Asian Americans' Attitudes Toward the Police in the Pandemic era

• In Event: Policing and Racialized Communities: Legitimacy, Trust, and Surveillance

Abstract

Although the past several decades have witnessed many studies on public attitudes toward the police, Asian Americans’ views of the police remain severely under-researched in the policing literature. Using more than 3,300 surveys collected by the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), this study assesses whether experience, immigration, and pandemic factors are connected to Asian Americans’ satisfaction with the police, distrust in the police, and willingness to call the police, controlling for their background characteristics. We found that victimization, discrimination, and police contact increase Asian American’s distrust in the police, and discrimination also lowers their satisfaction with the police. A sense of belonging raises satisfaction and willingness to call and reduces distrust in the police, whereas deportation threat decreases satisfaction and increase distrust. Those who viewed masking as important expressed lower satisfaction with police but were more likely to be willing to call the police. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Authors

• Daniel Yoon Sik Kim, University of Delaware

• Ivan Sun, University of Delaware