Reactive Policing, Social Disorder, and Neighborhood Context

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 16. Policing 2

Abstract

Although residents often shape police presence in neighborhoods, current urban sociology draws attention to more proactive forms of policing that contribute to hyper surveillance in disadvantaged communities, mass incarceration, and decreased trust between law enforcement and the public (Rios 2011, Brayne 2014, Alexander 2009). Most of these studies focus on a handful of major metropolitan cities across the US such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Oakland. Outside of these cities, the vast majority of contemporary policing in the US is reactive with police responding to demands for service from community members (Moore et al. 1988, Walker & Katz 2007). Yet, little research has connected older literature on when residents invoke the police and how neighborhood context may shape their demands, to more contemporary concerns about biased policing. In this paper, I examine the frequency with which residents draw on the police for assistance and the types of activities residents consider criminal across census tracts using 9-1-1 call data from Ypsilanti Township, Michigan and ACS 5-year estimates. I find residents most often call 9-1-1 about public disorder and suspicious persons, with variation across space. While recent events in Ferguson, MO and other cities across the US raise alarms that law enforcement engages in race-based discrimination, the frequency with which residents call the police about suspicious persons and social disorder suggests that reforms to improve community-police relations must also consider how these calls contribute to police presence in communities.

Author

• Jessica White Gillooly, University of Michigan