Discretionary Searches, the Impact of Passengers, and the Implications for Police–Minority Encounters

Abstract

Purpose:The current study examines whether a police officer’s decision to initiate a discretionary search is impacted by the presence of passengers. It also explores whether groups of minority citizens experience more frequent discretionary searches compared with other groups. These hypotheses are built on the theoretical foundation of officer suspicion, the group hazard hypothesis, the principles of symbolic interactionism, and Black’s theory of law.Methods:Traffic stop data from a large, urban city are used to test these hypotheses. Multilevel, Bernoulli models are estimated to reflect the nested nature of the data. Data are analyzed in multiple ways to reflect the complex elements of police–citizen encounters.Results:Results indicate that discretionary searches of a citizen are more likely when a passenger is present. While some group effects are also documented, minority groups are not more likely to be searched such that the presence of passengers appears to supersede the impact of race/ethnicity.Conclusions:The presence of passengers during a police–citizen encounter has a substantial impact on the likelihood of a discretionary search. Race/ethnicity effects are limited to single-occupant drivers.