The Effect of a Death-in-Police-Custody Incident on Community Reliance on the Police

Abstract

Examine whether a death-in-police-custody incident affected community reliance on the police, as measured through citizen calls requesting police assistance for non-criminal caretaking matters. This study used Baltimore Police Department (BPD) incident-level call data (2014–2017) concerning non-criminal caretaking matters (N = 234,781). Counts of non-criminal caretaking calls were aggregated by week for each of 279 unique sections derived from census-tract and police district boundaries. This study devised a Negative Community–Police Relationship Index Score that operationalized the expected risk of a negative community–police relationship for each of the sections. In April 2015, a Baltimore resident, Freddie Gray, died while in BPD custody. A Poisson regression model assessed whether this high-profile death-in-police-custody incident adversely affected the volume of non-criminal caretaking calls to the police and whether that effect was strongest in sections at a high risk of a negative community–police relationship. A falsification test used pocket-dialed emergency calls to verify that any observed trends were not the result of overall telephone usage. There was no statistical evidence that the death-in-police-custody incident produced any changes in community reliance on the police for non-criminal caretaking matters, even in high-risk sections. A supplemental analysis using calls for criminal matters yielded similar results. As the falsification test demonstrated, the observed trends were not the result of overall telephone usage. Despite a divisive death-in-police-custody incident, citizens were still willing to enlist police assistance. More broadly, the caretaking role of the police may be an important mechanism to strengthen community–police relations, particularly in marginalized neighborhoods vulnerable to strained community–police relations.