Policing in a Majority-Black City (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Citizens' Perceptions of Police Misconduct: Race & Neighborhood Context
JUSTICE QUARTERLY, 1999
One of the most controversial issues in policing concerns allegations of police abuse of members of minority groups. This article examines African Americans' and whites' perceptions and experiences of three types of police misconduct: unjustified street stops of citizens, verbal abuse, and use of excessive force. The study is based on in-depth interviews with residents of three neighborhoods in Washington, DC, which vary in racial and class profile. Findings support the thesis that neighborhood context conditions resi-dents' attitudes and reported experiences with the police. Residents of both the white and the black middle-class neighborhoods were less likely to perceive or experience police abuse in their neighborhoods than were residents of the black lower-class neighborhood. Neighborhood class position thus may be an important, but often overlooked, factor shaping citizens' attitudes and experiences. In encounters with the police outside the neighborhood , however, individuals' race becomes salient. Implications are discussed for understanding the rote of race, class, and neighborhood context in police-citizen relations. An unresolved issue in policing is the relative influence of race and class on citizens' attitudes and experiences regarding the police. Race is one of the strongest predictors of attitudes toward the police (African Americans are more likely than whites to negatively evaluate various aspects of policing), 1 but much less is known about the effects of social class. In this article I examine race and class
Black Cities/White Cities: Evaluating the Police
Political Behavior, 2004
It is well known that African Americans and whites hold different views of the police, but nearly all of the previous research has been conducted in majority white settings. This research examines the relationship between race and evaluations of the police in majority black versus majority white contexts. Social dominance theory and the research on racial threat predict that when the racial majority changes, the relationship between race and attitudes toward police will change. We find that, in majority black contexts, the traditional relationship between being black and having negative evaluations of the police disappears, and it disappears because whites' evaluations of the police become more negative. Black evaluations of the police are relatively consistent across racial contexts. Also, white racial attitudes affect police evaluations in majority black contexts, but not in white contexts, while African American racial attitudes are inconsequential in both contexts. Furthermore, if a white citizen is victimized by crime in a black city, it has greater ramifications for evaluations of the police than if the victimization had occurred in a white city. All of this suggests that whites' views of the police may be more racialized than the views of African Americans.
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.
White, black, or blue cops? Race and citizen assessments of police officers
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000
Contemporary public policy presupposes that police officers should be racially representative of the areas in which they work in order to foster good police-community relations. This article examines citizen assessments of Black and White officers and preferences regarding the kind of officers they want assigned to their neighborhoods. In-depth interviews were conducted with 169 residents of three neighborhoods in Washington, DC. The findings suggest that neighborhood context influences residents' views on the behavior of White and Black officers; that African Americans' evaluations of White and Black officers often challenge the conventional wisdom; and that there is considerable support for a policy of deploying racially integrated teams of officers in Black neighborhoods.
Race and satisfaction with the police in a small city
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2005
In a democratic society, public opinion of criminal justice systems is essential for the proper functioning of police departments. Since the 1970s, police organizations were increasingly concerned with their external social relationship. This was particularly true in the era of community policing. This study explored determinants of satisfaction with the police. Data from 235 residents of a small northeastern city in the United States were analyzed. The results indicated that Hispanics had the lowest global satisfaction with the police, while Caucasians had the highest. The results also revealed the importance of separating global satisfaction from specific satisfaction. The study concluded that police departments must work harder at gaining public satisfaction among African Americans and Hispanics and work toward increasing public feelings of safety in order to improve citizen satisfaction with the police.
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.
Social Forces, 2005
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.