Will More Black Cops Matter? Officer Race and Police‐Involved Homicides of Black Citizens

• Author: Jill Nicholson‐Crotty,Sean Nicholson‐Crotty,Sergio Fernandez
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12734
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

206 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 2, pp. 206–216. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12734.

Sergio Fernandez is associate

professor in the School of Public and

Environmental Affairs at Indiana University,

Bloomington, and visiting professor in

the Department of Public Management

and Governance at the University of

Johannesburg, South Africa. His research

focuses on organizational behavior in the

public sector, government contracting

and procurement, and representative

bureaucracy.

E-mail: sefernan@indiana.edu

Jill Nicholson-Crotty is associate

professor in the School of Public and

Environmental Affairs at Indiana University,

Bloomington. Her research focuses on

the management of public and nonprofit

organizations and on the impact of race,

gender, and representation on the outcomes

of public programs.

E-mail: jillnich@indiana.edu

Sean Nicholson-Crotty is professor

in the School of Public and Environmental

Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington.

His research focuses on the management

of public organizations, intergovernmental

relations, and the diffusion of policy

innovations among governments.

E-mail: seanicho@indiana.edu

Abstract : In response to police-involved homicides of black citizens in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere, some have

suggested that more black police officers could reduce the number of these events. The authors offer an empirical test of

this assertion. The literature offers conflicting expectations: some studies suggest that increased representation reduces

discrimination, while others suggest that it increases discrimination. The authors reconcile these perspectives using the

concept of critical mass, which leads to the expectation that an increase in black officers will reduce the number of

black citizens killed in encounters with police, but only once the proportion of black officers is sufficiently large. We

test this expectation in analyses of recently compiled data on police-involved homicides in 2014 and 2015 in large

U.S. cities.

Practitioner Point

• Increasing the proportion of the force that is black does not appear to be an effective strategy for reducing

police-involved homicides of black citizens in most large cities.

Sean Nicholson-Crotty

Jill Nicholson-Crotty

Indiana University, Bloomington

Sergio Fernandez

Indiana University, Bloomington

University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Will More Black Cops Matter?

Officer Race and Police-Involved Homicides of Black Citizens

O n August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot

to death by Officer Darren Wilson of the

Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department. The

incident touched off days of protest in Ferguson and

a heated national debate about the treatment of black

Americans by the police, thanks in part to a number

of now well-known specifics. The most salient of

these are that Officer Wilson was white; Michael

Brown was black and unarmed; there was a lack of

clear evidence that Mr. Brown was doing anything

that would have justified his killing; videos of his

body lying in the street were replayed repeatedly by

media around the nation; and a grand jury failed to

indict Officer Wilson for Mr. Brown ’ s death.

1

In the 12 months after Michael Brown ’ s death, 15

similar incidents of an unarmed black person being

killed by police, or dying in police custody under

suspicious circumstances, received national media

coverage. In some of these cases the officers were

indicted, in others they were exonerated, and in

others investigations are still on going. Nonetheless,

the steady stream of stories about black deaths at

the hands of the police has further eroded already

strained relationships between police and black

citizens in many urban areas. It has also convinced

more white Americans that this is a major policy and/

or administrative problem.

2 Most importantly, it has

sparked a sustained debate among members of both

races about potential solutions.

One of the most frequently proposed remedies to the

problem of police-involved homicides of black citizens

has been the creation of more diverse police forces or

ones that are more representative of the communities

they serve. Black and white community members

around the country have demanded in written and

public forums that city governments hire more police

of color (see, e.g., Jackson 2014 ; Ouriel 2014 ).

Communities across the country, from tiny Brick

Township, New York, to Los Angeles, California, have

announced initiatives to do so. The New York Times

ran a major story suggesting that these efforts are

warranted in even the largest cities, where they claim

that police forces are typically 30 percent more white

than the communities they patrol (Ashkenas and Park

2015 ).

More black officers are obviously seen, in part, as a

way to directly reduce unnecessary violence between

police and citizens. As a Ferguson resident said in

the days after Michael Brown ’ s shooting, “We want

answers, we want justice in our community, we

want diversity” (Bouie 2014 ). Increased diversity or

representation of minorities is also proposed as a

way to indirectly reduce violence by enhancing the

legitimacy of the police force within communities.

Two months after the shooting of Michael Brown, the

mayor of Ferguson announced that the city would be

hiring additional black officers in an effort to make

the force “more reflective of the demographics of