The Challenges and Rewards of Carrying Out Qualitative Research on the Police in the African American Community (original) (raw)
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This street participatory action research (Street PAR) study organized 15 residents to document street-identified Black youth and adult's negative experiences with police in Wilmington, Delaware. Data were collected on mostly street-identified Black men and women aged 18–35 in the forms of (1) 520 surveys, (2) 24 individual interviews, (3) four dual interviews, (4) three group interviews, and (5) extensive field observations. Forty-two percent of survey participants reported being stopped by police in the last year. However, with the exception of being " stopped, " participants overall reported little negative contact with police at least within the past year. Chi-square and ANOVA analyses suggest an interactional relationship exists between race, gender, and age on experiences with police. Younger Black men (18–21) were found to have the most negative contact with police. Analysis suggests a smaller, more hardened mostly male variant of the larger street community has had repeated contact with police. Qualitative analysis reveals at least two major themes: (1) disrespect and disdain for residents and (2) low motivation for working with police. Street PAR methodology was also found to be instrumental in working with local residents and the Wilmington Police Department to improve conditions between residents and police.
Police-Community Relations in a Majority-Black City
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2008
Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interactional, and ecological levels. This article examines the role of each factor in shaping citizens' perceptions of police misconduct, racial differences in these perceptions, and the reasons underlying them. The locus of the study is also important. Most research on police-community relations has been conducted in cities whose populations and police departments are majority White in composition, despite the growing number of minority-White cities. The present study draws on data from residents of a majority-Black city with a majority-Black police department: Washington, DC. The findings contribute to our understanding of policing in such underresearched cities.
Ethnic and Racial Studies Examining police/black relations: what's in a story
This article presents evidence from a detailed qualitative study to demonstrate the signi cance of personal knowledge to black people's understanding of police/black relations. It explains how the stories told by respondents to illustrate their views revealed that previous explanations of the relationship have over-stressed the role of the black community and underplayed the importance of personal experiences in helping to form the perspectives of black people. The article outlines three central assumed truths contained within the stories, each of which leads to the conclusion that policing is irrefutably racialized. It is argued that the stories are underpinned by a dominant narrative of racialized policing which has grave implications for efforts to address the mistrust of the police evident among the black population. In highlighting the social role of stories, the article draws attention to their analytical signi cance in sociological analysis. It also draws attention to the importance of increasing the focus on the experiences and views of those on the receiving end of criminal justice in order to improve our understanding of everyday processes of racialization.
Policing in a Majority-Black City
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency
Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interactional, and ecological levels. This article examines the role of each factor in shaping citizens' perceptions of police misconduct, racial differences in these perceptions, and the reasons underlying them. The locus of the study is also important. Most research on police-community relations has been conducted in cities whose populations and police departments are majority White in composition, despite the growing number of minority-White cities. The present study draws on data from residents of a majority-Black city with a majority-Black police department: Washington, DC. The findings contribute to our understanding of policing in such underresearched cities.
Racialized Policing: A Study of Three Neighborhoods
LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, 2000
One of the most controversial issues in policing concerns allegations of racial bias. This article examines citizens' perceptions of racialized policing in three neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., that vary by racial composition and class position: a middle-class white community, a middle-class black community, and a lower-class black community. In-depth interviews examined residents' perceptions of differential police treatment of individual blacks and whites in Washington and disparate police practices in black and white neighborhoods. Findings indicate, first, that there is substantial agreement across the communities in the belief that police treat blacks and whites differerently; and secondly, there is racial variation in respondents' explanations for racial disparities. On the question of residents' assessments of police relations with their own community relative to other-race communities, a neighborhood difference is found, with the black middle-class neighborhood standing apart from the other two neighborhoods. AJ n overwhelming majority of blacks and whites in America believe that the criminal justice system should operate in a raceneutral fashion and favor federal government intervention to ensure that minorities and whites receive equal treatment by the courts and police. Three-quarters of whites and 9 out of 10 blacks subscribed to this view in a recent poll (Washington Post 1995). But a person's support for the principle of equal justice does not mean that he or she believes the system actually dispenses unequal justice. Surveys consistently show, for example, that whites are less inclined than blacks to believe that police discriminate against minorities (130 Racisli,Pd Pnlicing blacks are more likely than whites to believe that blacks living in the respondent's own community are treated unfairly by the police, and that black neighborhoods receive inferior treatment by the police. With respect to respondents' personal experiences of discrimination, blacks are much more likely than whites to report that they have been treated unfairly by police because of their race.
