Race, Crime, and the Micro‐Ecology of Deadly Force

• Published date: 01 February 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12174
• Date: 01 February 2016

RESEARCH ARTICLE

MICRO-ECOLOGY OF DEADLY FORCE

Race, Crime, and the Micro-Ecology

of Deadly Force

David Klinger

Richard Rosenfeld

Daniel Isom

Michael Deckard

University of Missouri—St. Louis

Research Summary

Limitations in data and research on the use of firearms by police officers in the United

States preclude sound understanding of the determinants of deadly force in police

work. The current study addresses these limitations with detailed case attributes and a

microspatial analysis of police shootings in St. Louis, MO, between 2003 and 2012.

The results indicate that neither the racial composition of neighborhoods nor their level

of economic disadvantage directly increase the frequency of police shootings, whereas

levels of violent crime do—but only to a point. Police shootings are less frequentin areas

with the highest levels of criminal violence than in those with midlevels of violence.

We offer a provisional interpretation of these results and call for replications in other

settings.

Policy Implications

Nationwide replications of the current research will require the establishment of a

national database of police shootings. Informative assessments of a single agency’spolicies

and practices require comparative information from other agencies. We recommend

specific data elements to be included in such an information system that would shed

further empirical light on the interconnections among race, crime, and police use of

Direct correspondence to David Klinger, Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—St. Louis,

One University Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63121 (e-mail: KlingerD@msx.umsl.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12174 C2015 American Society of Criminology 193

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 1

Research Article Micro-Ecology of Deadly Force

deadly force. The database also would contribute to the development of evidence-based

policies and procedures on deadly force—an urgent public priority in light of recent

controversial police shootings across the United States.

Keywords

race, crime, ecology, police, deadly force

The use of deadly force by police officers has recently emerged as the most visible

and controversial aspect of the American criminal justice system. The protests and

related civil unrest after the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson

in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, MO, in August 2014 captured the nation’s attention

and led to the convening of The President’sTask Force on 21st Century Policing.1Boththe

visibility of police shootings and the public concern about the issue have grown since the

summer of 2014 as other instances in which police officers shot citizens captured widespread

media attention. Officer-involved shootings that preceded the Fergusonincident, such as the

shooting of James Boyd by officers of the Albuquerque, NM, police department, received

renewed public attention. Subsequent incidents in other cities, such as the shooting of

Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH, have added to general concerns about the use of deadly

force by America’spolice officers and have prompted many questions about officer-involved

shootings. Chief among these questions are the following: How often do American police

officers use deadly force against citizens? And what is the role of citizen race in the deadly

force picture? Unfortunately, neither question can be answered satisfactorily because existing

national data on police use of deadly force have critical limitations that render sound

empirical inquiry into these (and related) questions essentially impossible.

Many commentators have expressed astonishment at the paltry state of existing in-

formation systems on police use of deadly force. Even the Director of the Federal Bureau

of Investigation (FBI) was surprised to learn that his own agency could not give him an

accurate count of police shootings across the nation (Comey, 2015). As we will discuss in

this article, prior academic research based on the flawed data that do exist has produced

mixed results regarding the role of race in police use of deadly force. Some studies have

found that race is unrelated to police killings, whereas others have reported that race mat-

ters. Many studies also have reported a link between crime rates and police killings, but

such studies often have not incorporated controls for other influences, including the racial

composition and socioeconomic characteristics of the places studied. In sum, the available

data and prior research do not permit sound assessments of the social determinants of the

use of deadly force by the police, racial disparities in police shootings, or the degree to

which racial disparities may reflect biased or discriminatory police behavior. Therefore, they

1. See cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=2761.

194 Criminology & Public Policy