Who Cares If Police Become Violent? Explaining Approval of Police Use of Force Using a National Sample

Abstract

Understanding police violence is important in part because police violence, if generally tolerated, could transform a society based on law into one governed by political and personal whim. This research asks whether the conflict perspective can explain which groups are more likely to approve of police use of force, and whether several dimensions of power are at issue or just a few. Previous studies have found that race is the most important factor in determining approval of police use of force. Gender, age, class, and other variables have shown mixed results. Using a national sample (1998 General Social Survey), this paper contributes a more comprehensive examination of this issue to the small body of literature in this area. We look at approval of police use of force in five scenarios. Our findings show that minorities and women are more likely to disapprove of police use of force. Supporting a narrow application of conflict theory, other dimensions of power appear not to affect attitudes toward police hitting citizens. Context of violence matters too. When situations are not actively threatening for officers, by near consensus, violence is unacceptable. Disagreement comes from less clear-cut circumstances.

Strike More, Spend Less?: The Correlation between Opinions on Race Specific Government Spending and Feelings towards Police Use of Force

“…The bivariate and regression analysis provide results that are also consistent with the findings of past research (Thompson and Lee 2004). The regression and bivariate correlation produced significant relationships between opinions about government spending on the Black community and approval of police striking citizens.…”

“…Researchers also operationalized conflict theory to find that people of color are not only more likely to disapprove of police use of force (Thompson and Lee 2004;Halim and Stiles 2001) but are also more likely to believe that the criminal justice system is unfair (Hagan and Albonetti 1982). Therefore, people of color tend to lack confidence in the ability of the police to treat people impartially (Weitzer and Tuch 1999).…”

“…Other research (Thompson and Lee 2004) connecting opinions on government spending and police use of force has focused more on the effect of social attitudes on feelings towards police use of force. Social attitude describes political views, amount of confidence in social institutions (banks, Congress, education, medicine and the press) and attitudes on whether the government should assist the poor and improve the condition of Blacks.…”

Lay evaluations of police and civilian use of force: Moral and physical magnitude ratings of officer and civilian actions

“…In particular, we are not aware of any previous research that has investigated the correspondence of lay evaluations of force with the categories used by law enforcement. Moreover, very little research has experimentally studied the effects of beliefs about police legitimacy on evaluations of civilian resistance toward police; instead, the focus has tended to be on police actions or on motivating civilian cooperation (Thompson & Daniel Lee, 2004;Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;Gerber & Jackson, 2017). A general relationship between high-legitimacy and reduced support for vigilante violence has been demonstrated (Jackson, Huq, Bradford, & Tyler, 2013), but we are unaware of any research on legitimacy modulating evaluations of a wide array of specific civilian reactions to policeespecially not in a manner that corresponds to the way actions are described in police training and policy.…”

The New Transparency: Police Violence in the Context of Ubiquitous Surveillance

“…Though public disapproval of police agencies may increase after publicized incidents involving charges of brutality, this disapproval does not become entrenched, especially not among whites (Weitzer, 2002). Not only is there a strong majority approval of police in the United States, this approval is not impacted among whites even when they believe police are brutal and racist (Thompson & Lee, 2004). In keeping with Sir Robert Peel's belief that the public consent and trust are necessary for successful policing, criminological researchers presume its necessity despite so rarely finding it (Reiner, 2010), especially among those populations most intensively policed-Blacks living in segregated urban neighborhoods (Kane, 2005).…”