourses, being seen speaking with police or providing information did not necessarily constitute snitching. Rather, consistent with prior research, a complex set of variables, including age, gender, and the perceived seriousness of the crime, all factored in determining what constituted snitching and when someone was considered a snitch. My findings challenge the essentializing nature of popular discourses on snitching while also highlighting how diminished perceptions of police legitimacy and efficacy have impacted young people’s willingness to report crimes and comply with police investigations. Finally, I discuss the implications of my findings for efforts to reform the police and improve police–community relations.
Research Summary
Research examining death penalty deterrence has been characterized as inconclusive and uninformative. The present analysis heeds a recommendation from prior research to examine single-state changes in death penalty policy using the synthetic control method. Data from the years 1979–2019 were used to construct synthetic controls and estimate the effects of death penalty moratoriums on homicide rates in Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Moratoriums on capital punishment resulted in nonsignificant homicide reductions in all four states.
Policy Implications
Inconsistent with a deterrence hypothesis, no evidence of a deterrent effect attributable to death penalty statutes was found. Given the gravity and finality of state-sanctioned execution, it is important that policy makers consider the weight of evidence of the death penalty's capacity to deter, as well as issues of equity, justice, and fairness, in their decision making about death penalty policy.
Objectives
While a great deal of research has considered racial disparities in the criminal justice system, empirical research on the American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) population is still in its infancy. Instead, AIAN people are most often grouped in the “other race” category. In this research, we move beyond this categorization and advance research by considering differential handling of AIAN-involved violent crime.
Methods
We use 2016 NIBRS data—including information on 5,740 AIAN victims and 6,591 AIAN suspects—to examine variation in the likelihood of clearance by arrest and variation in these patterns according to victim race, offender race, and offense type.
Results
Results indicate that incidents involving AIAN suspects and White victims are especially likely to result in arrest, but incidents involving AIAN suspects and AIAN victims are less likely to result in arrest. AIAN sexual assault victimization is particularly unlikely to result in arrest.
Conclusions
The AIAN population is both disproportionately arrested when suspected of crime, and disproportionately neglected when victimized. If we wish to better understand the role of race in the criminal justice, it is imperative that we move beyond simple Black-White dichotomies, and begin centering attention on other marginalized populations, including the AIAN population, as well.
Objectives
An initial investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) found that the Newark Police Department (NPD) had engaged in a “pattern or practice” of constitutional violations with regard to stop and arrest practices, prompting the city to enter a consent decree.
Methods
This study draws on official event-level data on FIs recorded by NPD officers (N = 50,322) and uses random effects panel regression models to examine how socioeconomic characteristics interact with the implementation of the consent decree at micro places in the short term.
Results
Spatial analyses indicate a concentration of FI encounters. The implementation of the consent decree coincided with improvements in the quality of data collected by officers conducting FIs of citizens. It was also associated with decreased rates of reported FIs for the city’s Black and Latino citizens relative to their share of the local population, and patterns of FI encounters.
Conclusions
Newark’s consent decree improved the quality of data collection. However, the spatial concentration of reported FIs and subsequent arrest of Black and Latino individuals have not experienced the same effect as they presumably require a culture change that is likely to necessitate a longer time frame to manifest.
Using survey data from a large national sample of U.S. residents, this study examines how and why individuals’ race/ethnicity and perceived area crime risk influence their willingness to call police. Structural equation modeling tests a combined parallel-sequential multiple-mediator model that ties the normative (e.g., police legitimacy) and instrumental (e.g., concern about crime) perspectives of calling police to the profound issues of race, area, and policing. A wide range of individual sociodemographic traits and experience with crime and the police were also controlled in the analysis. The results reveal a clear distinction between Blacks and Whites in their likelihood of seeking police assistance, but no difference between Hispanics and Whites in these intentions. While the normative model highlighting police legitimacy best explains the racial gap in calling police, the instrumental model accentuating concern about crime better accounts for the area influences on willingness to call police.
Precarious firearm conduct among inexperienced gun possessors has the potential to intensify firearm-related fatalities and injuries. The current study involves face-to-face interviews with 51 high-risk (and prohibited) residents of Brooklyn and the Bronx, NY, each of whom have either been shot or shot at. We analyze study participants' lived experiences regarding urban gun violence (including as victims and perpetrators), firearm handling, sharing, and improper storage. Despite claiming to be knowledgeable about firearm fundamentals, the vast majority of respondents acknowledged never having received professional instruction, but rather “figured it out” by “playing around” with available guns. These informal methods were shaped by respondents' desire to arm themselves despite inadequate access to firearm training. Study participants also described routinely stashing firearms in unsecure, easily accessible locations. Our study findings have important implications for informing community-based harm reduction and safety strategies among persons within high-risk networks.
This study examined the factors affecting consideration of other ways than turning to the police, or non-police intervention, following potential victimization by members of ethnic minority. Performance, procedural justice, and social disorganization theories served as the study’s theoretical framework. The data were obtained from the 2019 Personal and Community Security Index Survey conducted in Israel and analyzed using logistic regression model. The analytical sample included 692 Arab citizens of Israel. Greater satisfaction with the police and high trust in the police were negatively associated with the consideration of non-police intervention. In contrast, perception of the increase in locality violence compared to the previous year and prior victimization were positively associated with the consideration of non-police intervention. The results imply that the police should improve their performance in Israel’s Arab society and direct efforts to the establishment more trustful relationship with its members, especially in localities experiencing increased violence.
