Network Position and Police Who Shoot

• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716219901171
• Author: Andrew V. Papachristos,Linda Zhao
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Patterns of Fatal Police Shootings

ANNALS, AAPSS, 687, January 2020 89

DOI: 10.1177/0002716219901171

Network

Position and

Police Who

Shoot

By

LINDA ZHAO

and

ANDREW V. PAPACHRISTOS

901171ANN The Annals of The American AcademyNetwork Position and Police Who Shoot

research-article2020

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 posi-

tions 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 sociodemo-

graphic 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.

Keywords: police; police misconduct; social networks;

brokerage; betweenness

The most common explanations for acts of

police violence tend to focus on the indi-

vidual attributes of officers who use excessive or

lethal force as compared to those who do not,

such as officer age (Chappell and Piquero 2004;

Terrill and Mastrofski 2002), race (Fyfe 1981;

Linda Zhao is a PhD candidate in the Department

of Sociology at Harvard University. She studies how

population configurations of attributes such as ethnicity

and socioeconomic class come together to shape various

forms of social integration. Her research also investigates

how interpersonal networks predict social outcomes and

diffusion.

Andrew V. Papachristos is a professor of sociology and

faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at

Northwestern University. He is also a fellow at the

Institute for Policy Research. His research applies

network science to the study of neighborhood and

police violence, neighborhood change, and violence

prevention efforts.

Correspondence: lzhao@fas.harvard.edu

90 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Ridgeway 2016; Worden 1996), gender (Bloch and Anderson 1974; Novak,

Brown, and Frank 2011), experience (M. White and Kane 2013), and psychologi-

cal background (Brandl, Stroshine, and Frank 2001; Wolfe and Piquero 2011).

Much of this prior work, however, often takes for granted the inherent networked

nature of policing. Simply put, police work is group work.

Police organizations, by design, create teams and groups of varying—and often

nested or interconnected—levels. Officers are part of districts, units, or teams;

and they are almost always assigned partners. Furthermore, from their time in

the academy to their everyday lives in squad cars and on the beat, police officers

rely on the formal and informal ties with fellow officers not only to carry out their

required tasks but also for formal and informal learning. In much the same way,

police deviance and violence—just like deviance more generally—might be asso-

ciated with the contours of officers’ social networks. Several recent studies have

begun to show that the structure of a police officer’s network is also correlated

with misconduct, including the use of force (Oullet et al. 2019; Quispe-

Torreblanca and Stewart 2019).

This study expands this growing body of network-oriented research by asking

whether police officers who shoot their guns occupy a unique position within

networks of alleged police misconduct. If networks influence police shootings

and other types of use of force, then it might be that officers who shoot are

exposed to different sorts of situations, fellow officers, information, beliefs,

norms, and so on within their networks. They may also occupy different sorts of

positions within networks that increase their probability of shooting.

Our study examines police violence using a structural approach that also

accounts for some individual and district-level officer characteristics. We use a

unique set of data on one of the largest police agencies in the United States: the

Chicago Police Department (CPD). Using publicly available data on all reports

of alleged police misconduct over a span of four years, we are able to track offic-

ers who are associated with each other through joint activity that resulted in a

report of misconduct. We investigate whether network position within these

networks predict increased risk of subsequent shooting.

Specifically, we investigate whether a position as a broker within misconduct

networks, where an officer is on the shortest path of associations that connect

other pairs of officers, marks higher risk of shooting net of differences in officer

activity (such as policing in certain districts, or involvement in activities that are

more likely to receive complaints) and career movement (related to officers’

salaries or unit assignment over time). These sorts of network insights offer

potentially new points of intervention aimed at reducing police shootings that

consider the impact of individual, organizational, and network factors.

A Networked Approach to Police Violence

A long history of research documents the group nature of crime and delinquency

(Warr 2002). Recent developments in network science have ushered in ways to