Black Police Officers Research Articles

American Police Brutality in Black and White: Fox News Website Coverage of the Killings of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols

The police-perpetrated killings of George Floyd in 2020 and Tyre Nichols in 2023, respectively, provide a unique opportunity for comparison of news content. Both incidents were recorded on video and appear to be characterized by unwarranted aggression and brutality. A key difference worth exploring is the race of the perpetrator(s). In the case of Floyd, the killer, Derek Chauvin, was white, while Nichols’ killers were black. The purpose of the present research was to comparatively examine how the Fox News website framed these two police-perpetrated killings. Quantitative content analysis was used to examine Fox News website coverage of the murders of Floyd and Nichols during the one-month periods following the publicity of both incidents. Findings were consistent with researcher expectations that Fox News would be more sympathetic to Nichols than Floyd, and more critical of the black police officers who killed Nichols than the white officer who killed Chauvin. In all, eight out of the study’s ten sub-hypotheses were supported.

Black and Blue: Black Police Officers’ Implicit and Explicit Biases in Split-Second Decisions to Shoot or Not to Shoot Unarmed Black Civilians

This study applies Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’ theory to explore the experiences of Black police officers. The research reveals that these officers’ interactions with unarmed Black civilians are influenced by their implicit identification with the Black community and their awareness of ongoing racial inequality in the U.S. However, internalized racism also leads to shooting errors, with officers viewing Black civilians through harmful racial stereotypes. The study, which involved 43 Black officers from various departments in the deep South, utilized a simulation game to assess decision-making under time pressure.

Behind the badge and the veil: Black police officers in the era of black lives matter.

Behind the badge and the veil: Black police officers in the era of black lives matter.

Challenging racism as a Black police officer: An emergent theory of employee anti-racism.

Organizations are key mechanisms by which racism is enacted and perpetuated. Although much of the management literature has focused on organizational efforts to combat racial discrimination, some of the most transformative changes come from the everyday actions of employees themselves. In this study, we develop grounded theory on racial minority employees who choose to challenge racism from within the organizational structures that perpetuate it most (i.e., highly racialized organizations). We present a theoretical model of employee anti-racism that emerged from our analysis of qualitative data-comprising 80.7 audio hours from 48 interviews with Black law enforcement officers. This model articulates anti-racism motivation as a key mechanism that motivates racial minority employees to join and stay within highly racialized organizations. Our analysis suggests that these employees enact anti-racism behaviors targeted at both the racialized organization and their racial community, with these behaviors playing a critical role in positively transforming the interface between the organization and the communities that are harmed by racism. Perceptions of transformation help sustain racial minority employees' anti-racism motivation, particularly as they experience continued racism and encounter backlash for their anti-racism efforts. In the absence of perceived transformation, we found that racial minority employees are likely to withdraw from the highly racialized organization. Altogether, our study provides a theoretical and practical roadmap highlighting how racial minority employees combat racism via organizational membership and sustain their positive impact on both their work organization and their racial communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Challenging Racism as a Black Police Officer: An Emergent Theory of Employee Anti-Racism

Supplemental Material for Challenging Racism as a Black Police Officer: An Emergent Theory of Employee Anti-Racism

Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South: African Americans and Law Enforcement in Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans, 1920–1945 by Brandon T. Jett

