Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target Minority Suspects?

Menifield, Charles E.; Shin, Geiguen; Strother, Logan

doi:10.1111/puar.12956

Cited by 61 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…However, averaging across shootings may provide an incomplete picture if racial disparities vary across types of fatal shootings. The remaining models (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) separate different types of shootings to test for this variation. No model showed significant evidence of anti-Black or -Hispanic disparity, although evidence for anti-Black and anti-Hispanic disparities was stronger when civilians were young (Model 1 vs. 2).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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RETRACTED: Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

Johnson

Tress

Burkel

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Despite extensive attention to racial disparities in police shootings, two problems have hindered progress on this issue. First, databases of fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) lack details about officers, making it difficult to test whether racial disparities vary by officer characteristics. Second, there are conflicting views on which benchmark should be used to determine racial disparities when the outcome is the rate at which members from racial groups are fatally shot. We address these issues by creating a database of FOIS that includes detailed officer information. We test racial disparities using an approach that sidesteps the benchmark debate by directly predicting the race of civilians fatally shot rather than comparing the rate at which racial groups are shot to some benchmark. We report three main findings: 1) As the proportion of Black or Hispanic officers in a FOIS increases, a person shot is more likely to be Black or Hispanic than White, a disparity explained by county demographics; 2) race-specific county-level violent crime strongly predicts the race of the civilian shot; and 3) although we find no overall evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities in fatal shootings, when focusing on different subtypes of shootings (e.g., unarmed shootings or "suicide by cop"), data are too uncertain to draw firm conclusions. We highlight the need to enforce federal policies that record both officer and civilian information in FOIS.officer-involved shootings | racial disparity | racial bias | police use of force | benchmarks R ecent high-profile police shootings of Black Americans have raised questions about racial disparities in fatal officerinvolved shootings (FOIS). These shootings have captured public concern, leading in part to the Black Lives Matter movement and a presidential task force on policing (1). Central to this debate are questions of whether Black civilians are overrepresented in FOIS and whether racial disparities are due to discrimination by White officers. However, a lack of data about officers in FOIS and disagreement on the correct benchmark for determining racial disparity in FOIS have led to conflicting conclusions about the degree to which Black civilians are more likely to be fatally shot than White civilians. We address both issues by creating a comprehensive database of FOIS that includes officer information and by using a method for testing racial disparities that does not rely on benchmarks.Until recently, the only nationwide data on FOIS was compiled yearly in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report. On a voluntary basis, departments report the number of justifiable homicides by on-duty law-enforcement officers. Not only are these shootings underreported (by ∼50%; ref.2), such reports do not provide information about the officers or circumstances surrounding these shootings. Beginning in 2015, news companies such as The Washington Post and The Guardian began to collect information about FOIS to address the issues with the FBI data. Through report...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…data. The only national examination of this question found that White officers were no more likely to fatally shoot Black or Hispanic civilians than non-White officers (13). However, their key analyses were based on only a small subset (19-23%) of all fatal shootings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED: Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

Johnson

Tress

Burkel

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Recent studies in public administration have emphasized the impact of institutions on racial disparities in policing outcomes, as opposed to individual‐level behaviors (Epp, Maynard‐Moody, and Haider‐Markel ; Eterno, Barrow, and Silverman ; Hong ; Jennings and Rubado ; Kim and Kiesel ; Maynard‐Moody and Musheno ; Menifield, Shin, and Strother ; Rivera and Ward ). While these studies effectively demonstrate the relevance and importance of widely prevalent norms, rules, and values in driving racially disparate criminal justice outcomes, the role of accountability institutions has not received sufficient attention.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the Federal Bureau of Investigation does collect data on police-involved civilian deaths, these data are subject to substantial underreporting, the extent of which varies across jurisdictions (Barber et al 2016). Several recent public administration studies studying PHCs have either directly used the FE database or used it to cross-check data gathered from other crowdsourced databases (see Jennings and Rubado 2017;Menifield, Shin, and Strother 2019;Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty, and Fernandez 2017).…”

Section: Figure 3 Geographic Dispersion Of Coas In the Contiguous Unimentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Accountability and Institutional Change: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

Ali

Pirog

2019

Public Administration Review

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This article examines the ability of social accountability to spur gradual institutional change at the municipal level, using the case of citizen oversight agencies (COAs) for police agencies. Using the gradual change framework and the social accountability framework to guide the empirical strategy and data collected through an original survey of COAs, the authors test the impact of COAs on institutional outcomes in policing. We find that, in accordance with the gradual change framework, the degree to which a COA reduces racial disparity in policing outcomes depends on its scope of authority and the degree of discretion afforded by existing institutions to police officers. In general, the wider the scope of authority, and the broader the discretion afforded by existing institutions, the greater the likelihood of change in institutional outcomes.

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“…Continuing the theme, Menifield, Shin, and Strother () find that an officer's race plays no role in influencing the use of lethal force against minority suspects. Amirkhanyan et al () find that managers prioritize diversity efforts when facing higher levels of regulatory violations, and that the effect of managerial strategies for diversity on performance is conditioned by the racial composition of the clients.…”

Section: New Developments In Social Equity As a Public Valuementioning

confidence: 99%