2010
This article explores the relationship between race and satisfaction with police services in a southern city. We surveyed residents of a deep-south medium size city to ascertain those feelings. We find that those who are satisfied with the community as a place to live, those who feel safe walking in their neighborhoods, and are satisfied with police services are positive in their attitudes toward the community oriented police services. Attendance at community events, perceptions of crime, calls to police, age, and college graduates are all negatively related to attitudes toward the police. We also find that African-Americans' satisfaction with police services is not different than non-African Americans' attitudes.
Ph.D. Dissertation, 2019
Confidence in Law Enforcement When African-Americans are Underrepresented on the Force: An Exploratory Study, Charles E. MacLean, 2019: Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. Descriptors: Law Enforcement, Racial Mirror Index, Civilian Confidence, Civilian Trust, Civilian Satisfaction, Minority Underrepresentation. This dissertation explores the prediction that when African-Americans are underrepresented among sworn officers in a community’s local law enforcement agencies compared to the African-American proportions in that community’s overall population, African-American civilians’ confidence in their local law enforcement agencies may suffer, leading to impaired respect for law, reduced civilian cooperation with law enforcement, and civilian impressions of weakened procedural justice and fairness. With low civilian confidence, the argument goes, one could expect an enhanced sense of disenfranchisement among the underrepresented sub-populations. The purpose of this study is to consider the impact of underrepresentation of AfricanAmericans among sworn officers serving a local community, explore the key correlates of civilian confidence viewed through the lens of African-American perceptions and attitudes, and confront the superordinate roles that procedural justice and police effectiveness play in forming African-American civilian attitudes of confidence, trust, and satisfaction in local law enforcement. To quantify representativeness, this study expresses relative racial compositions of the police and the policed as a Racial Mirror Index (“RMI”). If the percent of a community’s police, who are African-American, exactly matches the percent of the policed in that community, who are African-American, the RMI-AA (“Racial Mirror Index-AfricanAmerican”) would equal 100. RMI-AAs over 100 indicate African-Americans are overrepresented on the local law enforcement agency compared to the African-American share of the general population; RMI-AAs under 100 indicate African-Americans are underrepresented among sworn officers on the force. Despite expectations, as this study makes clear, RMI-AA is not a significant predictor of African-American civilian confidence, trust, and satisfaction in local law enforcement. Instead, African-American attitudes about local law enforcement are overwhelmingly driven by African-American perceptions of procedural justice and police effectiveness. African-American confidence, trust, and satisfaction in law enforcement remains far lower than for Whites regardless of RMI-AA and the degree of underrepresentation on the force. Thus, law enforcement agencies cannot hire their way out of this confidence gap through minority recruitment. Instead, improving African-American confidence in local law enforcement will require the agencies to engage with the far more substantive work of ensuring their officers deliver both procedural justice and effective policing.
Police Quarterly, 2008
The purpose of this study is to extend our understanding of attitudes toward the police by examining how race/ethnicity, social class, and neighborhood context interact to influence four different dimensions of attitudes: neighborhood, global, police services, and fear of the police. The results showed significant racial/ethnic variation in perceptions of the police, with African-Americans reporting the most negative attitudes. The magnitude of the racial/ethnic gap, however, varied across the different attitude dimensions with the largest difference between African-Americans and Whites in terms of fear of the police. The findings also suggested that African-Americans' and Hispanics' perceptions of the police are moderated by the interaction of social class and neighborhood socioeconomic composition. Middle-class African-Americans and Hispanics who resided in disadvantaged neighborhoods reported more negative attitudes toward the police than those who resided in more advantaged areas. Overall the study findings highlight the complex interplay between experiences, community context, social class, and type of attitudinal assessment in understanding within and across racial and ethnic variation in residents' perceptions of the police.