Section 14141 of the Violent Crime Act of 1994 fundamentally restructures the regulation of police behavior in the United States. Since the law’s passage, dozens of police departments have undergone lengthy and complex reforms designed to eliminate a pattern or practice of misconduct. Despite the program’s wide application, neither scholars nor practitioners know much about the efficacy or sustainability of these reforms. This article draws on longitudinal data across several outcome metrics, including citizen complaints, use of force incidence, and civil litigation, and a series of interviews with key stakeholders to examine pattern or practice initiatives in Pittsburgh, PA; Washington, DC; and Cincinnati, OH. Findings suggest that the reform process has the ability to minimize unwanted police misconduct and generate desirable policy outcomes, particularly during the period of Department of Justice oversight. Sustaining these reforms after the settlement agreement is dissolved, however, has proved a challenge.

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Racial disparities in police-community encounters are well documented, with people of color experiencing higher levels of police scrutiny. Far less is known about how police officers perceive the racial dynamics at play in their work. As part of a 2016 study of traffic stops in San Diego, we conducted in-depth interviews with 52 city police officers. Despite evidence of racial disparities in SDPD practices related to post-stop outcomes, officers denied, minimized, or even condemned racial profiling during traffic stops; officers described operating under a neutral policy of “colorblindness.” Our analysis identifies cognitive and discursive mechanisms which explain this complex and contradictory picture. We find that officers’ accounts excuse, justify, or otherwise negate the role of race in routine police work, yet officers’ thoughts and actions are based on racialized and, at times, dehumanizing narratives about people and communities of color. These morally neutral accounts form a pattern of micro-racialized discourse, constituting a layering of racialized processes and practices that cumulatively produce racially disparate outcomes. We argue that rejection of explicit racism alone is insufficient to address the progressive micro-racial aggression that emerges at key points during police-community encounters. We discuss the implications for law enforcement policy and practice.

Scholars know relatively little about why law enforcement agencies choose to share information with the public. Empirical research has shown that departments often do so to satisfy an external demand, whether in the form of a statute requiring information to be collected and disseminated, the presence of a consent decree, or some other similar pressure. There is also evidence that transparency is the product of a unique constellation of factors within agencies that lead certain departments to share more information than others. But this line of inquiry is underdeveloped, and questions remain about both the nature and degree to which these external and internal factors matter. This article focuses on the role of police executives in generating the agency's response to transparency demands, with a particular focus on such demands generated by civilian oversight agencies and the role that top leadership plays in establishing an organizational culture that values openness and transparency. To address these issues, we draw on the results of a series of Q-sorting exercises and the insights gleaned from several semi-structured interviews with municipal police chiefs and county sheriffs. Preliminary results suggest that the vision and goals of police executives are critical to his or her department's online transparency.