Reviewed by: Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South: African Americans and Law Enforcement in Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans, 1920–1945 by Brandon T. Jett Theresa Jach Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South: African Americans and Law Enforcement in Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans, 1920–1945. By Brandon T. Jett. Making the Modern South. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 235. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7507-1.) In Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South: African Americans and Law Enforcement in Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans, 1920–1945, Brandon T. Jett looks at how African Americans responded to crime and policing in three southern cities from 1920 to the end of World War II. While James Forman Jr.'s Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York, 2017) explores this theme from the 1960s on, Jett provides an important look at a critical period in the development of policing in the Jim Crow South. As police forces expanded and professionalized, African Americans found ways to use the police to clean up their own neighborhoods. Focusing on agency, Jett shows that Black southerners were not just victims of police indifference or brutality. Using extensive police records, newspaper accounts of crime, court records, and witness statements, Jett gives voice to both victims and perpetrators of crime in Memphis, New Orleans, and Birmingham. Jett chooses these three southern cities for his study because they all were legally segregated, and they all greatly expanded their police forces, but had no Black police officers, during the period covered in the book. African American communities in these cities wanted police involvement in their neighborhoods to cut down on crime. Jett thoroughly delineates the ways African Americans manipulated the police to serve their own needs. While Black residents did not want the police to target them, they did want the police to treat them fairly and to prevent and punish crimes committed against them. The African American community was not only overpoliced but also underpoliced. The police saw African Americans as likely criminals and yet rarely went after those who committed crimes against them. Police often ignored or half-heartedly investigated crimes committed against African Americans. Jett argues that focusing on intraracial crime allows him to center the reactions of Black southerners rather than white fears of Black crime. He convincingly shows that both working-class and middle-class African Americans wanted the police to stop crime in their communities. They found ways to manipulate and use the police to their own ends. They sought fair administration and application of the law, due process, more police in their communities, and the hiring of Black officers. However, because Black communities had little formal political power, city governments were not responsive to their demands. Jett uses a multitude of sources to show that African Americans often used self-policing to combat crime. And significantly, he proves that the police needed the help of the Black community to arrest Black criminals. African Americans often went to the police station or called the police for help if they witnessed a crime. Witnesses turned over weapons and, in some cases, captured and held suspects. African Americans routinely did their own investigation before contacting the police and provided names, addresses, and other help in solving the crime. In fact, in many instances, they did the policemen's jobs for them. [End Page 799] Working within a Jim Crow system that demanded deference to white supremacy, African Americans found ways to combat crime in their neighborhoods. They would, at least on the surface, acquiesce to the system, in order to get the police to combat crime, trust Black witnesses, protect Black victims, and help return stolen property. Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South provides a much-needed and nuanced look at African American interactions with the police in the urban South. It adds an important perspective on how the Black community used its power and agency to compel the police to combat crime and protect their neighborhoods. Theresa Jach Houston Community College–Northwest Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Darktown: Newspaper Coverage of Atlanta’s First Black Police, 1930–1960

When the city of Atlanta hired its first Black police officers in 1948, the milestone was covered by the city’s Black newspaper, the Atlanta Daily World, and by the city’s mainstream newspapers, the morning Atlanta Constitution and the afternoon Atlanta Journal, but in starkly different ways. 1 This study explores what each newspaper omitted and included, and what each emphasized or otherwise deemed important, an examination that also seeks to draw attention to the many roles of the Black press beyond reporting the news. Special attention is given to the strategies and tactics used to argue for and against the Black patrols. Finally, these first Black hires and the newspaper coverage of the integration of Atlanta police are placed into historical context, one that juxtaposes shame and pride, degradation and achievement, fealty to Jim Crow and progress with respect to civil rights.

Does an Increased Share of Black Police Officers Decrease Racial Discrimination in Law Enforcement?

Based on representative bureaucracy theory, the current study investigates whether increasing Black representation in police forces is negatively associated with racial discrimination in law enforcement. This study additionally investigates how associations may differ according to the organizational or environmental contexts of the forces. Results show that an increased share of Black officers is associated with decreased police-involved deaths of Black residents, but is not significantly associated with a change in order maintenance arrests of Black suspects. In addition, the negative association between Black representation and police-involved deaths of Black residents disappears when the percent of Black officers surpasses about 15 percent, especially in organizations where White officers comprise a larger share. These findings support the potential negative role of organizational socialization on the effectiveness of increasing the share of Black officers in policing, implying that additional long-term efforts to change organizational culture are needed to realize the benefits of enhancing Black representation.

From the field: Why I founded Black Cops Against Police Brutality

Controlling police use of unwarranted force is a recurring problem within police agencies, especially those that operate in urban spaces. Black people are disproportionately the recipients of such force. Using my experiences as a Black police officer as the backdrop, I describe my journey from rookie officer to community activist and founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality (B-CAP). Readers will come to understand the complex world of policing and the difficult road to police reform, from the inside out. Four recommendations are made for police reform: 1) that it be community-centered; 2) that it utilize appreciative inquiry; 3) that it incorporate “true” community policing; and, 4) that trauma-informed policing be supported for all levels of law enforcement.

The influence of community norms on black officers’ decision-making in a large municipal police department in a majority minority United States city: a quasi-experiment

For decades, scholars have called for and investigated the effects of representative bureaucracy, with some scholars explaining that common lived experiences, or “subject positions” between street-level bureaucrats and community members might facilitate better communication that in turn could lead to consensus or shared meaning in discourse and behavior between these two groups. Building upon the theoretical scaffolding of the Target Model of discretion, our study uses self-reported survey data from 190 sworn officers in a large majority minority city in the southern United States to investigate the relationship between officer race and the priority Black and non-Black officers ascribe to community norms and expectations as influences on their decision-making processes. Our findings indicate that Black police officers in this city are significantly more likely than their non-Black counterparts to recognize community norms as a factor that influences their decisions, in line with the research hypothesis.