This paper examines the impact of police funding on the fraction of homicides that are cleared by arrest. Using data covering homicides in approximately 50 of the largest US cities from 2007 to 2017, I find no evidence that greater police funding resulted in higher homicide clearance rates. This finding is robust to linear regression and instrumental variable approaches, different ways to measure police budgets, and across victims of different races and in different types of neighborhoods. In summary, the way large city police departments have historically spent their funds, more funding has not helped catch more murderers.
Objective: Black people compose 13% of the U.S. population but 23% of fatal police shootings (McLeod et al., 2020). Numerous studies have documented the negative mental health consequences experienced by communities of color due to negative experiences with law enforcement (Muchow & Amuedo-Dorantes, 2020; Smith et al., 2019). The goal of this special issue of the Psychology of Violence is to spotlight and encourage research that informs the development of effective policies and practices to reduce systemic violence and improve relationships between the police and the communities they serve. Method: This special issue includes 10 articles. These studies use a variety of methods including cross-sectional quantitative surveys (n = 4), qualitative focus groups and interviews (n = 4), experiments (n = 1), and critical reviews (n = 1). Results: Several themes emerge from these studies: (a) there are high levels of fear and mistrust between communities of color and law enforcement; (b) some exemplary police officers have developed strategies to de-escalate conflict and rebuild community trust; (c) White Americans who believe there is systemic racial injustice are more likely to be supportive of Black Lives Matter protests; and (d) police violence against Black communities is a global concern. Discussion: There is much still to be learned regarding the long-term impact of fear and mistrust of the police on communities of color and how to mitigate these impacts through trauma-informed interventions. Programs and policies are needed to address the historic roots of systemic racism in law enforcement. Conclusion: There are opportunities to address the historic and contemporary issues that impact police and community relations and address systemic violence in policing. These articles present a call to action to advance social justice in policing and address the long term trauma that exists in communities disproportionately impacted by police violence.
Research summary
Police use of violence may threaten police agencies’ effectiveness by reinforcing residents’ legal cynicism and disengagement from police. We examined police lethal violence against Black people and its relationship with clearance by arrest in a sample of Black victims’ crime incidents in over 350 jurisdictions in 2015, via Mapping Police Violence and the National Incident‐Based Reporting System (NIBRS). We calculated each crime incident's unique time‐varying exposure to police lethal violence, with an accompanying agency‐level measure that averaged this incident‐level measure. Under our original measures, multilevel survival analysis showed a statistically significant association with clearance for the agency‐level average exposure measure, but not for the time‐varying incident‐level exposure measure. Subsequent exploratory analyses suggested a possibly shorter‐lived relationship with incident‐level police lethal violence exposure, which should be investigated in future research.
Policy implications
Agency‐level findings encourage the adoption of reforms in policing practices and organizational characteristics that could enhance police legitimacy and citizen cooperation and promote perceptions of procedural justice in the Black community. Exploratory indications of a shorter‐lived relationship between police lethal violence and clearance will, if supported in further research, call for agencies to think carefully about adjusting detective work and resource allocations during the critical period following a police lethal violence event. A negative relationship between clearance rates and police lethal violence suggests a mutual interest of police agencies and activists in the reduction of police lethal violence.
New York State's nonfatal shooting initiative provided support to police departments and district attorney's offices in two cities, Newburgh and Utica, NY: two investigators and a crime analyst dedicated to nonfatal shooting investigations, training and technical assistance, and timely forensic laboratory analysis of evidence. Evaluation findings show that the initiative positively affected the processes and outcomes of nonfatal shooting investigations. The immediate effect of the initiative was dramatic in Newburgh and less pronounced but noteworthy in Utica. In both sites, however, clearance rates declined over time, as caseloads grew. The initiative consisted of several components: a commitment to evidence‐based prosecutions; investigative personnel dedicated to nonfatal shooting cases; collaboration between investigative and prosecutorial actors. The immediate effects of the initiative suggest how successful nonfatal shooting investigations can be when they are better resourced, while the decay in the impacts over time illustrate the need to ensure that the resources are commensurate with the caseload.
Many police departments across the USA have implemented some form of crisis intervention training. This training is modeled after Memphis’ 40 h Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training, a core component of their flagship CIT Program, and is designed, in part, to teach officers about the nature of mental illness as well as effective strategies for deescalating potentially volatile interactions. Some police departments have departed from the Memphis Model, where participation and completion of the training is voluntary, and have begun mandating that their officers complete the 40 h crisis intervention training. This study investigates patrol officers’ perceptions regarding this training mandate as well as their views on the utility of the training. The qualitative data were collected from a large, Midwestern, municipal police department and were triangulated to include the following: (1) 227 h of participant observation, (2) semi-structured interviews with police patrol officers who had completed the training (N = 32); and (3) interviews with executive command staff, CIT coordinators, Crisis Response Team officers, and telecommunications personnel (N = 13). The study finds that most participating patrol officers believe the 40 h crisis intervention training should be mandatory training for all officers, and every participating patrol officer expressed that the crisis intervention training has both specific and general utility.
Policing is a profession that has repeatedly cycled through periods of crisis and controversy, followed by calls for reformation. These reform processes have failed to alleviate persistent concerns with police abuses of authority, the policing of disadvantaged communities, and the nature of police–community relations. This chapter frames the evolution and context of the problems explored in the balance of the book. It introduces the concept of futures studies as a strategic leadership tool for police personnel. It reviews aspects of how American policing is structured and how this contributes to some of the recurrent crisis observed across history. The chapter concludes by providing an overview of the book’s contents.
