Police, Racism and Culture
The issue of legitimacy among authorities and its effect on whether people obey the lawhas beenwell studied.Most notably, TomTyler and his colleagues (e.g., Tyler, 2004; Tyler & Huo, 2002; Tyler & Wakslak, 2004) have convincingly demonstrated that citizens' perceptions of whether they are fairly and respectfully treated when confronted by legal authority shapes their satisfaction with those experiences. Moreover, perceptions of whether laws and legal institutions are legitimate can also shape the willingness of citizens to abide by the law (Tyler, 1990). It has recently become clear, however, that these patterns are not uniformacross all social groups and that race can play an important role inmediating citizen attitudes toward authority. For example, it has been demonstrated that racial and ethnicminorities aremore likely to distrust the police thanWhites (Tyler &Wakslak, 2004; see also Hagan, Shedd, & Payne, 2005) and may be lesswilling to cooperatewith the policewhen a crime is committed (Carr, Napolitano, & Keating, 2007; Tyler, 2005).
Even though race is related to levels of trust in authority among citizens, it is not clear whether the same pattern holds among police officers themselves. Does race and ethnicity have a similar influence on views of legitimacy and rule adherence among police officers as among the general public? This article considers whether police officers' perceptions of police authority are shaped by race or ethnicity and by their sense of trust in police authority. This article follows a companion piece, which demonstrated that a procedural justice perspective applies to police officers much as it applies to other individuals. That is, police officers' satisfaction with their experiences when a citizen oversight agency reviews complaints against them is shaped more by their perceptions of whether the review process and internal affairs staff are fair than by what happens as a result of the complaint (De Angelis & Kupchik, 2007a). The current research delves more deeply into the issue of how officers' races/ethnicities may shape officers' willingness to comply with decisions made by police command staff.
Procedural justice and police officer acceptance of authority Procedural justice theory posits that individuals' satisfaction with their interactions with authorities are largely a function of how they perceive the process rather than the outcome of their interactions.
Thus an airline passenger may be less likely to become angry at an airline for a flight delay if s/he is given reasonable information and kept comfortable during the delay. Similarly, a citizen who is arrested by a police officer is likely to believe s/he was fairly treated if s/he feels listened to and treated with respect-despite being arrested.
By extension, researchers have found that not only does procedural justice shape satisfaction, but it can also shape one's perception of the legitimacy of authority. This has been demonstrated with regard to citizens' perceptions of legal authorities, especially police. When individuals believe that police are fair in their dealings with people- rather than abusive, confrontational, rude, or biased-theyaremore likely to trust the police, have confidence in the police, support the police, and to view the police as a legitimate authority, overall (see Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler,1990; Tyler&Huo, 2002; Tyler&Wakslak,2004;Wells, 2007).
These perceptions of legitimacy are an integral component of maintaining order, since individuals are more likely to abide by laws they see as fair, and to followthe directives of policewhen they viewthe police as legitimate (Paternoster, Brame, Bachman, & Sherman, 1997;
Tyler, 1990, 2004). This is not a new idea, of course, as it has roots in Weber's (1968) discussion of people voluntarily obeying authority
figures when they believe in the legitimacy of their authority, or that
"they ought to be obeyed" (Tyler, 2004, p. 87). This idea was also explored fifty years ago,when sociologists such as GreshamSykes (1958)
argued that order in prisonsmust bemaintained through consent of the inmates rather than by force alone. Furthermore, the same concept has been used recently in a very different institution, schools, to demonstrate that students are more likely to followschool rules when these rules are clearly communicated and perceived to be consistently and fairly enforced (Bryk & Driscoll, 1988; D. Gottfredson, 2001; G. D. Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005; Mayer & Leone, 1999).
A very small number of recent studies also have begun to explore perceptions of legitimacy among authority figures themselves (Kreisel, 1998; Sviridoff & McElroy, 1989; Walker, 1999). This is an important issue for two reasons. One is that because police officers are in a very different power position relative to non-authorities, it is unclear whether procedural justice similarly shapes their perceptions of fairness and resulting willingness to abide by policing codes of conduct. Two is that if police officers' willingness to abide by codes of conduct is indeed shaped by their perceptions of legitimate authority, understanding the factors that influence this process is an important aspect of training police officers and improving police performance.
In an earlier article (De Angelis & Kupchik, 2007a), the current authors analyzed data from surveys of police officers to demonstrate that procedural justice theory applies to police officers, much as it does to the general public. That research found that police officers' satisfaction with the investigation and adjudication of citizen complaints against them depended more on (1) their perceptions of legitimacy of police command staff and internal affairs, and (2) how fairly they are treated during the process, than it did on the outcomes of the complaint. Additionally, in a recent article by Tyler, Callahan, and Frost (2007), the authors found similar results with regard to law enforcement officers' and soldiers' views of procedural justice and deference to authority. In both groups, perceived legitimacy of authority significantly predicted adherence to rules.
