Beyond Force: Reconciling Police Legitimacy and Protest Management - CANCELLED

• In Event: Protest, Policing, and Public Narratives

Abstract

Protest policing remains one of the most consequential challenges facing modern democratic policing. As American cities grapple with the aftershocks of unprecedented protest waves and police response, police-community relationships remain tumultuous. Research highlights the importance of collaboration between police and protesters to mitigate large-scale violence, further suggesting that dialogue is more effective at facilitating First Amendment rights than formal social control measures. 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 employ factorial vignettes that systematically vary police tactics and protest contexts to measure how specific elements of police behavior influence public perceptions of legitimacy. The findings of this study hold important implications for protest policing, as well as the theoretical bounds of procedural justice, legitimacy, and protest management theories.

Authors

• Michaela R. Flippin, Western Connecticut State University

• Logan P. Kennedy, East Carolina University