Race and the Probability of Police Injury

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.

Racial Discrimination in The London Metropolitan Police Service.

Abstract It is practically impossible for police officers to do their jobs without biases or prejudices. Even when the office of the Police Constable does not allow it. The purpose of this paper is summed up in three headings: first, to highlight the extent of racism in the London Metropolitan Police for over three decades This is evidenced from several case studies of black police officer’s mistreatment in the London Police Service. Second, the effect of police culture as a breeding ground for racism in the police and third, providing an understanding of the trio concepts of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotype. The author relies on racial Postcolonial theories that have created and sustain a culture of racial superiority over the years. This is a qualitative study; the author relies on the reviewing of previous literature relating to the topic of police racism. Some of the findings are: it has proven very difficult to find a solution to racism so long as the racism in the wider British society has not been dealt with effectively enough to accommodate the constructed other. Police culture needs to be outlawed in the police service and racism needs to become a dismissible police unlawful act.

Protest policing by black police officers: double marginality and collateral consequences

PurposeDrawing from representative bureaucracy theory, hiring minority police officers has been a perpetual reform recommendation for improving tense police-community relationships with minority communities since the 1960s. The expectation is that minority officers will provide active/symbolic representation, but little is known about minority officers' experiences during racially tense situations. This paper examines whether black officers experienced double marginality in the context of prolonged protests against police in Ferguson, MO in 2014 and compares black vs. nonblack officers' self-assessments about their preparedness to handle the crisis, procedural justice during the crisis and mental and emotional effects on officers following protest policing.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews with 45 police personnel who policed the Ferguson protests provide a rich description of the context and experiences through the lens of police officers. Surveys of 218 officers who conducted protest policing in Ferguson are used to compare the impact on black vs. non-black officers.FindingsThe results provide a detailed portrayal of the double marginality experienced by black officers while policing the Ferguson protests, but also demonstrate that black officers were resilient to the effects of that experience, showing significantly more favorable outcomes than their nonblack peers.Originality/valueThis is the only study to utilize a mixed methods approach with police officers who conducted protest policing to understand officers' experiences in the midst of a racially inflamed context. The findings provide support for policymakers interested in advocating and supporting hiring more minorities in policing.

The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions

ABSTRACT Although campus racial climate on colleges and universities has been scrutinized in research on higher education, scholarship focused on Black male collegians’ interactions with campus police remains limited. Considering how the logics of white supremacy and anti-Black racism have characterized policing across the nation, we assert that a critical examination of how those practices are mirrored on college campuses can illuminate the challenges Black students face when navigating white campus spaces. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, this study reports on the encounters between three Black male students and campus police officers at three distinct historically white institutions. We posit that for Black college students, the student identification (ID) evokes a legacy of surveillance that can be traced to the freedom papers that freed slaves were required to carry while traversing white spaces as a means to affirm rights to freely belong. We conclude with implications and directions for future research.

Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South ed. by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring

