Does Minority Representation in Police Agencies Reduce Assaults on the Police?

Am J Crim Just (2016) 41:402423

DOI 10.1007/s12103-016-9338-6

Turgut Ozkan1 & John L. Worrall1 & Alex R. Piquero1

Received: 9 December 2015 /Accepted: 21 January 2016 / Published online: 4 February 2016# Southern Criminal Justice Association 2016

Abstract Following recent high-profile deaths of unarmed African American suspects at the hands of police, a number of reforms have been proposed, among them improved minority representation in the ranks of law enforcement organizations. Previous research has explored the effects of minority representation on complaints against the police and other behaviors, but very few studies have examined violence toward the police. We merged several data sources together and tested the hypothesis that minority representation within police departments is inversely associated with assaults against the police. In an extension of prior research, we also conducted separate analyses for African American, Hispanic, and Asian officer representation. The results did not support the expectation that diversity within police organizations results in improved police-citizen interactions, as measured by assaults on police. This study is one of the few to examine how different measures of minority representation in police agencies relates to assaults on the police.

Keywords Minority representation . Police agencies . Assaults on police

Introduction

How could a community with a sizable minority presence be served by a police force that is almost entirely white? Such concerns have recently been voiced in a number of media outlets (Badger, Keating, & Elliott, 2014; Jeremy & Haeyoun, 2015), particularly after the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and subsequent reactions/events in New York, Baltimore, and elsewhere. Considerable debate has centered on whether the police have enough diversity in their ranks (and are reflective of the communities they

* Alex R. Piquero [email protected]

1 University of Texas at Dallas, Criminology, 800 W. Campbell Rd., GR31, Richardson,

TX 75080-3021, USA

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serve) and whether this diversity is related to improved police-citizen interactions. The general expectation is that improved minority representation in police departments enhances police credibility (Weitzer, 2015) and makes law enforcement more effective (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015a, b, pp.8889). Unfortunately, the empirical evidence on which to base such claims is...