Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot?

Clark, Tom; Cohen, Elisha; Glynn, Adam; Owens, Michael Leo; Gunderson, Anna; Schiff, Kaylyn Jackson

doi:10.1086/723973

Cited by 5 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Conversely, while White individuals form approximately 38 % of New York's population, they account for just 13% of stops and arrests, indicating ethnic disparities in these figures. This aligns with the extensive body of research highlighting ethnic discrimination in law enforcement practices(Clark et al 2023;Goncalves and Mello 2021;Knox, Lowe, and Mummolo 2020).…”

supporting

confidence: 73%

“…Public trust in the police has fallen in many countries, including the United States, mainly due to concerns about a culture that condones aggression (Hartig and Daniller 2023). This assertion is backed by extensive research demonstrating that the police violate rules, discriminate against ethnic minorities, and use excessive force with potentially fatal consequences (Eckhouse 2022;Knox, Lowe, and Mummolo 2020;Page and Soss 2021;Clark et al 2023). Consequently, there is a resounding demand for reforms (Mummolo 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Aggressive Police Leaders and the Strategic Choice of Overpolicing

Hansen

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Does the selection of aggressive leaders within the police contribute to overpolicing? Contrary to prevailing assumptions, I argue that police officers follow directions from aggressive leaders, causing the adoption of overpolicing as a strategic choice. Leveraging a unique dataset comprising commanding officers’ histories of aggression and precinct outcomes within the New York Police Department, I employ first-difference models to analyze the impact of aggressive leaders on officers behavior. In line with the theoretical prediction, I find that commanding officers with a history of substantiated misconduct allegations increase the total number of stops and arrests, with no discernible impact on public safety. I investigate two avenues for curbing the influence of aggressive leaders; 1) leader selection and 2) reform. Current leader selection strategies fail as a check against aggressive policing, since data on all NYPD-officers show that officers with substantiated misconduct allegations are more likely to ascend to leadership roles. However, a reform of police stops reduced the influence of commanding officers with aggressive histories.

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 73%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggressive Police Leaders and the Strategic Choice of Overpolicing

Hansen

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whereas much of the literature considers community perspectives, this study emphasizes assessments by officials with formal oversight power. Similarly, this study enhances our understanding of the politics of police shootings (e.g., Branton et al, 2023;Clark et al, 2023;Cohen et al, 2019) by analyzing the conditions under which courts impose constitutional accountability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Constitutional accountability for police shootings

Goelzhauser

2023

J Empirical Legal Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Constitutional accountability for police shootings is imposed in part through civil rights lawsuits alleging Fourth Amendment violations, but little is known about how judges evaluate these claims. I introduce original data on all federal circuit court decisions resolving Fourth Amendment excessive force claims in police shooting cases over three decades. The quasi‐random assignment of a majority‐Republican panel substantially increases the probability of circuit courts finding a police shooting to be constitutional. Capturing law's influence by mapping case facts to the three‐part analytical framework delineated by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor, I find that active resistance and threat immediacy are associated with increases in the probability of finding police shootings to be constitutional, but crime severity is not systematically associated with outcomes. In addition, there is evidence that law conditions the effect of politics, with increases in latent Fourth Amendment reasonableness narrowing the partisan outcome gap in constitutional assessments. The quasi‐random assignment of a Black judge does not impact outcomes. The results have important implications for police oversight and longstanding debates in judicial politics over the prevalence of panel effects and the extent to which law influences decision making.

show abstract

“…Barring increased participation and greater transparency in the NUFDC, the United States continues to lack a reliable national picture of non-fatal police shootings. Research based on nonrepresentative samples of states and local jurisdictions that make non-fatal shooting data available suggests that about half of shootings result in non-fatal injuries and that racial disparities are larger for non-fatal than fatal shootings (Clark et al, 2023;Nix and Shjarback, 2021). 12 Ward et al (forthcoming) find similar results nationally using the crowdsourced Gun Violence…”

Section: Undocumented Non-fatal Police Shootingsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…• The most-comprehensive sources-both federal and crowdsourced-track only fatal shootings. Research based on nonrepresentative samples of jurisdictions that make nonfatal shooting data available suggests that about half of police shootings result in nonfatal injuries and that racial disparities are larger for non-fatal than fatal shootings (Clark et al, 2023;Nix and Shjarback, 2021). Thus, analysis based only on fatal outcomes may underestimate racial bias.…”

Section: Data On Police Shootingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodological Challenges for Research on Racial Bias in Police Shootings

2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

hootings of racial minority civilians by police officers have long been a major social issue in the United States, the subject of extensive media coverage, and a reality that has galvanized social movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Police in the United States shoot people at far higher rates than police in other economically developed countries (Zimring, 2017). The victims of these shootings are disproportionately Black and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic, compared with their shares of the population. These shootings occur in a society that continues to grapple with its oftentimes racist history, one that, to this day, remains beset with pervasive racial inequalities. This is especially true of the relationship between police in the United States and the country's minority communities, which, although complex, has long been characterized by high degrees of both mistreatment and mistrust. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that this issue has become a national flashpoint and that high-profile police shootings weigh so heavily on the psyche of Americans, especially Black Americans.In this context, researchers have increasingly sought to answer a fundamental question: To what extent are police shootings of civilians driven by racial bias? This is research that is high profile and high stakes, being published in prestigious journals, getting coverage in leading media KEY FINDINGS■ The impact of police shootings is severe-particularly for communities of color in the United States-and more-nuanced research is needed to understand the dynamics of racial bias.■ Thinking of racial bias in police shootings as a process with a series of stages can improve research in this area. These stages include officers' encounters with civilians, use of force, and the type of force used.■ Fully unpacking how racial bias operates in police shootings is challenging due to data limitations. These limitations include unreliable federal and crowdsourced datasets, and the problem is particularly severe for non-fatal shootings.■ The most common forms of tests-benchmark and outcome tests-face significant challenges in inferring bias that research has only started to confront.■ We recommend several ways to improve understanding of the dynamics of racial bias in police shootings: better data, clearer definitions and estimands, better methods, and the use of bounding and sensitivity analyses.

show abstract

Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot?

Cited by 5 publications

References 65 publications

Aggressive Police Leaders and the Strategic Choice of Overpolicing

Aggressive Police Leaders and the Strategic Choice of Overpolicing

Constitutional accountability for police shootings

Methodological Challenges for Research on Racial Bias in Police Shootings

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About