Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

A high-profile police-involved shooting, civil unrest, and officers’ perceptions of legitimacy: insights from a natural experiment

  • Published:
Journal of Experimental Criminology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

To examine the effects of a high-profile police-involved shooting that resulted in a civil unrest on officers’ attitudes towards their communities and job performance.

Methods

A natural experiment design and original data from a population survey of 1,003 police officers in Newark are used to compare officers’ perceptions of community support for law enforcement, the impact of repeated media scrutiny of law enforcement on their job, and officers' aversion to discipline before and after the civil unrest that occurred in response to the controversial police shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte.

Results

In the weeks after the Keith Scott incident, officers reported significantly lower levels of perceived community support for law enforcement and greater discipline aversion, while no significant change in the impact of media scrutiny was observed.

Conclusion

Findings suggest officers may not be immune to controversies involving police in other cities and might project onto the communities they police the feelings of hostility expressed towards law enforcement elsewhere.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. American Community Survey 5-year estimates 2011–2015 https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t (accessed April 28, 2018)

  2. Officers who did not complete the survey during this period included those who were on vacation, sick leave, or disability.

  3. Records maintained by the Washington Post indicate that there were 128 civilians killed by police in the USA from September 14 to November 4, 2016. https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings/blob/master/fatal-police-shootings-data.csv (accessed March 26, 2017).

  4. It is important to note that even when statistical techniques are used, omitted variable bias continues to be a threat to the natural experiment research design (see Kirk 2009).

  5. Supplemental analyses using a “multiple imputation then deletion” approach to missing data were conducted to assess the robustness of key findings and whether they were sensitive to how missing data were handled but these additional tests did not substantively alter the results (see Technical Appendix).

References

  • Bottoms, A. E., & Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond procedural justice: a dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102(1), 119–170.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bottoms, A. E., & Tankebe, J. (2013). ‘A voice within’: power-holders’ perspectives on authority and legitimacy. In J. Tankebe & A. Liebling (Eds.), Legitimacy and criminal justice: an international exploration (pp. 60–82). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Desmond, M., Papachristos, A. V., & Kirk, D. S. (2016). Police violence and citizen crime reporting in the black community. American Sociological Review, 81(5), 857–876.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Girden, E. R. (2001). Evaluating research articles from start to finish. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramlich, J., & Parker, K. (2017). Most officers say the media treat police unfairly. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/25/most-officers-say-the-media-treat-police-unfairly/.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirk, D. S. (2009). A natural experiment on residential change and recidivism: lessons from Hurricane Katrina. American Sociological Review, 74(3), 484–505.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kochel, T. R. (2019). Explaining racial differences in Ferguson’s impact on local residents’ trust and perceived legitimacy: policy and implications for police. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 30(3), 374–405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leovy, J. (2015). Ghettoside: a true story of murder in America. New York: Spiegel & Grau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • MacDonald, H. (2016). The war on cops: how the new attack on law and order makes everyone less safe. New York City: Perseus Distribution Services.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, S. L. & Pally, J. A. (2016). Ferguson, Gray, and Davis: an analysis of recorded crime incidents and arrests in Baltimore City, March 2010 through December 2015. Baltimore, MD: 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.

  • Morin, R., Parker, K., Stepler, R., & Mercer, A. (2017). Behind the badge: amid protests and calls for reform, how police view their jobs, key issues and recent fatal encounters between blacks and police. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nix, J., & Wolfe, S. E. (2016). Sensitivity to the Ferguson effect: the role of managerial organizational justice. Journal of Criminal Justice, 47, 12–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nix, J., & Wolfe, S. E. (2017). The impact of negative publicity on police self-legitimacy. Justice Quarterly, 34(1), 84–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nix, J., Wolfe, S. E., & Campbell, B. A. (2018). Command-level police officers’ perceptions of the “war on cops” and de-policing. Justice Quarterly, 35(1), 33–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pyrooz, D. C., Decker, S. H., Wolfe, S. E., & Shjarback, J. A. (2016). Was there a Ferguson effect on crime rates in large U.S. cities? Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheppard, Mullin, Richter, & Hampton, L. L. P. (2015). Report of the consent decree monitor for the New Orleans police department consent decree, April 28, 2015. New Orleans, Louisiana: Office of the Consent Decree Monitor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shi, L. (2009). The limit of oversight in policing: evidence from the 2001 Cincinnati riot. Journal of Public Economics, 93(1–2), 99–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shjarback, J. A., Pyrooz, D. C., Wolfe, S. E., & Decker, S. H. (2017). De-policing and crime in the wake of Ferguson: racialized changes in the quantity and quality of policing among Missouri police departments. Journal of Criminal Justice, 50, 42–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spector, P. E. (1994). Job satisfaction survey. Tampa: University of South Florida, Department of Psychology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, C., Foglesong, T., & Cole, C. M. (2009). Policing Los Angeles under a consent decree: the dynamics of change at the LAPD. Cambridge: Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyler, T. (2004). Enhancing police legitimacy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 593(1), 84–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Department of Justice. (2016). Justice Department reaches agreement with City of Newark, New Jersey, to reform police department’s unconstitutional practices. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, M. (1968). In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.), Economy and society. New York: Bedminster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weitzer, R. (2002). Incidents of police misconduct and public opinion. Journal of Criminal Justice, 30(5), 397–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weitzer, R. (2015). American policing under fire: misconduct and reform. Society, 52(5), 475–480.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, S. E., & Nix, J. (2016). The alleged “Ferguson effect” and police willingness to engage in community partnerships. Law and Human Behavior, 40(1), 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Robert Apel, Anthony Braga, Valerio Baćak, Sarah Lageson, and Todd Clear for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brandon Turchan.

Ethics declarations

Disclaimer

This work uses data obtained from a survey of Newark Police Division officers that was carried out at the direction of the Independent Monitor for the Consent Decree signed by the City of Newark. A team of researchers from Rutgers University were responsible for administering the survey to the officers. The work contained in this paper is independent research and was not carried out at the direction of the Independent Monitor. Accordingly, the content included in this work is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the views or attitudes of the Independent Monitor or any other entities involved in the City of Newark Consent Decree.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(DOCX 47 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Turchan, B. A high-profile police-involved shooting, civil unrest, and officers’ perceptions of legitimacy: insights from a natural experiment. J Exp Criminol 17, 507–518 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09413-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09413-2

Keywords

Navigation