An important source of racial disparity in policing is traffic enforcement. The level of discretion afforded to officers for traffic enforcement is generally greater than it is for other policing decisions. One way to control misuse of discretion is through minority representation, which is the extent that the racial composition of the police agency matches that of the local community. Using data from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), this study examines how social context and police organizational variables (e.g., minority representation) relate to enforcement outcomes. We find that organizational measures, including minority representation, relate to written citations and consent search requests. Moreover, non-white population size conditions the effect of minority representation on traffic stops and citations. These results highlight the importance of accounting for both social context and organizational characteristics when research examines discretionary police behavior.
In the wake of significant media coverage of officer involved shootings and civil unrest to protest police behaviors toward Black suspects, policing is confronting a time where public perceptions of police are central to effective policing, especially views by racial minorities. Efforts to understand these views have largely been conducted within urban contexts. Moreover, many studies have relied on quantitative survey data to examine racial differences in views about police; thus, scant research has used qualitative approaches to understand racial differences. Based on qualitative in-person surveys administered to 238 residents in a small Midwestern town, we aim to understand residents’ expectations and assessments of police legitimacy. Contrary to research conducted in urban areas, we do not find a racial gap in views about police. Other than a stronger preference among White residents on the role of police as crime fighters, differences are subtle. These small-town residents appear to be like-minded in their assessments and view police positively. However, nontrivial, albeit nonsignificant, differences by race include minority residents emphasizing treatment by police in making legitimacy judgments, likely explained by the group position thesis and accumulated experiences, while it seems White residents based their responses on global views about the ideal police officer.
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