Clearing crimes in the aftermath of police lethal violence

• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Aki Roberts,John M. Roberts
• Date: 01 August 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12592

DOI: ./-. 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Clearing crimes in the aftermath of police lethal

violence

Aki Roberts John M. Roberts Jr.

Department of Sociology, University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee,

Wisconsin, USA

Correspondence

Aki Roberts, Department of Sociology,

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,

Milwaukee, WI, USA.

Email: aki@uwm.edu

Abstract

Research summary: Police use of violence may

threaten police agencies’ effectiveness by reinforc-

ing residents’ legal cynicism and disengagement from

police. We examinedpolice lethal violence against Black

people and its relationship with clearance by arrest in

a sample of Black victims’ crime incidents in over 

jurisdictions in , via Mapping Police Violence and

the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

Wecalculated each crime incident’s unique time-varying

exposure to police lethal violence, with an accompany-

ing agency-level measure that averaged this incident-

level measure. Under our original measures, multilevel

survival analysis showed a statistically significant asso-

ciation with clearance for the agency-level average

exposure measure, but not for the time-varyingincident-

level exposure measure. Subsequent exploratory analy-

ses suggested a possibly shorter-lived relationship with

incident-level police lethal violence exposure, which

should be investigated in future research.

Policy implications: Agency-level findings encour-

age the adoption of reforms in policing practices and

organizational characteristics that could enhance police

legitimacy and citizen cooperation and promote per-

ceptions of procedural justice in the Black community.

Exploratory indications of a shorter-lived relationship

between police lethal violence and clearance will, if

Criminology & Public Policy. ;:–. ©  American Society of Criminology. 619wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp

620 ROBERTS  ROBERT S

supported in further research, call for agencies to think

carefully about adjusting detective work and resource

allocations during the critical period following a police

lethal violence event. A negative relationship between

clearance rates and police lethal violence suggests a

mutual interest of police agencies and activists in the

reduction of police lethal violence.

KEYWORDS

clearance, NIBRS, police shootings, police use of force

1 INTRODUCTION

Recent events and the Black Lives Matter movement have sparked great academic and popu-

lar interest in police violence and police-community relations.One possible consequence of

well-publicized police violence against Black people is increased legal cynicism in the Black com-

munity, leading to citizen disengagementfrom police (Desmond et al., ; Kirk & Papachristos,

). Citizen disengagement is in turn likely to have a detrimental impact on police work, as

many police functions depend on citizen cooperation.

One domain in which the link between police work and citizen cooperation is especially salient

is crime solvability, or crime clearance by arrest.The crime clearance literature has consis-

tently highlighted the vital role of citizen cooperation in police investigations leading to arrests

(e.g., Carter & Carter, ;Keel et al., ). To the extent that police violence against Black peo-

ple hinders citizen engagement with police and threatens Black residents’ cooperation with crime

investigations, it would be expectedto reduce clearance of crime incidents involving Black victims

and Black associates. In the United States, Black homicide victims’ cases are, descriptively,much

less likely to be cleared than those of their White counterparts (Roberts & Lyons, ), although

multivariate analyses that control for other incident characteristics have reported mixed results

on the Black–White difference (e.g., Petersen,; Roberts & Lyons, ;Vaughn,). In any

case, with American clearance rates already disturbingly low (Roberts,), all potential barriers

to crime clearance are of great concern.

But although this link between police violence and reduced crime clearance seems sensible,

it is not obvious, due to the complex and at times paradoxical relationship between police and

the Black community. Despite widespread legal cynicism, Black residents rely heavily on police

(e.g., Carr et al., ; Hagan et al., ), and often reconcile this reliance with a simultaneous

negative general perception of police by exercising “situational trust” (Bell, ; Zoorob, ).

Decisions to report crime or cooperate with police involvecomplicated considerations of potential

costs and benefits in specific situations (e.g., Bell, ; Felson et al., ; Gottfredson & Got-

tfredson, ), in which critical views of police may be just one element among many that could

influence behavior. Empirical evidence on police violence and citizens’ crime reporting is mixed

(Cohen et al., ; Desmond et al., ;Moyer, in, press; Zoorob, ),and these observations

suggest that police violence may not have a discernible relationship with crime clearance.

These contrasting views highlight the importance of empirical investigation of the relation-

ship between police violence and crime clearance, especially in the American context marked by