An Examination of the Effects of Administrative Policies on Racial Disparities and Civilian Fatalities in Officer-Involved Shootings of Unarmed Civilians

• In Event: Profiling and Understanding Police Shootings in Metropolitan America

Abstract

Although policing scholars have established the effectiveness of restrictive administrative policies on reducing officer-involved shootings (OIS) and related racial disparities, none of them specifically examined whether department policies that restrict the use of force can reduce OIS of unarmed civilians where there is a greater potential for de-escalation. From the perspective of organizational development, training, guidelines, and disciplines and rewards foster values and model behaviors. actions Using data derived from Gun Violence Archive and Use of Force Policy databases, this study aims to investigate the impact of the restrictiveness of use of force policies implemented on the likelihood of OIS of unarmed citizens, the fatality of OIS of unarmed civilians, and racial disparities in both the occurrence and fatality of OIS of unarmed civilians. Cases will be drawn from the 100 largest police departments in the U.S. An ordinal scale will be created to capture the entire continuum of restrictiveness of extant policies. Logistic regression will be performed to model hypothesized relationships while removing disturbances from known confounders. Findings will help police departments rethink this problem and develop evidence-based revisions to their existing policies.

Authors

• Yuchen Hou, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Frank S Pezzella, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• Hung-En Sung, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY