Policy Memo #1: Reforming Stop-and-Frisk Practices (Module 3)

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Article

Criminal Justice Review 2021, Vol. 46(1) 99-118

D et e r m in a nt 202 Geor'20 gia State UniversityDeterminants of Citizens'"' Article uereuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissionsPerceptions of Police DOI: 10.1177/0734016820952523 journals.sagepub.com/home/cjr

Behavior During Traffic and OSAGE

Pedestrian Stops

Jason Carmichael' , Jean-Denis David', Ann-Marie Helou', and Colby Pereira'

Abstract A large body of research has examined public perceptions of police behavior. Many of these studies have raised concerns about perceptions of unequal treatment of citizens by law enforcement and the effects such disparate treatment might have on police-community relations. This scholarship has largely examined global perceptions of police behavior rather than asking about actual encounters with officers. Relying on global opinions of police, however, tends to distort perceptions as it tends to illicit prejudiced and stereotypical views about law enforcement rather than lived experiences. This article offers a more precise approach to measuring police behavior during encounters with citizens by assessing views of those who have had recent contact with law enforcement. Specifically, we examine how perceptions of police behavior during both traffic stops and street stops of pedestrians might vary according to a citizen's sociodemographic background and geographic location and how such factors might influence perceptions of the legitimacy of their encounter with the officer. Results from our multivariate analyses suggest that youth, African Americans, the poor, and those living in large urban areas are significantly more likely than others to believe they were treated outside of the scope of acceptable police conduct. Furthermore, ethnic minorities, the poor, and those in urban areas are much more likely to perceive the stop as illegitimate. Our results suggest that much of this might be explained by differences in police behavior according to the size of the place and across different social groups.

Keywords perceptions of police behavior, legitimacy, traffic stops, pedestrian stops, respect

' Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Corresponding Author: Jason Carmichael, Department of Sociology, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Leacock Building #713, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A2T7. Email: [email protected]

Over the last several decades, there has been growing concern about the apparent abuse of force and other forms of misconduct by police officers, particularly against members of racialized minority groups and other marginalized communities. Intense public pressure has been placed on police administrators and policy makers to address this issue. Evidence of such pressure abounds. Major cities across the United States have held public hearings and commissions to try and address the problem, and numerous civil and criminal lawsuits claiming police misconduct and abuse have been advanced against police departments and individual officers. Police misconduct has also motivated the formation of disruptive social movement organizations including Black Lives Matter. Over the decades, suspected police misconduct toward minorities has also spurred widespread social unrest. In fact, nearly every major riot in the United States since the 1960s was precipitated by suspected police abuse of individual(s) belonging to a racialized minority group. This history of social unrest following police use of force makes it clear that negative perceptions of police behavior are directly connected to the maintenance of social order and broader social stability. Thus, improving our understanding of police interactions with citizens is useful not only as an exercise to improve the quality of police services but also because widespread, negative perceptions of the police can degrade efforts to maintain social order.

A large body of research has also demonstrated that negative public perceptions about the police can affect broader views of the police as a legitimate authority (e.g., Tyler, 2001, 2003; Tyler & Fagan, 2008). But why is the legitimacy of law enforcement important to nurture? Social scientists from a number of disciplines have argued that the legitimacy of state actors, particularly the police and other criminal justice officials, is of critical importance for several reasons. Research has shown that residents who perceive the police as a legitimate authority are more willing to (1) obey the law, (2) comply with law enforcement requests during an encounter with police, (3) cooperate with investigations, and (4) report criminal activity. What factors appear to influence the perceived legitimacy of law enforcement? Scholars have argued that such views are anchored in the public's perception of police officers. In particular, legitimacy of officers appears to be tied to perceptions that police act appropriately, respectfully, and fairly toward all citizens (for elaboration see Jackson et al., 2013; Murphy et al., 2009; Reisig & Parks, 2000; Ren et al., 2005; Schuck et al., 2008; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2001; Tyler & Huo, 2002; Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Weitzer & Tuch, 2005).

