scholarly journals Network Position and Police Who Shoot

Author(s):  
Linda Zhao ◽  
Andrew V. Papachristos

This study applies the growing field of network science to explore whether police violence is associated with characteristics of an officer’s social networks and his or her placement within those networks. To do this, we re-create the network of police misconduct for the Chicago Police Department using more than 38,442 complaints filed against police officers between 2000 and 2003. Our statistical models reveal that officers who shoot at civilians are often “brokers” within the social networks of policing, occupying important positions between other actors in the network and often connecting otherwise disconnected parts of the social structure between other officers within larger networks of misconduct. This finding holds, even net measures of officer activity, career movement, and sociodemographic background. Our finding suggest that policies and interventions aimed at curbing police shootings should include not only individual assessments of risk but also an understanding of officers’ positions within larger social networks.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wood ◽  
Tom Tyler ◽  
Andrew V Papachristos ◽  
Jonathan Roth ◽  
Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna

Wood et al. (2020) studied the rollout of a procedural justice training program in the Chicago Police Department and found large and statistically significant impacts on complaints and sustained complaints against police officers and police use of force. This document describes a subtle statistical problem that led the magnitude of those estimates to be inflated. We then re-analyze the data using a methodology that corrects for this problem. The re-analysis provides less strong conclusions about the effectiveness of the training than the original study: although the point estimates for most outcomes and specifications are negative and of a meaningful magnitude, the confidence intervals typically include zero or very small effects. On the whole, we interpret the data as providing suggestive evidence that procedural justice training reduced the use of force, but no statistically significant evidence for a reduction in complaints or sustained complaints.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 1028-1067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob William Faber ◽  
Jessica Rose Kalbfeld

Reports of citizen complaints of police misconduct often note that officers are rarely disciplined for alleged misconduct. The perception of little officer accountability contributes to widespread distrust of law enforcement in communities of color. This project investigates how race and segregation shape the outcomes of allegations made against the Chicago Police Department (CPD) between 2011 and 2014. We find that complaints by black and Latino citizens and against white officers are less likely to be sustained. We show neighborhood context interacts with complainant characteristics: Incidents alleged by white citizens in high–crime and predominantly black neighborhoods are more likely to be sustained. These findings provide context for understanding tensions between communities of color and the CPD. These results are consistent with theories that individual and institutional actors prioritize white victimhood and reflect the neighborhood effects literature stressing the interaction between individual and contextual factors in shaping outcomes.


Author(s):  
Sam Mitrani

This chapter examines Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison's reorganization of the Chicago Police Department to increase its legitimacy and usefulness during the first half of the 1880s. The events of the 1870s set the stage for an unprecedented strengthening of the police department in the first half of the 1880s. At the beginning of the decade, the police force was undermanned and lacked legitimacy among the majority of Chicago's population. The police were chastised by elite observers for corruption and inefficiency and viewed by the working class as little more than servants of the rich. This chapter discusses the measures adopted by Harrison to rehabilitate the police department's image, such as improving police technology; maintaining police neutrality in strikes; initiating civil service reform; giving the department a new set of social-service responsibilities; giving the police new incentives; and hiring a more ethnically representative group of police officers.


Author(s):  
Sam Mitrani

This chapter examines how the Eight-hour strikes of 1886 and the Haymarket bombing transformed the Chicago Police Department into a much stronger institution. It begins with a discussion of the Haymarket affair and how it led to massive strikes for the eight-hour workday that began on May 1, 1886. It then considers how the Haymarket bombing changed what it meant to be a member of the Chicago Police Department as well as the relationship between the police, the press, and the city government. It shows that the Haymarket and its aftermath consolidated a positive image of the Chicago Police Department in the eyes of the respectable citizens of the city. This shift facilitated some institutional changes that favored police officers, such as the allocation of funds for a pension, improvements in police buildings, and expansion of the force. But most of all, only citizens willing to risk being identified with the anarchists would criticize the institution itself.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311987979 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wood ◽  
Daria Roithmayr ◽  
Andrew V. Papachristos

Conventional explanations of police misconduct generally adopt a microlevel focus on deviant officers or a macrolevel focus on the top-down organization of police departments. Between these levels are social networks of misconduct. This study recreates these networks using data on 16,503 complaints and 15,811 police officers over a six-year period in Chicago. We examine individual-level factors associated with receiving a complaint, the basic properties of these misconduct networks, and factors related to officer co-naming in complaints. We find that the incidence of police misconduct is associated with attributes including race, age, and tenure and that almost half of police officers are connected in misconduct ties in broader networks of misconduct. We also find that certain dyadic factors, especially seniority and race, strongly predict network ties and the incidence of group misconduct. Our results provide actionable information regarding possible ways to leverage the co-complaint network structure to reduce misconduct.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Mancik ◽  
Karen F. Parker ◽  
Kirk R. Williams

Only a handful of macro-level studies of homicide clearance exist, and the impact of community characteristics is mixed. In addition, community members are critical to clearances, but the willingness of residents to unite for the collective goal of aiding in investigations (via collective efficacy) remains to be tested. Combining data from the Chicago Police Department, Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), and U.S. Census, we estimate the effect of collective efficacy on homicide clearances in Chicago neighborhoods, while taking into account neighborhood characteristics and case composition. Results indicate that economic disadvantage, residential stability, and victimization significantly decrease homicides clearances, while collective efficacy increases clearances.


2019 ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Joe Kraus

This chapter documents Lenny Patrick’s growing paranoia by 1974. This was a pivotal year—the twenty-fifth since the death of Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick’s own rise to power. Everyone knew that and, for practical purposes, such knowledge mattered. It meant people made way for him; that they understood he had influence to help in shady business; and that they acceded to his suggestions, requests, or threats. In a legal sense, though, the difference between knowledge and proof was everything. Until law enforcement had hard evidence against him, he was a free man. And by 1974 the FBI and Chicago Police Department had been trying to collect such evidence for at least fifteen years through sustained campaigns of surveillance, wiretapping, and harassment. Wherever Patrick went, someone was trying to track him. He had had a long run as boss of Chicago Jewish organized crime, but the net was tightening around him.


2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 157-160
Author(s):  
Bocar Ba ◽  
Jeffrey Grogger

Many police jurisdictions have recently expanded their Taser arsenals with a goal of reducing officer-involved shootings. We analyze substitution between Tasers and firearms by means of an event study made possible by a policy change at the Chicago Police Department. Before March 2010, only sergeants and field training officers had access to Tasers; after that date, they were made available to patrol officers. We find that the change in Taser policy led to a large increase in Taser use, but not to a decrease in the use of firearms.


Author(s):  
Sam Mitrani

This chapter examines how the Chicago Police Department was transformed by its struggle with the city's anarchist and socialist movement during the 1870s and 1880s. Compared with the department's interaction with the wider labor movement and the working class generally, the relationship between the police and the militant workers' organizations varied solely in degree. The police and the anarchists consistently faced each other with unmistakable hostility. The first real mass confrontation between the anarchists and the police took place during the 1877 upheaval, when the police broke up their meetings with violence. But in the 1880s, the anarchist organizations grew rapidly in size and increasingly set themselves against the police. This chapter shows that the conflict between the police and the anarchists shaped the development of the Chicago Police Department, in part due to the threat of mass strikes, riots, and revolution that pushed the city's elite to seek a strong force that could be relied on to respond to the workers' movement.


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