On the relationship between social disorganization and police coercive action(s) in the New York City Police Department

ABSTRACT

This study applies indicators of social disorganization theory (i.e., concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, and concentrated immigration) to predict officers’ use of coercive action during street stops of citizens suspected of criminal activity. It also investigates whether concentrated disadvantage moderates suspects’ likelihood of receiving greater levels of police coercive actions when stopped for reasons listed in the New York City Police Department’s Unified Form 250 (UF-250). Results from multilevel analyses of stop incidents nested within neighborhoods confirm that certain indicators of social disorganization are associated with officer use of coercive action. Further, suspects stopped in areas marked by concentrated disadvantage are less likely to receive higher levels of police coercive action. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Neighborhood disorganization
• concentrated disadvantage
• stop and frisk
• New York City Police Department

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The NYPD SQF does not contain information from traffic stops and only includes stops made during street encounters. The information provided in the UF-250 report ranges from suspect characteristics to the actions that occurred during the stop, all reported by the officer. A UF-250 report is not mandated in all stops, but only those resulting in a frisk, search, use of force, arrest, or citizen refusal to identify him or herself; it is estimated that mandated UF-250 reports account for approximately 72% of the total encounters (Gelman et al., 2007).

2. Seven percent of stop incidents were dropped from the data set due to missing x,y coordinates and .26% of the stops did not fall within a New York City census tract boundary. A total of 52 census tracts had no households, which also were dropped from the data set. Further, 7 census tracts had no stops occurring within them, and were excluded as well.

3. Following Klinger (1995), the use of force variable was originally measured on a continuum based on level of discomfort or potential injury to the suspect, ranging from the least severe to most severe use of force option. The levels of force were operationalized using a combination of the use of force variables available in the NYPD SQF database and included categories of low, moderate, and high force. The multiple levels of force were, however, subsequently combined into a dummy measure of use of force because the number of incidents of moderate and high force was too few (e.g., 184 total incidents of moderate force out of 654,485 total stops).

4. The concentrated immigration measure does not follow the usual pattern found in prior literature, which is often composed of the percentage of the population that is foreign-born and the percentage of the population that is Hispanic (e.g., Sampson et al., 1997). This concentrated immigration variable may be explained by the increase in Asian immigration in New York City over the past several years. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2011), the sub-groups of all Asian immigrants increased from 2000 to 2010, while sub-groups of Hispanics either declined or remained steady during this time. For example, from 2000 to 2010, the Dominican immigrant population decreased by 11.2%, while the Chinese immigrant population increased by 34% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).

5. Residential instability customarily consists of two variables (1) percent of the population that has moved within the past 5 years and (2) percent of renter-occupied households. In New York City, the percent of renter-occupied households does not load with the other measure of residential instability. Although speculation, it may be that because households within New York City are largely renter-occupied, it does not necessarily mean that such neighborhoods are marked by transiency. Therefore, percent of the population that has moved within the past year and percent renters are included separately to represent residential instability. The past year, as opposed to the past 5 years, was believed to be a better indicator of recent residential instability within a neighborhood.

6. Although a proxy, officer perceptions of high crime areas seems a reasonable measure of criminal activity, as we are reminded by Thomas’ theorem that states: ‘If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572). Furthermore, there is evidence that officers are reasonably good at identifying longer-term, shotspots and for hotspots consisting of certain types of crime (McLaughlin, Johnson, Bowers, Birks & Pease, 2007; Ratcliffe & McCullagh, 2001).

7. Brooklyn reported 221,975 stops (33.9%), the Bronx 127,608 (19.5%), Manhattan 133,929 (20.5%), and Queens reported 144,673 stops (22.1%).

8. All of the level-1 variables were grand-mean centered to control for compositional differences in individual stop events across neighborhoods.

9. Note that the dichotomous outcomes are not mutually exclusive; officers may have checked more than one type of coercive action occurring during a stop, therefore, percentages will sum to more than 100.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allison Martin

Dr. Allison Martin is an adjunct professor for the department of Justice Studies at San José State University in California. She earned her Ph.D. from The University of South Carolina. Her research interests include community-level theoretical advancements, the impact of formal controls on communities, and environmental impacts on shaping behavior.

Robert J. Kaminski

Robert J. Kaminski is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. from The University at Albany, State University of New York. His research has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Criminology, Crime and Delinquency, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Justice Quarterly.