Though the theoretical premise of procedural justice and legitimacy is not new, recent research has done a great deal to clarify the mechanisms through which this process works. One important contribution in particular has been the importance of race and ethnicity in this equation. Recently, work has begun to demonstrate that racial and ethnic minorities harbor more distrust of the police than Whites, at least in part due to perceptions of racial profiling, which is believed to be procedurally unfair (e.g., Tyler &Wakslak, 2004; see also
Hagan et al., 2005). Since this distrust can shape people's willingness to cooperate with the police and call on the police when a crime is committed (Carr et al., 2007; Tyler, 2005), racial disparities in trust of police and perceptions of legitimacy are an important issue to explore.
One important issue that has not been fully explored, however, is whether race and ethnicity have a similar influence on views of legitimacy and rule adherence among police officers as among the general public. Over the last thirty years, numerous print media articles have reported that minority officers are less trusting of police command staff than their White counterparts. Particularly with the rise of minority officer associations in the 1970s and 1980s, it has not been uncommon for newspaper articles to focus on minority officers' concerns about the trustworthiness of police management, particularly in relation to hiring and promotion. For example, in talking about the problem of racial discrimination in promotion decisions in the Arlington, Virginia Police Department, the president of the local Black officers association argued: "The problem is discriminatory practices and attitudes are tolerated by management. And management is involved" (Latimer,1983). Other articles have focused on howminority officers believe that they are unfairly discriminated against through the disciplinary process. In describing the problem of racism in the Baltimore Police Department, a lawyer representing an African American officer contended that: "This police department has had decade after decade of racism… They do it more subtly through the disciplinary process" (Linskey & Fritze, 2008).
Despite the media attention devoted to minority officer concerns over race and racism, far less academic attention has been devoted to the issue. Only a small number of studies had examined minority officer occupational experiences through the use of biographical sketches (Reaves, 1991; Runnels, 1989) and in-depth interviews (Alex, 1969;
Bolton, 2003; Bolton & Feagin, 2004; Holder, Nee, & Ellis, 1999; Leinen, 1984). One theme that consistently appeared among these studies was that minority officers tend to be highly distrustful of command staff. For example, in awidely cited study, Alex (1969) conducted interviewswith forty-one African American officers and found that they were highly cynical toward both their jobs and the motives of command staff. This cynicism emerged largely as a result of the officers' belief that they were being used as symbolic pawns in a larger race relations campaign, and were only assigned to patrol districts in low-income minority neighborhoods rather than middle-class White neighborhoods. Bolton (2003) interviewed a small sample of African American officers in one southern state and found thatminority officers commonly believed that racism and tokenismwere persistent obstacles that routinely hindered the advancement of African American officers. Bolton and Feagin (2004) conducted interviews with fifty African American officers from historically White police departments in several jurisdictions.
They found that, regardless of rank, African American officers tended to exhibit a type of "siege mentality" toward their jobs, in part due to the widespread belief that command staff privileged White officers in both hiring and promotion decisions. Finally,whilemost of the literature had focused on African American officers, Carter (1986) did find similar patterns among Latino officers. In this, he argued that Latino officers were more likely than White officers to believe that the police department command staff discriminated against them when making promotion decisions.
There is also some evidence that heightened distrust increases the willingness of African American officers to challenge police authority on issues relating to work place conditions. Dulaney (1996), in a detailed occupational history of African American police officers, demonstrated that minority officer distrust of command staff helped promote the emergence of Black police unions as a countervailing force to more traditional police unions. Bolton and Feagin (2004) also argued that the persistent distrust of command staff has increased African American officer solidarity and the willingness of minority officers to engage in legal and occupational activism. While suggestive, the literature's discussion of these very broad patterns does not answer the question of whether high levels of distrust leadminority police officers to be less willing to accept and followthe decisionsmade by police command staff.
In an attempt to address these issues, Tyler et al.'s (2007) analyses found no significant effect of race on law enforcement officers' and soldiers' views of procedural justice, perceived legitimacy, or stated adherence to rules. In prior research on the complaint investigation process (De Angelis & Kupchik, 2007a), Latino/a officers had more negative perceptions than others of their treatment by internal affairs staff during their citizen complaint review process, and less trust in citizen oversight overall; yet race/ethnicity did not significantly shape perceived fairness or overall satisfaction with the citizen complaint review process. Since race/ethnicity was not the central focus of the priorwork, the research stopped short of considering further howitmay influence rule adherence among police officers.
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