Police Stops of and Interactions with Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation

Abstract

Following previous research on traffic stops involving police officers with African American and White drivers, a content analysis of 69 recorded stops was conducted in a very different locale of Latino and non-Latino drivers with non-Latino officers. The study was guided by communication accommodation theory, and predicted differences in interactants' communication strategies and stop outcomes based on ethnicity, driver accent, and the level of accommodative and nonaccommodative strategies. The results largely supported the hypotheses and suggested that there is a disparity in the treatment of certain stigmatized ethnic groups as evidenced in the dynamics of officer and driver communication behaviors. The findings are discussed in terms of their empirical, theoretical, and practical implications for negative experiences the Latino community may have with police.

Keywords:

• Police
• Law Enforcement
• Communication Accommodation Theory
• Latinos
• Non-Latinos
• Accommodation
• Nonaccommodation
• Extensive Policing
• Nonnative Accents

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their deep appreciation of the law enforcement agency and its executives from whom we procured the videotapes and also to this journal's Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. In addition, considerable thanks are due to our coders: Cameron Freleaux, Daisy Pereda, and Kathleen Strzempek, to Travis Dixon for making available his code books, and to Tammy Afifi for insightful comments on this work.

Notes

1. Of course, some heavily-accented speakers who derive from regions that are traditionally respected and/or considered “cultured” (e.g., Britain) may not be stigmatized and sometimes lauded (Stewart, Ryan, & Giles, 1985).

2. Dixon et al. (2008) combined accommodative and nonaccommodative into one cumulative measure. For more conceptual and interpretive precision, we chose to distinguish the two given CAT's conjecture that speakers can converge on some linguistic features while diverging on others simultaneously (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Howard Giles

Howard Giles (PhD, DSc, University of Bristol, UK) is Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Daniel Linz

Dan Linz (PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison) is Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Doug Bonilla

Doug Bonilla (MCIS, Rutgers University) recently obtained a Masters in Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Michelle Leah Gomez

Michelle Leah Gomez (JD, University of California, Davis; MA, University of California, Berkeley) served as the Director of Research and Education of UCSB's Center on Police Practices and Community, where she first negotiated the acquisition of the videos used in this study