The importance of respectful and civil treatment by the police during encounters with the public is better understood if one borrows from the power in discourse literature. Discourse scholarship has examined the effect of disrespectful behavior on relationships in a variety of contexts including interactions between individuals within the workplace (e.g., Leape et al., 2012), gender relations (e.g., LaFrance, 1992; Miller, 1995), relationships between organizations and corporations (Mumby & Stohl, 1991), and international relations (e.g., Ringmar, 2015). The literature considers how disrespect toward another implies a power hierarchy toward which the disrespect is directed. Spe- cifically, conferring or withholding respect toward another signals one's position in the power hierarchy. Mumby and Stohl (1991) strengthen this point by suggesting that discourse is the "principal medium through which power relations are maintained and reproduced" in modern society (p. 313). Disrespect is a form of belittlement or humiliating, demeaning, and aggressive behavior that reinforces the hierarchical power structure wherein the officer is in a dominant position and the citizen is subordinate. Such an understanding of power in discourse is particularly salient in the context of police-citizen confrontation given that there are likely few encounters that an indi- vidual can experience where power in discourse is as consequential.

Thus, the consequences of negative perceptions of police behavior appear to be significant. A substantial portion of the literature suggests that perceived police misconduct not only harms views about law enforcement, but it also degrades citizens' perceptions of procedural justice and thereby the legitimacy of legal authority overall (e.g., Mastrofski et al., 2002). Those who question

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the legitimacy and fairness of police are less willing to cooperate with law enforcement and are less inclined to abide by the law (cf. Tyler, 2001; Tyler & Fagan, 2008). Importantly, it has been rather well-documented that police misconduct tends to be concentrated in poor communities and com- munities of color. A large body of empirical evidence has identified racialized patterns in police behavior including aggressive police tactics and practices (e.g., E. Anderson, 1999; Carmichael & Kent, 2015; Lai & Zhoa, 2010; Lundman & Kaufman, 2003; Wu et al., 2009). Such systematic, persistent disrespect by the police within certain communities can undermine the legitimacy of the state as well as increase the likelihood of social unrest within these communities (for elaboration see Chevigny, 1995; Gurr, 1970; Mastrofski et al., 2002).

While we have learned a great deal from the extant literature about public perceptions of the police, there are nevertheless some limitations. First and foremost, more work is needed to develop our understanding of how race, gender, class, age, and other sociodemographic factors might influence the context of a broad set of actual encounters with the police. The research that does exist tends to focus on the role that sociodemographic factors might play in determining rather rare outcomes of police-citizen encounters, namely, an officer's decision to use force (see Bolger, 2015, for a recent meta-analysis), arrest (see Lytle, 2014, for a recent meta-analysis), or search a suspect (Bolger & Lytle, 2018). A relatively small number of studies that assessed how these factors might influence police-citizen interactions that do not necessarily involve either the use of force or arrest have been conducted (see Black & Reiss, 1970, for an important exception). Furthermore, the extant literature has tended to focus on global perceptions of the police even though most of the views expressed by survey respondents in such studies are likely not based on lived experiences but, rather, prejudice, stereotypes, vicarious experiences (e.g., Rosenbaum et al., 2005), sensationalized accounts of police treatment of citizens in the news media or on social media (Dowler, 2003; Lawrence, 2000; Mason, 2007), or television dramas, films, or novels that often "overdramatize and romanticize" policing (Dowler, 2003, p. 111). Given this, there are likely to be important differences between abstract notions of police behavior and lived experiences that need to be better understood. To identify some of these discrepancies, this article will examine individuals' percep- tions of police behavior following actual encounters drawn from a large national sample.

Another important limitation of the extant literature has to do with data and generalizability. Prior scholarship examining actual police-citizen encounters has typically drawn from data on either a single or a small number of cities (e.g., Reisig & Parks, 2000; Rosenbaum et al., 2005; Skogan, 2006, 2006; Wu et al., 2009). While highly informative, relying on one or just a few cases to assess perceptions of police-citizen encounters risks presenting a biased picture of these interactions because police-community relations, as well as styles of policing within a single jurisdiction, can be rather idiosyncratic. Since views of the police are uniquely formed within community contexts and cultures, drawing broad conclusions about police-citizen interaction from studies relying on data from a single or small number of jurisdictions can be misleading. To overcome this weakness, we analyze the only publicly available, nationally representative survey of police-citizen encoun- ters available in the United States. Doing so will allow us to make more generalizable assumptions about perceptions of police conduct during encounters across a diverse set of citizens in a number of geographical contexts.

