The Past as Prologue: Police Stops and Legacies of Complaints About Neighborhood Police Misconduct

• Published date: 01 October 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/21533687221140553
• Author: Bill McCarthy,John Hagan,Daniel Herda,Wesley G. Skogan
• Date: 01 October 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Past as Prologue: Police

Stops and Legacies of

Complaints About

Neighborhood Police

Misconduct

Bill McCarthy

1

, John Hagan

2

,

Daniel Herda

3

, and Wesley G. Skogan

4

Abstract

Quantitative analyses show that police stop and frisks are highly concentrated by

neighborhood. Interview and ethnographic studies show that police routinely share

information about neighborhood attributes including crime rates and demographic

characteristics such as racial and ethnic composition and economic conditions.

Investigations suggest that police also share information about complaints against

them. Our analysis bridges these three literatures and examines whether a neighbor-

hood’s historical and contemporary complaints about police mistreatment are a sig-

nif‌icant source of police stops. Our research focuses on complaints and stops in

Chicago. We f‌ind that stops are more frequent in neighborhoods where historical

and contemporary complaints are high, as well as in communities with high concen-

trations of economically disadvantaged, Hispanic, and especially Black residents. We

f‌ind that these associations hold net of potential sources of spuriousness, including

prior police stops and crime. Police perceptions of the race of the person stopped

contextualize the relationships between stops and complaints: they are exacerbated

for people the police identif‌ied as Black. Our f‌indings suggest that complaints and

the narratives they engender may be enduring systemic sources of bias in police

behavior.

1

School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University Newark, Newark, NJ, USA

2

American Bar Foundation & Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

3

Sociology, Merrimack College, North Andover, MA, USA

4

Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bill McCarthy, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University Newark, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: wm307@scj.rutgers.edu

Article

Race and Justice

2024, Vol. 14(4) 518-542

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/21533687221140553

journals.sagepub.com/home/raj

Keywords

police complaints, narratives, police stops, race and policing, Chicago

A growing body of research documents the disproportionate use of stop and frisks

(hereafter stops) by police against racial minorities (ACLU, 2015; Fagan et al.,

2016; Kramer & Remster, 2018, 2022; Rios et al. 2020). A smaller set of studies con-

siders neighborhood attributes, demonstrating that stops are more frequent in racially

segregated and economically distressed communities.

Interview and ethnographic research show that law enforcement off‌icers develop

and share narratives about the neighborhoods they police; they use these narratives

to distinguish communities for surveillance, control, and intervention (e.g., Beckett

et al., 2006; Herbert, 1997; Skolnick 1966; Stuart 2016). Police also share information

about resident complaints f‌iled against them (e.g., U.S. Department of Justice, 2017).

We draw on this research, on police stops, narratives, and complaints, in an analysis of

policing in Chicago.

Chicago police use stops to an alarming degree. In the summer of 2014, they

recorded more than 250,000 stops that did not result in arrest, about four times the

number police made in New York City in 2011 (ACLU, 2015, 2017); at that time,

New York had more than three times as many people as Chicago. Chicago also has

a long history of well-publicized resident complaints about police misconduct (Dale,

2016; Lindberg, 1991).

We begin our examination with a discussion of narratives documented in ethnog-

raphies and interviews. We then review research on stops, and on police misconduct

and complaints. We highlight an infamous example of police misconduct in

Chicago and a narrative it fostered. We build on this research with a macrolevel,

processual, and time-dependent analysis of census tract variation in police stops

and complaints. We use stop data from 2016 and 2017 and complaint data from

two periods: 1980–1994 and 2012 through 2014. Thus, we consider both proximate

and long-lasting links between complaints and stops, net of differences in crime,

prior stops, and structural characteristics. Positive associations between stops and

complaints are consistent with the thesis that police develop neighborhood narra-

tives about resident complaints and that these narratives inf‌luence their actions,

including the use of stops. Our analysis documents associations between stops

and complaints; it also shows that these relationships are pronounced for people

whom the police identif‌ied as Black.

Neighborhood Narratives

People describe neighborhoods in terms of history, demographics, characteristics of

buildings and streets, the ways residents interact, and the activities that take place

there, including crime (Quillian & Pager, 2001; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004) and

policing (Bell, 2020; Sampson, 2013). People incorporate these descriptions into nar-

ratives; stories that link different parts of their worlds (Small, 2004), reveal

McCarthy et al. 519