Complaining while Black: Racial Disparities in the Adjudication of Complaints Against the Police

• In Event: Racism in Policing - Discourses of the State and Discourses of Resistance

Abstract

Many police departments have processes through which officers can ostensibly be held accountable for improper or illegal activity. Reports of how citizen complaints are adjudicated often note that officers are rarely disciplined. Furthermore, several recent, high-profile incidents of alleged police brutality involved officers against whom numerous complaints had previously been lodged—suggesting that changes in the process of complaint adjudication may prevent such incidents and improve community relations. This project investigates how race shapes the outcomes of allegations made against the Chicago Police Department between 2011 and 2014. We find that complaints by black and Latino citizens and against white officers are less likely to result in sanction. Additionally, we show neighborhood context can interact with both complainant and officer characteristics to influence outcomes. Alleged incidents by white citizens in high crime and predominantly black neighborhoods are more likely to result in sanction. These disparities help provide context for understanding tensions between communities of color and the largely-white Chicago Police Department—and constitute an important flaw in a procedure supposedly designed to enforce accountability upon those empowered with the right to take human life.

Authors

• Jacob William Faber, New York University

• Jessica Rose Kalbfeld, New York University