To date, only a few studies have examined perceptions of police-initiated contact across the entire country (e.g., Lundman & Kaufman, 2003; Shepard-Engel, 2005). In fact, only one study by Shepard-Engel (2005) draws from the same survey utilized here. This article builds on Shepard- Engel's work in a number of ways. First, we utilize a more recent version of the survey (2011 vs. 1999). Second, Shepard-Engel limited her analyses to police-initiated traffic stops, whereas our analyses examine both police-initiated traffic stops and police stops of citizens on the street. These two improvements are important because (1) both citizens' views and police treatment may have shifted since 1999 and (2) ignoring police-initiated stops of pedestrians may introduce bias into the

Carmichael et al. 101

findings because these types of encounters are particularly prone to perceptions of bias, illegitimacy, and inappropriate treatment by the police (see Gelman et al., 2007). Thus, the present study will offer a more accurate and generalizable picture of the public's perceptions of police behavior during an encounter. Before proceeding to our data and findings, we will offer a brief account of the factors that might explain the varying treatment of citizens by law enforcement officers.

Determinants of Citizens' Perceptions of Police-Initiated Contact

A substantial amount of empirical research on police-citizen encounters has accumulated over the last few decades. The bulk of this scholarly work has either relied on survey data to assess how individual characteristics such as race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status influence perceptions of law enforcement by the general public (e.g., Murphy, 2009; Schuck et al., 2008; Weitzer & Tuch, 2005) or employed a participatory observational approach (e.g., Chambliss, 1994; Moskos, 2008; Rios, 2011). We outline this research below.

Race and Ethnicity

Racially biased policing has been among the most widely researched areas within the policing literature. While a number of studies have shown that the general public views the police favorably (Huang & Vaughn, 1996; Reisig & Parks, 2000; Weitzer & Tuch, 1999), there are well-established differences across social groups. As discussed above, racial and ethnic minorities report lower levels of confidence in the police than do Whites, and they are more likely to believe that minorities are treated less favorably by officers (Morin & Stepler, 2016). In fact, both Blacks and Hispanics perceive the police as racially biased and report higher rates of harassment and disrespect at the hands of officers (e.g., Brunson, 2007; Gau & Brunson, 2010; Wortley et al., 1997). Empirical evidence tends to support the idea that the lived experiences of minority group members within our racially and ethnically stratified society are fundamentally different than those experienced by Whites, particularly when they confront the criminal justice system. A number of studies have shown, for instance, that police disproportionately target minorities in a variety of contexts. Spe- cifically, racial bias has been identified in a variety of policing contexts including general harass- ment by police (Browning et al., 1994), "stop-and-frisk" searches (Fagan et al., 2010; Gelman et al., 2007), vehicle searches-aka "driving while Black" (e.g., Petrocelli et al., 2003; Rojek et al., 2012), arrests (see meta-analysis by Kochel et al., 2013), and police use of force (e.g., Carmichael & Kent, 2015; Garner et al., 2006; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002).

Evidence of disparate treatment across racial and ethnic groups is somewhat mixed, though. For example, a 2003 study by Lundman and Kaufman found that Black drivers were more likely than other drivers to believe that traffic stops were illegitimate and that officers acted improperly during the encounter. Such findings, however, are inconclusive. Recent work by Allen and Monk-Turner (2010), for instance, found that Blacks and Whites were equally likely to perceive stops as illegi- timate. They did find, however, that Blacks were significantly more likely to report improper treatment by police relative to other groups. Such inconsistencies may be due to the use of different samples. While Lundman and Kaufman rely on nationally representative survey data, Allen and Monk-Turner draw from a small, convenience sample (mostly undergraduate students in a single university). As a result, the findings from the Allen and Monk-Turner study may be presenting a less reliable picture of perceptions of police-initiated encounters across the country. We will attempt to remedy some of these inconsistencies in the present study.