Importance
A foundational issue in firearms policy has been whether the type of weapon used in an assault affects the likelihood of death.
Objective
To determine whether the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds inflicted in criminal assaults is associated with the power of the assailant’s firearm as indicated by its caliber.
Design, Setting, and Participants
Cross-sectional study with multivariate analysis of data on shooting cases extracted by the authors from police investigation files for assaults that took place in Boston, Massachusetts, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014. These data were analyzed between October 1, 2017, and February 18, 2018. In all cases the victim sustained 1 or more gunshot wounds in circumstances that the Boston Police Department deemed criminal. The working sample included all 221 gun homicides and a stratified random sample of 300 nonfatal cases drawn from the 1012 that occurred during the 5-year period. Seven nonfatal cases were omitted because they had been misclassified.
Exposures
The primary source of variation was the caliber of the firearm used to shoot the victim.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Whether the victim died from the gunshot wound(s).
Results
The final sample of 511 gunshot victims and survivors (n = 220 fatal; n = 291 nonfatal) was predominantly male (n = 470 [92.2%]), black (n = 413 [80.8%]) or Hispanic (n = 69 [13.5%]), and young (mean [SD] age, 26.8 [9.4] years). Police investigations determined firearm caliber in 184 nonfatal cases (63.2%) and 183 fatal cases (83.2%). These 367 cases were divided into 3 groups by caliber: small (.22, .25, and .32), medium (.38, .380, and 9 mm), or large (.357 magnum, .40, .44 magnum, .45, 10 mm, and 7.62 × 39 mm). Firearm caliber had no systematic association with the number of wounds, the location of wounds, circumstances of the assault, or victim characteristics, as demonstrated by χ² tests of each cluster of variables and by a comprehensive multinomial logit analysis. A logit analysis of the likelihood of death found that compared with small-caliber cases, medium caliber had an odds ratio of 2.25 (95% CI, 1.37-3.70; P = .001) and large caliber had an odds ratio of 4.54 (95% CI, 2.37-8.70; P < .001). Based on a simulation using the logit equation, replacing the medium- and large-caliber guns with small-caliber guns would have reduced gun homicides by 39.5%.
Conclusions and Relevance
Firearms caliber was associated with the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds in criminal assault. Shootings with larger-caliber handguns were more deadly but no more sustained or accurate than shootings with smaller-caliber handguns. This conclusion is of direct relevance to the design of gun policy.
Objectives
This paper investigates the influence of case characteristics and investigative resources on homicide clearance rates.
Methods
We extend a previous evaluation of a problem-oriented policing project intended to improve homicide clearance rates in Boston. Data were collected on N = 465 homicide incidents that occurred between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2014. Confirmatory factor analyses are used to identify latent variables representing investigative resources, initial crime scene results, and subsequent investigative actions and forensic testing. The effects of these investigative factors on homicide clearances net other covariates were estimated using mixed effects logistic regression models. Mediation analysis was then used to decompose the total, direct, and indirect effect of investigative resources on homicide clearances. Exploratory group comparisons were examined to distinguish investigative differences in gang and drug homicides relative to non-gang and non-drug homicides.
Results
Investigative resources, crime scene results, and subsequent investigative actions and forensic testing were found to increase the likelihood of homicide case clearance controlling for other covariates. Investigative resources were found to produce both direct and indirect impacts on homicide clearances mediated through its positive influence on initial crime scene results and subsequent investigative actions and forensic testing. Clearance through follow-up investigation was more difficult for gang and drug homicide cases when compared to other homicide cases.
Conclusion
While inherited case characteristics matter, enhanced investigative resources and improved practices increase homicide clearances. Beyond investments to improve investigations, gang and drug homicides remain particularly difficult to clear due to a lack of physical evidence and witness cooperation.
Legal authorities and the public live in two separate worlds. One world is suffused with law, and the other world is suffused with people’s lived experiences that support their evaluations of fairness. When legal authorities consider whether police policies and practices are desirable, a framework regarding the lawfulness of the relevant policies and practices dominates the conversation. Police departments, their policies, and police officers’ actions are viewed as right or wrong with reference to constitutional standards, as interpreted by prosecutors, judges, and other legal actors. In contrast, we argue that the public is generally insensitive to the question of whether police officers act consistently with constitutional standards. Instead, the public evaluates the propriety of police actions primarily by assessing whether police officers exercise their authority with “procedural fairness.” We rely on the results of an innovative nationwide experimental survey involving respondents from representative American cities. Each survey respondent completed a questionnaire and then watched and reacted to three videos of police-citizen interactions. We argue that the actual lawfulness of police action has at best a minor influence on public evaluations of appropriate police behavior. Public judgments about whether police officers should be disciplined for misconduct are largely shaped by people’s procedural justice evaluations. We believe that these findings strongly support the need for police to broaden the framework within which they evaluate a variety of types of policing policy-racial profiling, zero tolerance policing, street stops, mosque surveillance, etc.-to include an understanding of how these policies and practices impact public views about the appropriateness of police conduct. Whether policies comport with constitutional standards alone is an impoverished way to judge the rightfulness of police action. Further, our findings point the way toward creating relationships between the police and the public that both enhance cooperative efforts to maintain social order and build people’s identification with and commitment to both the communities in which they live and to law and government. That broader framework requires evaluating police policies and practices with reference to public conceptions of procedural justice.
