Citizen-Initiated Police Surveillance & Sleep Health: How 911 Suspicious Person Calls Inform Sleep Disorder Diagnoses in Minneapolis, Minnesota

• In Event: 40401 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session II

Abstract

Extant literature finds an association between neighborhood exposure to intrusive police stops (involving frisks and pat downs) and chronic health conditions due to the surveillance stress resulting from vicarious police contact. However, we know less about the role of requests for police responses (e.g., 911 calls) in shaping policing’s impact on population health, especially sleep health, which is sensitive to neighborhood conditions. Drawing on Minneapolis (Minnesota) Police Department officer-civilian stop and a local hospital system’s medical records data, I use multi-level negative binomial regression models to examine how the rate of 911 calls reporting a suspicious person out of total police stops from 2017 to 2019 are correlated with Census block rates of sleep disorder diagnoses per 1,000 block group residents. I also consider how racialized, citizen-initiated police surveillance informs population health by examining how (1) the racial identity of the reported suspicious person varies across racial and ethnic groups and (2) the proportion of race-specific 911 suspicious person reports influence diagnoses of sleep disorders for White and Black residents per capita. This analysis will increase our knowledge of policing and health by exploring how citizens’ demands for policing influence disparities in exposure to police contact and access to optimal sleep health.

Author

• Christopher Everett Robertson, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities