Community-Level Risks of Civilian Fatalities in Police-Involved Shootings: From the Structural to the Cultural

• In Event: Profiling and Understanding Police Shootings in Metropolitan America

Abstract

Various community characteristics have long been known to exercise powerful influence on the behaviors and wellbeing of the residents. Time and space create possibilities for and impose constraints on police-citizen interactions. By focusing on the structural and cultural forces that shape the residential patterns of American cities, we cast the analysis of civilian fatalities in police shooting incidents in a sociological framework that transcends the description of personal vicissitudes of participating actors. Instead, racial compositions and socioeconomic resources that translate into power relationships as well as perceived dangerousness constituted by violence and weapon availability are hypothesized to determine the volume and outcome of police use of deadly force. Pertinent department- and community-level data are collected for about 600 incidents that took place in cities with a population of 100,000 or more residents between January and June 2015. Several multivariate techniques will be implemented to model the hypothesized relations. Findings will inform to what extent police officers are not autonomous social actors, but are constrained by the patterns of demographic, socioeconomic, and political arrangements. Results will also indicate whether the reduction of civilian casualties in confrontations between law enforcement and the citizenry require reforms of more than the police.

Authors

• Victoria Italico, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Mia Martin, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Victor J. St. John, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Allison Bernheimer, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY