Friend Not Foe? Reconsidering Race, the Police, and Community Relations

Abstract

Given the complicated historical and contemporary relationship between law enforcement and African Americans, academic and popular commentary have focused intently on the existence of conflict between the police and the Black citizenry in the United States. The current project, however, seeks to broaden understanding in this area by exploring the extent to which African Americans know the police in positive, informal ways. Based on a 2017 national-level survey of 1,000 African Americans, this project explores the extent of survey participants’ association with police officers as well as potential predictors of those relationships. Specifically, binary logistic regression is used to analyze the relationship between the survey respondents’ social bonds, demographic characteristics, and their relationships with police officers. The analyses reveal that respondents’ ties to the police were common, with nearly one in four having a police officer as a family member and a majority having some relationship with officers. Those with stakes in conformity were more likely to have bonds to officers, although racial homophily likely also accounts for knowing police officers. Importantly, this project demonstrates the complexity of African Americans’ relationships with the police and identifies further lines of inquiry that might profitably be explored.