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Stop, Frisk, and Assault? Racial Disparities in Police Use of Force During Investigatory Stops

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Rory Kramer  and
Brianna Remster
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Abstract

Black civilians are more likely to be stopped by police than white civilians net of relevant factors. Less is known about whether or not racial inequalities exist in police use of force during stops. Using data on over 2 million police stops in New York City from 2007 to 2014 and drawing on literatures on race, policing, and the Black Lives Matter movement, we test hypotheses regarding the associations between race, civilian behavior, age, and police use of force. We also investigate whether recent reforms reduced any observed inequality in police violence during stops. Findings show that Black and White civilians experience fundamentally different interactions with police. Black civilians are particularly more likely to experience potential lethal force when police uncover criminal activity and this disparity is greatest for black youth compared to white youth. Overall, if there were no racial disparities in police use of force, we estimate that approximately 61,000 fewer stops of black civilians would have included police use of force and 1,000 fewer stops would have included potential lethal force from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, while reform efforts substantially reduced the number of stops annually, inequalities in police use of force persist.

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Articles
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Law & Society Review , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 960 - 993
Copyright
© 2018 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

We thank Laurie Krivo, Chris Smith, and members of the Penn and Rutgers Sociology Colloquia for helpful feedback and Denise Wilson for research assistance.

References

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Cases Cited

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Floyd v. City of New York, No. 08 Civ. 1034 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).

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