There are a number of possible explanations for why police might treat minorities differently. Scholars have asserted that the public, in general, and law enforcement, in particular, equate Black- ness itself with wrongdoing and criminality (e.g., C. Anderson, 2016; Browne, 2015; Kennedy,

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1997; Muhammad, 2010; Quillian & Pager, 2001). Others argue that police target African Amer- icans primarily because they represent less of a threat to the careers of officers given their relative powerlessness (Chambliss, 1994). Similarly, neo-Marxian accounts suggest that minorities rep- resent a real or perceived threat to the superordinate economic and political position of Whites and that such threats to the status quo will be met with, among other things, increased levels of formal social control (e.g., Carmichael & Kent, 2014; Kent & Carmichael, 2015; Spitzer, 1975; Turk, 1969). Empirical research has consistently shown that there is a pervasive use of race by police to determine who they suspect of wrongdoing and who they choose to stop and question. If such police behavior is prevalent across the entire United States, the following hypotheses should guide our expectations:

Hypothesis 1: Relative to Whites, African Americans and Hispanics will be less likely to believe they were treated appropriately and respectfully by police.

Hypothesis 2: African Americans and Hispanics will be more likely than Whites to perceive police-initiated encounters as illegitimate.

Social Class

While race is the focal concern of the bulk of the literature related to police misconduct, a relatively small number of studies have examined the role that social class might play in shaping police-citizen encounters. Much of the class-based research draws on the conflict perspective. Conflict theory has long associated the criminal justice system with the maintenance of structural inequality in society (e.g., Quinney, 1977). Scholars following this tradition have suggested that large disparities in economic resources can produce an unstable social order that must be maintained by increases in coercive mechanisms such as the police (e.g., Chambliss & Seidman, 1980; Chevigny, 1995; Rusche & Kirchheimer, 1939; Turk, 1969). According to this line of reasoning, the poor and unemployed members of society are less committed to the law and its underlying moral order and are presumed to be more likely to threaten the prevailing social arrangements through criminal activity. Police are thought to be employed as a mechanism to intensify coercive pressure in an effort to dissuade members of the "dangerous class" (the poor, unemployed, and vagrants) from committing a crime (e.g., Fagan & Davies, 2000; Garland, 2001; Jankovic, 1977).

Aside from race, one's level of affluence may influence their experiences with the police, with those at the bottom of the economic stratification system being more likely to have conflict with the authorities. Studies that have tried to assess the relationship between social class and treatment by law enforcement have tended to provide support for such expectations. In his foundational work observing police-citizen encounters, Reiss (1971) concluded that social class is more important than race in determining police misconduct. More recent ethnographic work has come to similar con- clusions (e.g., Chambliss, 1994; Moskos, 2008). Early quantitative work by Hagan and Albonetti (1982) found that, regardless of race, the poor and/or unemployed were significantly more likely to face injustice in the criminal justice system. Fagan and Davies (2000) and Mastrofski et al. (2002) reinforce these ideas by demonstrating that police are more aggressive and disrespectful to citizens in poor communities relative to those living in middle-class neighborhoods. If such aggressive, disrespectful police misconduct is more likely to occur against the poor, we should expect the following:

Hypothesis 3: The poor will be more likely to believe they are treated inappropriately and disrespectfully by the police when compared to more affluent individuals.

Hypothesis 4: The poor will be more likely to perceive police-initiated encounters as illegitimate relative to more advantaged individuals.

