Abstract
Perceptions of police legitimacy have a significant impact on reported crime rates and public order, particularly as it relates to police searches and seizures. Research has shown that variations in community demographics play a vital role in how the police are perceived by their constituents, as well as how crime is differentially enforced in these communities. One limitation from this line of research is the tendency to focus on racial differences (e.g., Black vs. White), with less attention devoted to ethnic variations. This study examines how perceptions of police searches and seizures (as defined by U.S. Supreme Court case law) compare in a majority-Hispanic community in the Southwest and a majority-White community in the Northeast. We also explore the differential perceptions toward police legitimacy as defined by the type of police search or seizure; that is, whether vehicle stops and searches are viewed as more or less legitimate compared to person and residential searches and whether such views vary according to race and ethnicity, as well as region. Results indicate that perceptions of police search legality are mediated by region. Differences in racial perceptions of the police were found among respondents in the Northeast, with African-Americans least likely to favor police search policies compared to Hispanics and Whites. However, no such differences were found in the Southwest. The findings are discussed within the larger context of police-community relations research.
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Notes
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We field-tested the instrument with a group of ten police officers and made some changes prior to deploying it to the study population. All of the participants acknowledged that the scenarios represented the “most essential facts” of the search once alterations had been made. Kessler (2009) used a similar approach to gauge perceptions of citizens on whether they felt “free to leave” after having been confronted by a police officer while riding a bus or walking on the sidewalk. Building on this instrument, we were careful to include as many of the key legal issues of each search as possible: (1) whether consent, plain view, or any other exceptions to the normal probable cause requirement applied to the search, and (2) whether the facts arising to probable cause or reasonable suspicion were sufficiently identified.
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Can, S.H., Frantzen, D. (2019). Search and Seizure Jurisprudence: Community Perceptions of Police Legitimacy in the United States. In: Albrecht, J.F., den Heyer, G., Stanislas, P. (eds) Policing and Minority Communities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19182-5_8
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