Inflammatory Political Campaigns and Racial Bias in Policing

Abstract

Can political rallies affect the behavior of law enforcement officers towards racial minorities? Using data from 35 million traffic stops, we show that the probability that a stopped driver is Black increases by 5.74% after a Trump rally during his 2015–2016 campaign. The effect is immediate, specific to Black drivers, lasts for up to 60 days after the rally, and is not justified by changes in driver behavior. The effects are significantly larger among law enforcement officers whose estimated racial bias is higher at baseline, in areas that score higher on present-day measures of racial resentment, those that experienced more racial violence during the Jim Crow era, and in former slave-holding counties. Mentions of racial issues in Trump speeches, whether explicit or implicit, exacerbate the effect of a Trump rally among officers with higher estimated racial bias.

The Politics of Police

“…I show that the Black/White racial disparity exhibited by White officers nearly doubled between 2012 and 2020, a time when the United States witnessed a series of highly publicized police killings of Black men and women, an election characterized by racialized law-and-order rhetoric (Bobo 2017; Drakulich et al 2020), and a more tightly integrated connection between police unions and national politics (Jackman 2016; Lange 2020; NBC 2020). The post-2016 shift in the Black/White disparity among White officers also corresponds with recent work that shows Trump’s racially inflammatory rhetoric increased the rate at which Black motorists were stopped by police (Grosjean et al 2023). To support these findings, I offer a series of robustness checks that address variation in exposure to “suspicious motorists,” differences in stop behavior, and heterogeneity in party effect across sociodemographic contexts.…”

“…In addition to contributing to a growing literature on the correlates of police discrimination (Anwar and Fang 2006;Ba et al 2021;Epp et al 2014;Gelman et al 2006;Grosjean et al 2023;Legewie 2016;Legewie and Fagan 2019;Shoub, Stauffer, and Song 2021), these findings attend to an often-overlooked component of group position as well as racial threat theories of racial prejudice (Blalock 1967;Blumer 1958). In their widely cited article on the utility of Blumer's group position framework, Bobo and Hutchings (1996:968) encourage researchers to address the "processes of within-group interaction and socialization that pass on distinctive group perspectives on the social order, such as feelings of racial alienation."…”

“…Analyzing an archive of millions of stop records, Grosjean, Masera, and Yousaf (2023) show that immediately following Donald Trump’s rallies, the likelihood that a stopped motorist is Black temporarily increases by over 5 percent, and that explicit mentions of race at these rallies add to this disparity. The authors argue that this increase is a function of Trump’s racially inflammatory rhetoric, which tracks with work in political science that shows partisan rhetoric influences individuals most when it addresses politically contentious issues (Hersh and Goldenberg 2016; Slothuus 2010; Slothuus and de Vreese 2010).…”

An experimental look at reasonable suspicion and police discretion

“…For instance, recent quasi-experimental research has shown that traffic stops of black drivers increased near Trump rallies during the 2015–2016 presidential campaign. This effect was more pronounced in areas with historical slavery ties, more Jim Crow-era racial violence, and among officers with higher estimated baseline racial bias (Grosjean et al. , 2023).…”

“…For instance, recent quasi-experimental research has shown that traffic stops of black drivers increased near Trump rallies during the 2015-2016 presidential campaign. This effect was more pronounced in areas with historical slavery ties, more Jim Crow-era racial violence, and among officers with higher estimated baseline racial bias (Grosjean et al, 2023). While these factors should not influence officers' legal judgments, scholars should investigate their potential effects to help policymakers and practitioners understand and mitigate their impact on legal decisions.…”