Quick on the Draw

• Author: Wesley G. Jennings,Alex R. Piquero,Jon Maskaly,Christopher M. Donner
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1098611116688066
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Quick on the Draw:

Assessing the

Relationship Between

Low Self-Control and

Officer-Involved Police

Shootings

Christopher M. Donner

1

, Jon Maskaly

2

,

Alex R. Piquero

2

, and

Wesley G. Jennings

3

Abstract

Police officers have a continuum of force options available to them, but, without

question, the most extreme of these options is deadly force. Recent officer-involved

shootings in the United States, and their subsequent media attention, have placed

police use of deadly force at the forefront of political, academic, and policy conver-

sations. While the extant literature has uncovered numerous structural, organiza-

tional, and situational predictors of police shootings, studies to date are more limited

with respect to individual-level factors and have essentially ignored criminological

theoretical constructs. Using Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime as a

theoretical framework, the current study fills a gap in the literature by using personal

and agency records of 1,935 Philadelphia police officers to examine the relationship

between low self-control and officer-involved shootings. The results indicate that

officers with lower self-control are significantly more likely to have been involved

in a police shooting.

1

Loyola University Chicago, IL, USA

2

University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

3

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Christopher M. Donner, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Loyola University Chicago,

1032 W. Sheridan Road, Mundelein Center 805A, Chicago, IL 60660, USA.

Email: cdonner@luc.edu

Police Quarterly

2017, Vol. 20(2) 213–234

!The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1098611116688066

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Keywords

police, use-of-force, shootings, self-control

Introduction

There is a historical context (particularly in America) and a long line of research

that has documented a race-crime stereotype that influences how individuals

react to others, and this stereotype is attributable to an individual’s racial and

ethnic grouping (e.g., Duncan, 1976; Hilton & Von Hippel, 1990). In this vein,

policing historians and scholars have theorized and empirically demonstrated

how this race-crime stereotype (often referred to as implicit bias) is often appar-

ent among police officers (Payne, 2001; Peruche & Plant, 2006). In addition,

a series of shoot or do not shoot experimental studies have provided even further

evidence for the influence of implicit bias on decisions to shoot racial and ethnic

minorities, and these decisions are largely due to the perceptions of racial and

ethnic minorities as aggressive, violent, and dangerous (Correll, Park, Judd, &

Wittenbrink, 2002; Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003; Peruche & Plant, 2006;

Plant & Peruche, 2005; Plant, Peruche, & Butz, 2005).

With recognition of this historical context of race-based policing and race-

crime stereotypes as a backdrop, in recent years, several high-profile incidents of

officer-involved shootings have resparked a national debate on police use of

force in general and as it relates to racial and ethnic minorities in particular

(e.g., Alpert, 2015; Jennings, Fridell, & Lynch, 2014; Jennings, Lynch, & Fridell,

2015). For example, on October 14, 2013, Officer Cardan Spencer shot and

injured Bobby Bennett in Dallas, Texas. On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren

Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. On September

4, 2014, Trooper Sean Groubert shot and injured Levar Jones near Columbia,

South Carolina. On October 20, 2014, Officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed

Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Illinois. One month later, on November 22,

2014, Officer Timothy Loehman shot and killed Tamir Rice in Cleveland,

Ohio. And, on April 4, 2015, Officer Michael Slager shot and killed Walter

Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina. While agency investigations and

court proceedings will ultimately determine—or have already determined—if

these shootings were justified, family members, community residents, politicians,

academics, and police personnel themselves are left with key questions to

answer, such as ‘‘Was the shooting necessary?’’ and ‘‘Did the officer react too

quickly?’’ In other words, was the officer ‘‘quick on the draw?’’

Officer-involved shootings occur in a myriad of situations and, unfortunately,

are not a new phenomenon. However, recent shootings, such as those noted

earlier, and particularly those of unarmed suspects, have gained wide-spread

media attention, aided by both video footage and instantaneous online postings,

have ignited conversations across the country about police behavior, and have

214 Police Quarterly 20(2)