Even though forensic evidence is collected at virtually every homicide scene, only a few studies have examined its role in investigation and prosecution. This article adds to the literature by providing the results of a study of 294 homicide cases (315 victims) occurring in Cleveland, Ohio, between 2008 and 2011. Through a logistic regression on open versus closed cases, the collection of knives, administration of gunshot residue (GSR) kits, and clothing at the scene were positively and significantly related to case closures, while collection of ballistics evidence and DNA evidence were statistically significant in the opposite direction. With regard to analysis, the clearance rate for cases with probative results (i.e., matches or exclusions) was 63.1% compared to a closure rate of 56.3% for cases without probative results. However, only 23 cases had probative results prior to arrest compared to 128 cases with probative results after arrest.
© 2015 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
Legitimacy acts as the dividing line between a police force that merely possesses legal authority to enforce the law and one that enjoys both legal and moral authority. Research has shown that people who see the police as procedurally just are more likely to also view them as legitimate. Most of this research has been quantitative and has focused on the statistical link between procedural justice and police legitimacy. The present study offers a qualitative examination of in-depth interviews with young men residing in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods to uncover the specific actions that police take that are seen as unjust and that erode legitimacy. In addition, evidence is revealed that compromised legitimacy can encourage young males to engage in certain self-protective behaviors that can, in turn, increase their risk of becoming the targets of police scrutiny. Implications of this finding for research and police policy are made.
At present, the average homicide clearance rate in the United States is approximately 65%, down roughly 15% from the mid-1970s. This research seeks to inform how police can best improve homicide clearance rates by identifying best practices in homicide investigations. To accomplish this goal, as part of a federally funded project, seven geographically representative law enforcement agencies were identified that had at least 24 homicides in 2011 and had a clearance rate of 80% or higher from which effective investigative practices could be gleaned. Qualitative findings indicate that a strong community policing presence, collaboration with external agencies, and an innovative culture facilitate high rates of homicide clearance. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
The current controversy surrounding racial profi ling in America has focused renewed attention on the larger issue of racial bias by the police. Yet little is known about the extent of police racial bias and even less about public perceptions of the problem. This article analyzes recent national survey data on citizens' views of, and reported personal experiences with, several forms of police bias—including differential treatment of individuals and neighborhoods, police prejudice, and racial profi ling. We fi nd that attitudes toward the prevalence and acceptability of these practices are largely shaped by citizens' race, personal experiences with police discrimination, and exposure to news media reporting on incidents of police misconduct. The fi ndings lend support to the group-position theory of race relations. Racial bias by the police includes such things as racial profi ling of motorists, racial prejudice among police offi cers, and discriminatory treatment of minority individuals and minority neighborhoods. Little research exists on public perceptions of racially biased policing, though such perceptions may have important consequences. The perception of police practices as unfair or as racially motivated may lead to more frequent and severe confrontations between police and citizens and to greater distrust of the police. This article examines citizens' views of and reported experiences with police bias and the major determinants of citizens' perceptions.
The blue wall of silence - the rule that police officers will not testify against each other- has Its roots in an important asso-ciational virtue, loyalty, which, in the context of friendship and familial relations, is of central importance. This article seeks to distinguish the worthy roots of the blue wall from its frequent corruption in the covering up of serious criminality, and attempts to offer criteria for determining when to testify and when to respond in other ways to the flaws of fellow officers.
Objectives:
We surveyed young men on their experiences of police encounters and subsequent mental health.
Methods:
Between September 2012 and March 2013, we conducted a population-based telephone survey of 1261 young men aged 18 to 26 years in New York City. Respondents reported how many times they were approached by New York Police Department officers, what these encounters entailed, any trauma they attributed to the stops, and their overall anxiety. We analyzed data using cross-sectional regressions.
Results:
Participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms, associations tied to how many stops they reported, the intrusiveness of the encounters, and their perceptions of police fairness.
Conclusions:
The intensity of respondent experiences and their associated health risks raise serious concerns, suggesting a need to reevaluate officer interactions with the public. Less invasive tactics are needed for suspects who may display mental health symptoms and to reduce any psychological harms to individuals stopped.
Gang members have been found to engage in more delinquent behaviors than comparable nongang youth. Few empirical attempts have been made to identify the group processes associated with the gang experience that lead to such noteworthy behavioral outcomes. While not developed to explain gang behavior, Elijah Anderson's “code of the street” framework may prove insightful. Utilizing data from a diverse school-based sample of 2,216 youth, we examine the efficacy of street code-related variables to explain gang members’ heightened involvement in violent offending. Utilizing methods based on a potential outcomes framework, results suggest that joining a gang facilitates greater ascription to street code-related attitudes and emotions, and these constructs partially mediate the relationship between gang joining and the increased frequency of violent offending.
Ethnographic evidence reveals that many crimes in poor minority neighborhoods evade criminal justice sanctioning, thus leading to a negative association between the proportion of minority residents in a neighborhood and the arrest rate. To explain this finding, we extend recent theoretical explications of the concept of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural orientation in which the law and the agents of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. Crime might flourish in neighborhoods characterized by legal cynicism because individuals who view the law as illegitimate are less likely to comply with it; yet because of legal cynicism, these crimes might go unreported and therefore unsanctioned. This study draws on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to test the importance of legal cynicism for understanding geographic variation in the probability of arrest. We find that, in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of legal cynicism, crimes are much less likely to lead to an arrest than in neighborhoods where citizens view the police more favorably. Findings also reveal that residents of highly cynical neighborhoods are less likely to engage in collective efficacy and that collective efficacy mediates the association between legal cynicism and the probability of arrest.