Reviewed by: Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South ed. by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring Max Felker-Kantor (bio) Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South. Edited by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019. Pp. 240. $99.00 cloth; $26.00 paper; $19.95 ebook) Recent attention to the crisis of mass incarceration has led historians to rethink the roots of crime and punishment in American society. The burgeoning field of carceral state studies has produced important scholarship on the convict lease period following Reconstruction in the South and the punitive turn after the uprisings of the 1960s. Yet, the first half of the twentieth century in America’s carceral past, particularly in the Jim Crow South, has largely gone overlooked. Amy Louise Wood’s and Natalie J. Ring’s nine chapter edited collection provides a needed addition that bridges the convict lease era with that of mass incarceration. Framed around two broadly defined features of the criminal justice system, Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South presents a nuanced argument about the South’s distinctive criminal justice system in areas of policing, incarceration, and capital punishment. The region’s suspicion of state power meant that centralized criminal justice systems developed slowly over the first half of the twentieth century as the Jim Crow South modernized. As southern progressives managed a modernizing region reform brought greater state centralization to the criminal justice system. Government oversight, however, did not challenge Jim Crow. Rather, “Criminal justice served to bolster the racial hierarchy in the face of these changes associated with modernity” (p. 6). The mechanisms that facilitated entrance into southern criminal justice systems explored in part one offer insights into the contested history of southern policing. Despite legal segregation, southern police forces were not all-white. As K. Stephen Prince shows, Black police officers in New Orleans who joined the force during Reconstruction presented a challenge to white supremacy’s supporters. Would they support the police or racial order? Using the trial and [End Page 532] removal of a Black officer, George Doyle, for the killing of a white bar owner, Prince shows how “the lines of race proved more enduring than respect for the authority of the police” (p. 23). For the police to become a modern instrument of racial control, in short, it had to be made white. Despite the consolidation of white police forces, African Americans routinely tried to make the police arm of the modern state work for them. As Brandon Jett and Silvan Niedermeier reveal in their respective chapters on homicide investigations and police torture, Black residents attempted to use the police to advance their own interests within the confines of Jim Crow. African Americans in Memphis called the police, acted as witnesses, assisted officers in gathering evidence, and, at times, apprehended suspects. In contrast, as Niedermeyer shows, African American challenges to police torture served as a catalyst for organizing and the foundation of the long Black freedom movement. Just as African Americans attempted to make the state work for them, Jim Crow shielded white criminals from prosecution, as Tammy Ingram demonstrates in a chapter on organized crime in Phenix City, Alabama, that mirrors Khalil Muhammad’s description of the disappearance of the white criminal in the urban north. Efforts to root out organized crime did not lead to the arrest of whites but produced a new means of racialized control in the form of law-and-order politics. Modernization and progressive government reforms released the powers of white supremacy to police African Americans with the backing of the state. The modes of incapacitation developed in response to state centralization, modernization, and progressive reforms unique to the Jim Crow South. However, as the authors in part two show, the criminal justice system not only responded to reform but was a causal factor in the consolidation of an updated system of racial control. As Amy Wood suggests, South Carolina governor Cole Blease resisted centralized state power but employed a liberal use of the pardon to push [End Page 533] forward penal reform and reinforce the populist and personal control over African Americans rooted in racial paternalism. Or, more...

Are We Honoring Malcolm X's Legacy?

Are We Honoring Malcolm X’s Legacy? Judson L. Jeffries As an African American man who has benefitted mightily from the struggles waged by those men and woman who came before me, I often wonder if I am someone of whom they would be proud. Am I honoring their legacy? Am I doing enough? In fact, not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself that very question, “AM I DOING ENOUGH?” Am I doing enough to raise the consciousness of those around me? Malcolm called them the living dead, but I see them as Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s miseducated. Am I doing a good job mentoring young people? Am I teaching what young people need to know in order to navigate this thing called Life? Am I doing enough to enhance people’s life chances? Am I doing enough to move the race forward? All too often my response has been to answer these questions with a question: what would Malcolm say about what I’ve been doing over the years? What would he say about what we’ve been doing or not doing, as a community/generation, that is?1 No issue has elicited more attention over the past few years where Black people are concerned than police use of excessive force against Black people. George Floyd is just one name on a long list of Black folks who have been murdered by White police officers in recent years. Black folks can’t gather on street corners, run through parks, sit in their vehicles, or walk down the street without being killed by those who took an oath “to serve and protect.” Like Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1969, Breonna Taylor was shot multiple times while in bed. Police officers broke through the door of her Louisville home and started firing. A beautiful young lady whose life was snuffed out before she had an opportunity to actualize her potential. Her future was bright. No one held accountable, because police officers kill with impunity, when the victim is Black, that is. Every now and then a police officer sees the inside of a jail cell as a result of his devilish behavior. For example, in 1997, Officer Justin Volpe landed a lengthy prison sentence after he rammed the stick from a toilet plunger into the rectum of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn police station, causing irreparable damage to internal organs. Volpe [End Page 1] was reportedly so excited by the act of playing in a Black man’s ass that he strutted around the precinct afterward, wiping beads of perspiration from his brow, exclaiming, “I broke a man down,” to the approval of several other officers. If police officers were killing or assaulting Whites at this kind of indiscriminate rate, major changes would already be underway. If Black police officers were killing White civilians at an equally alarming rate, few of them would make it to retirement. In fact, the names of Black police officers would increase the number of cold case files exponentially. What would Malcolm say about these atrocities? If the government is unwilling or unable to protect you or ensure your safety, then you are within your constitutional rights, as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment, to protect yourself “By any means necessary.” A group in Louisiana, calling itself the Deacons for Defense and Justice, did just that. A year after Malcolm was assassinated, the baton was passed to the men and women of Oakland, California, who answered the call by forming the Black Panther Party.2 Not long after that, activists in Detroit formed the Republic of New Afrika. Other, lesser known, militant groups sprouted up in ensuing years. Much has been done to attempt to put this public health crisis issue on the front burner of American politics. I applaud the cell phone camera warriors who have, time after time, gone out of their way and in some instances put themselves in harm’s way in order to capture on film police officers committing criminal acts, including murder. I applaud the protestors who have taken to the streets in cities across America demanding wholesale change.3 I applaud those police officers who...

