Race, Place, and Police Violence: The Role of Racial Residential Segregation in Fatal Police Shootings

• In Event: 1451 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Racial Segregation

Abstract

Police violence continues to be one of the most widely debated topics in contemporary American society. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement following the highly publicized deaths of unarmed Black men has further fueled debates surrounding race and police. In this study, we examine the role of racial residential segregation in fatal police shootings. City-level data from the U.S. Census, as well as data on police killings were obtained from Mapping Police Violence (.org) and analysed. Based on index measures of dissimilarity of the 25 largest cities in the United States, we do not find support that more racially segregated cities have more cases of fatal police shootings. Instead, we find support for the racial threat hypothesis, in that, cities that are less racially segregated appear to have more instances of fatal police shootings. These findings are further explored and discussed.

Authors

• Stephanie Jones, University of California, Irvine

• Carol Walther, Northern Illinois University

• Rodrigo Dominguez-Martinez, University of Maryland, College Park