Where Do Cops Stop? A New Dimension to Explore Spatial Patterns of Police Contacts

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241249700
• Author: Cory Schnell,Hunter Boehme
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2024, Vol. 51, No. 9, September 2024, 1320 –1338.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241249700

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2024 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

1320

WHERE DO COPS STOP?

A New Dimension to Explore Spatial Patterns of

Police Contacts

CORY SCHNELL

HUNTER BOEHME

University of South Carolina

While police officers must adapt behavior between places to effectively do their jobs, these decisions could result in some

communities receiving different levels of exposure to the police. This study explores a new spatial measure of police contacts

to observe these differences. We calculate neighborhood-specific Gini coefficients based upon the spatial distribution of

77,752 police-civilian stops at street segments and intersections nested within census tracts in Oakland, California. This coef-

ficient presents a contrast between two divergent distributional patterns—the diffusion of police contacts to more places

across neighborhoods and the concentration of contacts at fewer “hot spot” places within neighborhoods. The most consistent

environmental explanation for these differences was the race/ethnicity of neighborhood residents, which was associated with

the police stopping people across more places. Future research should continue to investigate this finding and examine the

mechanisms that explain why spatial exposure to police contacts changes between places.

Keywords: police contacts; police behavior; neighborhood effects; hot spots; race

The police are a public-facing symbol of the government’s authority in the United States

and are often considered the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. In 2020, over 53

million Americans had direct contact with the police with just under half of those contacts

initiated by police officers (Tapp & Davis, 2022). Contemporary research has established the

process by which people are treated in these interactions by police officers is often more influ-

ential than the outcome of the interaction (see Tyler, 2004). These contacts shape individual’s

perceptions of police legitimacy and broader trust in government authority, which influence

the general safety of communities and an individual’s willingness to cooperate with the police.

Due to these far-reaching implications, police-civilian contacts matter and represent a critical

juncture to examine the impact of the criminal justice system on communities.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: We would like to thank Leigh Grossman and the Oakland Police Department for helping

us access and learn more about the police contact data. Correspondence concerning this article should be

addressed to Cory Schnell, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina,

1305 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA; e-mail: schnellc@mailbox.sc.edu.

1249700CJBXXX10.1177/00938548241249700Criminal Justice and BehaviorSchnell and Boehme / WHERE DO COPS STOP?

research-article2024

Schnell and Boehme / WHERE DO COPS STOP? 1321

There are two main ecological explanations for why some locations could receive

varying numbers of police contacts and different levels of exposure compared to other

places (see Klinger, 1997). For instance, the spatial distribution of police contacts is

influenced by land use and crime reporting. The police are more likely to make contact in

locations where there are more people, facilities, and public spaces (Brantingham &

Brantingham, 1991). Police agencies have become more reliant on using data-driven

strategies such as CompStat and hot spot policing, which efficiently channel resources to

locations that experience the most crime within cities. In contrast, substantial literature

exists that suggests the police might engage in different patterns of contact at places

based on the socio-demographic characteristics of a places’ residents such as race/ethnic-

ity and economic status (see Brunson, 2007). As a result, these communities could experi-

ence either over- or under-policing due to the spatial concentration of these disadvantaged

social groups at locations (Boehme et al., 2020).

This study explores a novel approach to measure the spatial distribution of police-civil-

ian contacts and tests the effectiveness of these traditional ecological perspectives to explain

differences between places. Our analyses examine neighborhood-specific Gini coefficients

to observe the distribution of police contacts at the micro-places nested within these loca-

tions (see O’Brien et al., 2021). These coefficients contrast two divergent possibilities: (1)

there is more concentration of police stops between micro-places within neighborhoods or

(2) there is more diffusion of stops between micro-places within neighborhoods. This study

contributes a new dimension to explore differences in police practices between places.

Therefore, moving beyond using just the frequency of contacts at places (i.e., counts) to

quantify the underlying geographic footprint or spatial exposure of communities to contacts

from the police. In other words, a neighborhood where the police contact civilians across a

wide range of places is materially different from a neighborhood where the police only

contact civilians in a few specific places.

This study examines a core debate about policing by conducting an exploratory test of

the effectiveness of traditional ecological perspectives to explain the spatial variability of

these distributional patterns. Are differences in distributional patterns of police contacts

between places explained by routine police work (e.g., cops follow crime reporting) or

the social characteristics of places (e.g., race/ethnicity influences decisions)? In the after-

math of the death of George Floyd, there has been renewed public attention toward the

intersecting topics of race and policing. Some scholars have since engaged in a critical

reexamination of the central tenets of policing such as whether differences in police

behavior across places is the byproduct of perpetuating a systemic bias against disadvan-

taged communities and not just routine police work (see Bolger et al., 2021). Our analy-

ses conduct a limited but insightful test of these divergent ecological perspectives on

differences in police behavior between places to contribute more evidence to this on-

going debate. This study helps inform discourse around this salient topic in criminal jus-

tice and advances criminological theory by providing preliminary insight into why some

neighborhoods receive different levels of spatial exposure to police contacts compared to

others within urban areas. In addition, the findings from our study can further strengthen

criminal justice policies constructed around either promoting the positive aspects of

police contacts or mitigating the negative aspects of these contacts.