Keeping the Peace or Delegitimizing the Police: Legitimacy Perceptions of Police Response to Protest

• In Event: The Link Between Police Legitimacy and Police Effectiveness

Abstract

The past decade has been fraught with growing public distrust of police, creating a legitimacy crisis in American policing. With the recent mobilization of protests in the summer of 2020 following the numerous high-profile lethal police encounters, police-community relations have suffered significantly, and events highlighting these behaviors have become increasingly contentious. Research examining protest policing traditionally highlights that crowds who view police behavior as overly authoritative are more likely to rebel, thus, increasing the likelihood of large-scale violence. Pairing this with police legitimacy research that has consistently emphasized the importance of police treatment and decision-making in the development of legitimacy perceptions, police behavior during protests becomes all the more salient. In this study, we plan to utilize factorial vignettes to further our understanding of this phenomenon. Specifically, we are interested in evaluating what types of protest management tactics are considered legitimate, as well as which are perceived as overly authoritative. The findings of this study have important implications for the future of protest policing, as well as the theoretical bounds of procedural justice, legitimacy, and protest management theories.

Authors

• Michaela Flippin, East Carolina University

• Logan Kennedy, East Carolina University