Carmichael et al. 103

Gender

A number of scholars have also identified patterns of differential treatment between men and women by criminal justice officials. While somewhat mixed, the bulk of this literature suggests that, at many points of discretion within the justice system, women are treated less formally and/or punitively. Empirical evidence suggests, for example, that women are less likely to be arrested by police (e.g., M. R. Smith et al., 2006; Visher, 1983), less likely to have police use force against them (Klahm & Tillyer, 2010), more likely to be released on bail prior to trial (Swigert & Ferrell, 1976), more likely to have their cases dismissed by prosecutors (Spohn et al., 1987), and, when found guilty of similar offenses as men, "women-particularly those with dependent children-are less likely to be sen- tenced to prison (Koons-Witt, 2002). Furthermore, Doerner and Demuth (2009) found that, if sentenced to prison, women tend to receive shorter terms of incarcerations relative to those received by men.

Findings from scholarship that specifically examines police treatment of female suspects have been mixed. While some studies have found that police treat male and female suspects similarly (e.g., Alpert & Dunham, 2004; D. A. Smith & Visher, 1980, p. 81), the bulk of the literature appears to point toward differential treatment by police, that is, as long as female suspects display appro- priate gender behaviors (Visher, 1983). It appears, for instance, that police are less likely to stop females and/or harass them. According to results from a self-report survey of public high school students in Chicago, 73% of the male respondents, but only 45% of women, had been stopped by the police (Friedman et al., 2004). Women are also less likely to report being harassed by police (Browning et al., 1994). As mentioned above, women are also less likely to be arrested and to have force used against them. The primary hypotheses used to explain the gendered treatment of citizens by police tend to involve notions of chivalry (Kruttschnitt & Savolainen, 2009; Spohn, 1999) which stipulates that women are, relative to men, more passive, weak, and dependent on the protection on men rather than punishment. If suppositions about police treatment of female offenders are accurate, we should expect the following:

Hypothesis 5: Relative to men, women will more likely to believe they were treated more appropriately and respectfully by police.

Hypothesis 6: Women to be less likely than men to perceive police-initiated encounters as illegitimate.

Additional Controls

Two additional factors are also considered in our analyses. First, numerous studies have identified patterns of police misconduct toward adolescents (e.g., Carr et al., 2007; Chambliss, 1994; Decker, 2003; Goffman, 2009; Lundman & Kaufman, 2003; Rios, 2011). This scholarship suggests that youth are more likely to have negative encounters with police primarily because of perceptions that young people are relatively powerless and are therefore less likely to threaten the careers of the officials involved if misconduct occurs (Chambliss, 1994; Steffensmeier et al., 1998). Given this, we hypothesize that young people will be more likely than older individuals to believe that police acted inappropriately during the encounter.

Finally, a number of policing scholars have focused on differences in policing styles across communities. Foundational work by Wilson (1968) identifies three main styles of policing: (1) the watchman style (typically emphasizes order over law enforcement, this style is rather aggressive and tends not to rely on formal powers of ticketing and arrest), (2) the legalistic style (focuses on enforcing the law rather than order, fines, and arrests for most, even small, infractions), and (3) the service style (promotes service to the community over law enforcement, fewer tickets, and arrests).

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It is important to note that the majority of research on policing has focused on policing in large urban centers (e.g., Lai & Zhao, 2010; Moskos, 2008; Reisig & Parks, 2000; Rosenbaum et al., 2005; Skogan, 2006; Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Wu et al., 2009). Much of this work points to police adopting the watchman style in urban areas with large poor and minority populations and the legalistic style in less ethnically diverse and more affluent communities. While relatively little attention has been given to policing in smaller communities, the research that has been conducted suggests that department norms emphasize the less aggressive service style of policing and that officers tend to focus on social services to members of the community (Payne et al., 2005; Weisheit et al., 2006). Differences across large and small jurisdictions appear to be associated with the relationship between the police and communities they patrol. In cities, police tend to be viewed as outsiders and accorded less respect, whereas small-town officers are typically respected individuals in what are often close-knit communities (Decker, 1978). If these differences in style vary according to community size, we should expect more negative public perceptions of police-initiated contact in larger cities relative to small ones.

Data and Measures

The Sample and Dependent Variable

To assess the hypotheses outlined above, we draw from the most recent Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) administered in 2011. The PPCS is a supplement of the National Crime Victimiza- tion Survey (NCVS), which interviews a nationally representative sample of