BlacKkKlansman

Though set in 1970s Colorado, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman trains a lens on the broad sweep of American history. Its cinematic bookends span the film version of Gone with the Wind (1939) and footage of contemporary white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Birth of a Nation (1915), the film that sparked and styled the real-life reformation of the Ku Klux Klan (Kkk), features prominently as well, juxtaposed with Harry Belafonte's searing recounting of a Texas lynching the year after its release. Alec Baldwin's opening cameo as the fictional midcentury demagogue Kennebrew Beauregard incorporates a pastiche of racist tropes—“Jewish-controlled puppets on the Supreme Court,” “army of Commies,” “mongrels,” “super-predators”—that span generations of racist ideology. This broad arc provides a rich palette for Lee to present a much smaller tale writ large. As the opening credits inform audiences, this film is based on “some fo' real, fo' real sh∗t.” Source material, which serves more as a device here, comes from the black police officer Ron Stallworth's memoir of his 1978 infiltration of the Colorado Kkk, Black Klansman. Stallworth's unlikely ruse begins when, while on duty and seemingly on a whim, he answers a Kkk recruitment advertisement in the local newspaper. Posing on the phone as an interested prospective recruit who hates anyone who “doesn't have pure white Aryan blood running through their veins,” he piques the interest of a local Kkk officer. He subsequently infiltrates the group with the help of a white officer who poses as “Ron Stallworth” at a variety of in-person meetings while the real Stallworth continues his telephonic contact. The operation unfolds over six months, ending abruptly with a (thankfully unheeded) order from the police chief to destroy all evidence of its existence.

Videos Don’t Lie: African Americans’ Support for Body-Worn Cameras

In light of growing concern regarding the policing of inner-city communities—including questionable incidents of use of force—equipping officers with body-worn cameras (BWCs) has emerged as a salient proposal for reform. Based on a national-level survey of African Americans ( n = 1,000), this project shows that wide consensus exists among Black citizens in favor of BWCs. Since ostensibly “videos don’t lie,” implementing camera technology thus may be a means to increase police legitimacy. Importantly, the analysis also reveals that African Americans support a broad range of reforms to improve inner-city policing, of which BWCs are only one. Finally, the survey included a subset of 45 Black police officers. These officers also supported BWCs and most other proposed reforms but at a level that was lower and less intense than African American members of the public.

Can We Talk About Race? Exploring Online Comments about Race-Related Shootings

A quantitative content analysis was conducted of online comments (N = 1,840) posted on news stories about 4 shooting deaths involving Black Americans and police officers to assess how Americans talk about race in the digital space. Findings showed that uncivil attributes, such as profanity or name-calling, were more frequent than deliberative attributes, such as using evidence to support one’s point. Findings suggested there are scant but meaningful deliberative discussions about race in the comments we studied, but incivility mires that conversation. Results are discussed in terms of critical race theory and deliberative democracy.

More Black than Blue? Comparing the Racial Attitudes of Police to Citizens

How are the racial attitudes of police officers distinct from those of the public? How might the officer's own race shape those attitudes? Recent high‐profile cases of contested uses of lethal force by white police officers against citizens of color have reanimated a long‐established debate about the way(s) that race shapes police contact. While research has documented substantial racial disparities across a variety of criminal justice outcomes, little is known about how law enforcement officers might differ from citizens in the way that they think about citizens of color. Existing studies of such attitudes are often limited by the idiosyncrasies of small and unrepresentative samples. The present study overcomes these limitations by employing the first nationally representative survey comparing citizens and police a range of racial attitudes. Findings suggest that white police are, indeed, more racially resentful, more likely to see blacks as violent, and more likely to minimize anti‐black discrimination than are white nonpolice. Black police officers, however, are not significantly more racially conservative than black citizens on any of the measures examined, lending modest evidence to the “selection effect” theory of Police Personality.