[Poscgrad] Social Sciences Lab Lunch Talk on Oct 19, 12:30-2pm: Dr. Nicholas Weller (Political Science)

[Social Sciences Laboratory]

Dear Social Science Community,

As we begin the fall quarter, we are excited to kick off our lunch talk
series with our first talk of the academic year. Please join us on October
19 for a presentation by Dr. Nicholas Weller (Political Science), who will
present his research titled* “Police Subject Black and Hispanic Drivers to
More Intensive Traffic Stops That Are Perceived as Less Legitimate.” *We
hope you can join us for an engaging discussion and a chance to connect
with colleagues over lunch!

*Date and Time:* October 19 (Mon), from 12:30 to 2 pm.
*Location*: INTS 1113 & Zoom <https://ucr.zoom.us/j/99846766217>
*Speaker*: Dr. Nicholas Weller (Political Science)
*Registration*: Please register here <https://forms.gle/5mSW84ZaYmcd8tsa8>
by *Oct 8* so we can finalize the headcount and accommodate any dietary
restrictions.


[image: SSL Lunch Talk_Weller_Oct19.png]

*Title*: Police Subject Black and Hispanic Drivers to More Intensive
Traffic Stops That Are Perceived as Less Legitimate

*Abstract: *Police reform rooted in procedural justice targets the content
of officers' communication rather than enforcement outcomes. These reforms
are based on evidence that citizen perceptions of police legitimacy are
more strongly affected by officers' adherence to procedural fairness than
their ultimate enforcement decisions. However, this evidence rests on a
narrow operationalization of citizen outcomes defined as arrests or
citations, overlooking a wide range of intrusive actions shown to affect
citizens' perceptions of police but rarely recorded in administrative
police data. We reevaluate the assumed primacy of officer communication
over citizen outcomes using detailed annotations of more than 1,500
body-worn camera recordings covering 917 Los Angeles Police Department
traffic stops. We construct a stop-level measure of procedural justice and
compare it to a new measure of stop intensity: the cumulative intrusiveness
of discretionary officer action within an interaction. We show that Black
and Hispanic drivers experience substantially more intense stops than White
drivers; this gap persists after conditioning on stop context and citizens'
escalatory behavior during a stop. We also show, counter to prevailing
wisdom, that stop intensity predicts perceived legitimacy as strongly as
procedural justice. Our findings underscore the utility of expanding
currently narrow measures of citizen outcomes in assessment of
police-citizen interactions, and that reforms intended to enhance police
legitimacy should also address intrusive police behavior rarely captured in
administrative enforcement data.


Social Sciences Lab
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