Objectives: The objective of this study is to advance knowledge on racial/ethnic disparities in violence and the structural sources of those disparities. We do so by extending scarce and limited research exploring the relationship between race/ethnic gaps in disadvantage and differences in violent crime across groups.
Methods: Using census place-level data from California and New York, we construct white, black, and Hispanic “gap” measures that take as a given the existence of disparities across race/ethnic groups in structural disadvantage and crime and subsequently utilize seemingly unrelated regression models to assess the extent to which gaps in disadvantage are predictive of gaps in homicide and index violence.
Results: Our results suggest that (1) there is considerable heterogeneity in the size of white–black, white–Hispanic, and black–Hispanic gaps in structural disadvantage and crime and (2) that race/ethnic disparities in structural disadvantage, particularly poverty and female headship, are positively associated with race/ethnic gaps in homicide and index violence.
Conclusion: In light of recent scholarship on the racial invariance hypothesis and on the relationship between structural inequality and crime, the current study demonstrates that disparities in disadvantage, particularly family structure and poverty, are important in driving racial and ethnic disparities in crime.
Objectives:
We estimated the association of an individual's exposure to homicide in a social network and the risk of individual homicide victimization across a high-crime African American community.
Methods:
Combining 5 years of homicide and police records, we analyzed a network of 3718 high-risk individuals that was created by instances of co-offending. We used logistic regression to model the odds of being a gunshot homicide victim by individual characteristics, network position, and indirect exposure to homicide.
Results:
Forty-one percent of all gun homicides occurred within a network component containing less than 4% of the neighborhood's population. Network-level indicators reduced the association between individual risk factors and homicide victimization and improved the overall prediction of individual victimization. Network exposure to homicide was strongly associated with victimization: the closer one is to a homicide victim, the greater the risk of victimization. Regression models show that exposure diminished with social distance: each social tie removed from a homicide victim decreased one's odds of being a homicide victim by 57%.
Conclusions:
Risk of homicide in urban areas is even more highly concentrated than previously thought. We found that most of the risk of gun violence was concentrated in networks of identifiable individuals. Understanding these networks may improve prediction of individual homicide victimization within disadvantaged communities.
Illicit drug traders are more likely to be victimized because they cannot report crimes committed against them to the police. Their inability to access law is seen as a major precipitating factor in retaliatory violence. But, as we demonstrate, sometimes victimized drug traders do ask for formal mediation. Based on evidence from prior research combined with experiences recounted to us in the course of interviewing twenty-five unincarcerated drug dealers, we propose a typology of how this happens. We suggest that victimized drug traders mobilize the police in four conceptually distinct ways: “BSing”; getting over; criminal concealment; and criminal disclosure. Our typology provides the empirical grounding for future work aimed at theorizing this behavior and for reducing retaliatory violence by enhancing victimized criminals’ access to law. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our “inconvenient” results for the broader ethnographic audience.
Gang members engage in a considerable amount of violence. Based on a three-year field study of active gang members in St. Louis, this paper examines five activities in which gang members use violence. Retaliatory gang violence is highlighted for its role in generating additional violence and contributing to the growth of gangs. We pay particular attention to the normative aspects of gang violence. In addition, gang violence is interpreted from the perspective of collective behavior.
This handbook shows how local police organizations in the United States have been the focus of reform efforts, especially due to a new crisis in the policing environment—terrorism. The problem of terrorism has raised a host of questions about how police should respond to this new threat, and this handbook aims to address these questions. It also discusses the social ill that is the drug market, which is often associated with violence and often occurs in disadvantaged urban communities. Alternative approaches are presented that can be used to address drug crime in these areas, such as problem-oriented policing, which calls for the identification of recurring crime problems; order maintenance policing, which defines and regulates the fair use of public spaces; and community policing, which is considered “a philosophy, not a program.” The rise of zero-tolerance policies in policing has shifted the focus from the problem-solving model to aggressive order-maintenance enforcement. This has led to a call for anti-authoritarian policing; police are urged to use discretion to support their own longstanding institutional interest in plural governance.
Neighborhood violence is a persistent source of danger, stress, and other adverse outcomes for urban youth. We examined how 140 African American and Latino adolescents coped with neighborhood danger in low, medium, and high crime neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Participants reported using a range of coping strategies (measured via a modified version of the Ways of Coping Scale; R. S. Lazarus & S. Folkman, 1984). In low and medium crime rate areas, using confrontive strategies was significantly correlated with increased exposure to violence, and no strategies were associated with perceptions of safety. Coping strategies were associated with perceived safety to a substantial degree only in high crime neighborhoods, and none were associated with exposure to violence. A k means cluster analysis identified groups that differed in coping profiles and varied in rates of exposure to violence. Moderating effects of gender, ethnicity, and neighborhood were found for both person level and variable level analyses.
High-profile cases of police violence—disproportionately experienced by black men—may present a serious threat to public safety if they lower citizen crime reporting. Using an interrupted time series design, this study analyzes how one of Milwaukee’s most publicized cases of police violence against an unarmed black man, the beating of Frank Jude, affected police-related 911 calls. Controlling for crime, prior call patterns, and several neighborhood characteristics, we find that residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, especially residents of black neighborhoods, were far less likely to report crime after Jude’s beating was broadcast. The effect lasted for over a year and resulted in a total net loss of approximately 22,200 calls for service. Other local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men also had a significant impact on citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee. Police misconduct can powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters of personal and public safety.
