Restoring Police Legitimacy: The Politicization of Policing Through Mass Political Debates and Social Movements

• In Event: Varieties of Policing Research

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the Michael Brown case and its aftermath, this paper aims to document the emergence and evolvement of the nationwide debates on police legitimacy as well as the social movements to promote police accountability and to strengthen police-community relations; delineate the main arguments made and the underlying sociological issues raised by the key players in the debates and movements; and identify the social problems collectively defined (Blumer, 1977) through the debates and (re)construct the social processes of such collective definition. To accomplish these tasks, the project collects data from online archives of media reports on major national newspapers and state legislations and local police department policies that aim to restore police legitimacy and community trust and confidence in police. Both quantitative and in-depth qualitative analyses will be performed in the content analysis of the data. With the findings from the data analysis, the paper will provide a historical account of the nationwide debates on police legitimacy and accountability, broaden the understanding of the rise and fall of social movements, and propose an integrative theoretical and analytical model for examining and explaining the social process of the politicization of social problems through political and public debates.

Author

• Fei Yang, University of California, Irvine