Race and the Probability of Police Injury
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Race and the Probability of Police Injury Christopher E. Torres1 · Stewart J. D’Alessio1 · Lisa Stolzenberg1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Although research finds that police are more apt to employ force against black criminal suspects, empirical evidence for this relationship is derived entirely from analyses that only account for factors associated with the police-citizen encounter. If racial disparities exist in how citizens view the police prior to the citizen-police encounter, then any observed nexus between a criminal suspect’s race and police use of force will suffer omitted variable bias. We indirectly test this thesis by examining whether a black criminal suspect has an enhanced proclivity to injure either a black or white police officer during an assault. Results show that black suspects are no more likely than white suspects to injure black or white police officers. Keywords Assaults of police officers · Race · Police use of force · Victim injury “If my son calls me and says he’s been pulled over [by the police], that I’m not that confident that things are going to go well, and my son is going to return home” — LeBron James.
Introduction Since the genesis of the American criminal justice system, racial tension has been the crucial cornerstone of political debate, public discourse, and a focal driver for social reform. To date, these tensions still exist and are explicitly displayed through a variety of media outlets. A common talking point on news stations, podcasts, social media, and newspapers claim that black citizens are unduly and wantonly subject to the use of force and even killed at higher rates relative to whites (Edwards et al. 2019). Empirical research on police use of force provides a definitive rationale for these claims. Throughout the United States, blacks are disproportionately subject to non-lethal forms of force such as grabbing or hitting (Fryer 2016; Lee 2016) and are exponentially more likely to be killed by lethal force than whites (Ross 2015).
* Christopher E. Torres [email protected] 1
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street ‑ PCA 254, Miami, FL 33199, USA
In the current body of scientific literature, two main explanatory hypotheses have emerged to clarify these findings. The first postulates that police reflexively respond with force to the perceived threatening behavior before them and that blacks are more likely to engage in these behaviors (Johnson 2006). The second hypothesis posits that police respond with force in a racially biased manner towards blacks (James et al. 2019). The current study introduces a new hypothesis which attempts to explain why there is excessive exposure among blacks to police use of force in the United States. We theorize here that blacks harbor more animosity towards law enforcement officers than whites, which is present before the police-citizen encounter begins. In turn, this animosity may cause them to act out with aggressive or
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