Research Summary
The prevailing view is that follow‐up investigations are of limited value as crimes are primarily cleared by patrol officers making on‐scene arrests and through the presence of eyewitnesses and forensic evidence at the initial crime scene. We use a quasi‐experimental design to compare investigative resources invested in clearing gun homicide cases relative to nonfatal gun assaults in Boston. We find the large gap in clearances (43% for gun murders vs. 19% for nonfatal gun assaults) is primarily a result of sustained investigative effort in homicide cases made after the first 2 days.
Policy Implications
Police departments should invest additional resources in the investigation of nonfatal gun assaults. When additional investigative effort is expended, law enforcement improves its success in gaining the cooperation of key witnesses and increases the amount of forensic evidence collected and analyzed. In turn, the capacity of the police to hold violent gun offenders accountable, deliver justice to victims, and prevent future gun attacks is enhanced.
A number of studies have examined the relationship between the ‘code of the street’ and the concept of snitching (that is, informing the police). With some notable exceptions, these studies have generally focused on the pervasiveness of a ‘stop-snitching code’ or ‘code of silence’ among street offenders. In this study we seek to broaden understanding of the stop-snitching code by exploring perceptions of active, former, and non-offenders living in areas considered by residents to embody the street code. We find that informal cultural norms do in fact dissuade both offender and non-offenders from cooperating with police, but also that personal experience with police, proximity to offences and offenders, and types of crimes in question play major roles in the contextual framing of whether or not people choose to cooperate with the police.
Illegal guns circulating among high‐risk networks represent a threat to the security and well‐being of urban neighborhoods. Research findings reveal that illegal firearms are usually acquired through a variety of means, including theft and diversions from legitimate firearms commerce. Little is known, however, about the underground gun markets supplying the gang and drug networks responsible for a large share of gun violence in U.S. cities. In this article, we take a mixed‐methods approach, combining trace analyses of recovered handguns with ethnographic interviews of high‐risk gun users to develop new insights on the entry of guns into three criminal networks in Boston. We find that guns possessed by Boston gang members are of a different character compared with other crime guns; these guns are more likely to be older firearms originating from New Hampshire, Maine, and I‐95 southern states. The results of our qualitative research reveal that gang members and drug dealers pay inflated prices for handguns diverted by traffickers exploiting unregulated secondary market transactions, with significant premiums paid for high‐caliber semiautomatic pistols. Taken together, these findings provide an analytic portrait of the market for illicit guns among those most proximate to violence, yielding novel empirical, theoretical, and practical insights into the problem of criminal gun access.
Focused deterrence strategies are increasingly being applied to prevent and control gang and group-involved violence, overt drug markets, and individual repeat offenders. Our updated examination of the effects of focused deterrence strategies on crime followed the systematic review protocols and conventions of the Campbell Collaboration. Twenty-four quasi-experimental evaluations were identified in this systematic review. The results of our meta-analysis demonstrate that focused deterrence strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, moderate crime reduction effect. Nevertheless, program effect sizes varied by program type and were smaller for evaluations with more rigorous research designs.
Objectives:
To investigate the validity of the apparent downward trend in the national case-fatality rate for gunshot wounds from assault.
Methods:
We reanalyzed the estimated annual number of nonfatal firearm injuries the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System reported from 2003 to 2012. We adjusted the estimates for discontinuities created by the substitution of 1 hospital for another in the sample and for a downward trend in the percentage of gunshot injuries classified as "unknown circumstance." Firearm homicide data are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System.
Results:
The unadjusted National Electronic Injury Surveillance System estimate increased by 49%, yielding a decline in the case-fatality rate from 25% to 18%. Our adjustments eliminated these trends; the case-fatality rate was 22% in both 2003 and 2012.
Conclusions:
With reasonable adjustments, the trend in nonfatal injuries from interpersonal firearms assault tracks the flat trend in firearms homicides, suggesting that there was no increase in firearms violence during this period. The case-fatality rate did not change, and trauma care improvements did not influence the firearms homicide trend. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 22, 2017: e1-e5. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2017.303837).
The available scientific evidence on the value of detectives in clearing crimes generally suggests that most crimes are solved through the random circumstances of crime scenes rather than special follow-up investigation. Other research, however, suggests that the work of criminal investigators can increase the likelihood that crimes might be cleared through arrest. After years of homicide clearance rates that were lower than the national average, the Boston Police Department engaged a problem-oriented policing approach to improve their post-homicide criminal investigation processes and practices. Our quasi-experimental statistical analyses suggest that the intervention significantly increased key investigative activities and improved Boston homicide clearance rates relative to existing homicide clearance trends in other Massachusetts and U.S. jurisdictions.
High-profile cases of police violence—disproportionately experienced by black men—may present a serious threat to public safety if they lower citizen crime reporting. Using an interrupted time series design, this study analyzes how one of Milwaukee’s most publicized cases of police violence against an unarmed black man, the beating of Frank Jude, affected police-related 911 calls. Controlling for crime, prior call patterns, and several neighborhood characteristics, we find that residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, especially residents of black neighborhoods, were far less likely to report crime after Jude’s beating was broadcast. The effect lasted for over a year and resulted in a total net loss of approximately 22,200 calls for service. Other local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men also had a significant impact on citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee. Police misconduct can powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters of personal and public safety.
The major lesson from the 1990s is that relatively superficial changes in the character of urban life can be associated with up to 75% drops in the crime rate. Crime can drop even if there is no major change in the population, the economy or the schools. Offering the most reliable data available, this book documents the decline in the 1990s in American crime as the longest and largest since World War II. It ranges across both violent and non-violent offenses, all regions, and every demographic. All Americans, whether they live in cities or suburbs, whether rich or poor, are safer today. Casting a critical and unerring eye on current explanations, the book demonstrates that both long-standing theories of crime prevention and recently generated theories fall far short of explaining the drop in the 1990s. A careful study of Canadian crime trends reveals that imprisonment and economic factors may not have played the role in the U.S. crime drop that many have suggested. A combination of factors rather than a single cause produced the decline. It is clear that declines in the crime rate do not require fundamental social or structural change, but that smaller shifts in policy can make large differences. The significant reductions in crime rates, especially in New York, where crime dropped twice the national average, suggests that there is room for other cities to repeat this astounding success.
This is a book about policing styles in the broadest sense, looking at zero tolerance policing at one extreme and 'softer' approaches to policing at the other. It is particularly concerned to explore the dilemmas and moral ambiguities inherent in the tensions between different policing approaches. Rather than seeking to juxtapose 'hard' and 'soft' policing styles the guiding thread of the book is the notion that policing is both pervasive and insidious. Different policing styles, whether conducted by the public police service, private security or social work agencies, are all part of a multi-agency corporate crime control industry which provides the essential context for an understanding of these different approaches.
More than half a century after the first Jim Crow laws were dismantled, the majority of urban neighborhoods in the United States remain segregated by race. The degree of social and economic advantage or disadvantage that each community experiences-particularly its crime rate-is most often a reflection of which group is in the majority. As Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo note in Divergent Social Worlds, "Race, place, and crime are still inextricably linked in the minds of the public." This book broadens the scope of single-city, black/white studies by using national data to compare local crime patterns in five racially distinct types of neighborhoods. Peterson and Krivo meticulously demonstrate how residential segregation creates and maintains inequality in neighborhood crime rates. Based on the authors' groundbreaking National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), Divergent Social Worlds provides a more complete picture of the social conditions underlying neighborhood crime patterns than has ever before been drawn. The study includes economic, social, and local investment data for nearly nine thousand neighborhoods in eighty-seven cities, and the findings reveal a pattern across neighborhoods of racialized separation among unequal groups. Residential segregation reproduces existing privilege or disadvantage in neighborhoods-such as adequate or inadequate schools, political representation, and local business-increasing the potential for crime and instability in impoverished non-white areas yet providing few opportunities for residents to improve conditions or leave. And the numbers bear this out. Among urban residents, more than two-thirds of all whites, half of all African Americans, and one-third of Latinos live in segregated local neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of white neighborhoods have low poverty, but this is only true for one quarter of black, Latino, and minority areas. Of the five types of neighborhoods studied, African American communities experience violent crime on average at a rate five times that of their white counterparts, with violence rates for Latino, minority, and integrated neighborhoods falling between the two extremes. Divergent Social Worlds lays to rest the popular misconception that persistently high crime rates in impoverished, non-white neighborhoods are merely the result of individual pathologies or, worse, inherent group criminality. Yet Peterson and Krivo also show that the reality of crime inequality in urban neighborhoods is no less alarming. Separate, the book emphasizes, is inherently unequal. Divergent Social Worlds lays the groundwork for closing the gap-and for next steps among organizers, policymakers, and future researchers. Copyright © 2010 by the American Sociological Association. All rights reserved.
The effects of gang membership on individual social, behavior, cognitive, and health outcomes are well documented. Yet, research consistently has shown that gang membership and the boundaries of gangs are often fluid and amorphous. The current study examines how social proximity to a gang member in one's co-offending network influences the probability of being a gunshot victim. We re-create and analyze the social network of all individuals who were arrested, summonsed for a quality-of-life violation, and subjected to noncustodial police contacts in Newark, New Jersey, during a 1-year time period (N = 10,531). A descriptive network analysis finds an extreme concentration of fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries within a small social network: Nearly one third of all shootings in Newark occur in a network that contains less than 4 percent of the city's total population. Furthermore, a series of logistic regression models finds that being directly or indirectly linked to a gang member in one's co-offending network has a significant effect on one's probability of being a gunshot victim. Implications of these findings for the study of gangs, gun violence, and a public health approach to violence are discussed.
A cluster of recent police killings of African American men has sparked an unprecedented amount of public debate regarding policing in the United States. Critics and protesters have made sweeping allegations about the police; a presidential commission has been formed to study police misconduct; and reforms are being debated. These events provide a backdrop for this article’s review of recent poll data and discussion of research regarding police relations with African Americans, Latinos, and whites.
We conducted an in-depth interview study with 77 young men in three moderate to high-crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia to hear their stories about community violence and relations with police. In this article, we have analyzed how Latino, African-American, and white young men experience policing and how they discuss the guidelines around cooperation with the police and what they view as snitching. Contrary to popular perception, talking to the police is not always banned in poor or high-crime neighborhoods. Instead, the respondents present a variety of personal rules that they use to assess when cooperation is called for. We argue that the policing they experience within disadvantaged neighborhoods shapes their frame of legal cynicism, which in turn makes decisions not to cooperate with the police more likely.
We advance here a neighborhood-level perspective on racial differences in legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and the tolerance of various forms of deviance. Our basic premise is that structural characteristics of neighbor-hoods explain variations in normative orientations about law, criminal justice, and deviance that are often confounded with the demographic characteristics of individuals. Using a multilevel approach that permits the decomposition of variance within and between neighborhoods, we tested hypotheses on a recently completed study of 8,782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago. Contrary to received wisdom, we find that African Americans and Latinos are less tolerant of deviance--including violence--than whites. At the same time, neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage display elevated levels of legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and tolerance of deviance unaccounted for by sociodemographic composition and crime-rate differences. Concentrated disadvantage also helps explain why African Americans are more cynical about law and dissatisfied with the police. Neighborhood context is thus important for resolving the seeming paradox that estrangement from legal norms and agencies of criminal justice, especially by blacks, is compatible with the personal condemnation of deviance.
This paper examines activist black clergy involvement in local youth violence reduction initiatives and efforts to improve police-minority community relations in Boston, Massachusetts. In-depth interviews were conducted with activist black clergy, community organizers, and Boston Police Department (BPD) managers. Study findings highlight how the work of a specific group of black ministers supports that of BPD and vice versa. The research suggests that police-black clergy partnerships can improve police legitimacy in minority communities and enhance informal social control elements of youth violence prevention strategies.
This research explores the utility of Black's theory of law for explaining differences in homicide clearance rates across large cities in the United States. Using insights from the social disorganization literature, we develop and evaluate hypotheses regarding homicide clearance rates and aggregate measures of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and alternative social control. Our findings support the argument that the rate of clearing homicide cases varies according to the social characteristics of the location where they occur. In particular, clearance rates were highest in cities marked by greater racial disparities in education, income, employment, and residence; greater residential stability; higher levels of educational attainment; higher expenditures for educational programs; and lower rates of homicide. We discuss the implications of our analysis for both the social disorganization literature and Black's theory, and we suggest directions for further inquiry into the relationship between structural conditions in urban areas and homicide clearance rates.
This paper examines the intersection of social disorganization at a community level with responses to crime. In contrast to other works examining the impact of social disorganization on the production of crime rates, we examine the role of social disorganization theory in responses to crime rates (i.e. the arrest and conviction of perpetrators of crime). In an effort to examine these dynamics, we use law enforcement data from Cleveland, Ohio to explore the role of social disorganization in the ability of police and the courts to respond to homicide cases. Such an examination suggests not only how far the law extends in community responses to homicide but also reveals an extension of social disorganization theory beyond its established role in explaining the production of crime rates.
The percent of offenders arrested for murder in the United States has declined in all reporting cities from 92% in 1960 to 66% in 1997. This paper evaluates three sources of evidence that account for the decline in homicide arrests: police-based programs; changes in the character of homicides; and community and social factors. In the final section we suggest a view of homicide as self-help and explore third party behavior in relation to police cooperation, fear of retaliation, and type of homicide.
In recent years a troubling trend has emerged within a number of poor, black communities. Termed “Stop Snitching,” it has manifested itself in the form community members’ refusing to cooperate with police investigations of community crimes. The result of this widespread refusal to cooperate has been a reduced number of crimes solved within these communities; without cooperating witnesses, it has proven exceedingly difficult for police to make criminal cases. Reactions to Stop Snitching have taken two predominant forms, both of which are mistaken. The first, most often attributed to law enforcement officers, is contempt. To them, community members who do not assist in criminal investigations are violating the ethical obligation all citizens have to aid in the arrest and prosecution of criminal actors. The second reaction to Stop Snitching, most often coming from citizens largely isolated from poor, black communities, is confusion. Assuming the police to be allies of the citizenry, they wonder why anyone would even entertain the notion of refusing to help the police solve community crimes. This Article suggests a different understanding of Stop Snitching, arguing that poor, black community members’ refusal to cooperate with police investigations should be viewed as neither ethically condemnable nor inexplicable, but rather as a natural extension of the innate human aspiration to be loyal. It does so by situating Stop Snitching within the existing literature on loyalty and asserting that the refusal to cooperate with police represents a privileging of community loyalty over loyalty to the state. Throughout the various strata of contemporary society, such privileging of the familiar over the remote is common, and Stop Snitching is neither puzzling nor reprehensible when viewed as a manifestation of this manner of prioritization. Once Stop Snitching is understood as a reflection of the weak loyalty bonds that exist between police officers and the poor, black communities they serve, it becomes clear that it can only be curtailed and ultimately eliminated through police efforts aimed at strengthening these bonds. This Article closes with a discussion of the steps police should take in order to succeed in this regard.
Very little attention has been devoted to studying factors associated with how quickly murders are cleared. This dearth of knowledge is mainly due to a lack of available data, especially at the national level. Currently the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is undergoing a large-scale conversion from its traditional summary system form of data collection to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). One benefit of NIBRS is that it enables law enforcement agencies to report incident-level clearance information, including the incident and clearance dates. The present study utilizes NIBRS data to compare characteristics of homicides that are cleared quickly with those cleared over a longer period of time and those that are not cleared. Findings from this exploratory study confirm the conventional belief that murders are cleared quickly if at all, as a large drop in the percentage of cleared cases is observed one week after a murder occurs. The present research also suggests that incident characteristics play a dynamic role in predicting not only whether a murder is cleared, but how quickly. These findings provide new insights for studying clearance and suggest policy implications.