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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri

Time: 12:23 pm

Results for swat teams

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Author: Mummolo, Jonathan

Title: The Perceptual Side Effects of Government Action: The Case of Police Militarization

Summary: This study develops and tests a theory explaining how government actions can cause citizens to misperceive the social world. Focusing on the case of police militarization, I use survey experiments to show that the appearance of militarized police in a community causes individuals to perceive that violent crime is more severe than in otherwise similar places where traditionally armed police are portrayed. This is problematic, because original data on SWAT team deployments gathered through hundreds of public information requests show that militarized police behavior is an unreliable predictor of violent crime rates. The experiments also show that seeing militarized police weakens support for police funding and lowers confidence in police. Government actions can bias public perceptions of social conditions, and unintentionally undermine the political goals of public agencies, findings with widespread implications for the study of bureaucracy, representation and policy development.

Details: Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Department of Political Science, 2016. 79p.

Source: Internet Resource: This study develops and tests a theory explaining how government actions can cause citizens to misperceive the social world. Focusing on the case of police militarization, I use survey experiments to show that the appearance of militarized police in a community causes individuals to perceive that violent crime is more severe than in otherwise similar places where traditionally armed police are portrayed. This is problematic, because original data on SWAT team deployments gathered through hundreds of public information requests show that militarized police behavior is an unreliable predictor of violent crime rates. The experiments also show that seeing militarized police weakens support for police funding and lowers confidence in police. Government actions can bias public perceptions of social conditions, and unintentionally undermine the political goals of public agencies, findings with widespread implications for the study of bureaucracy, representation and policy development.

Year: 2016

Country: United States

URL: This study develops and tests a theory explaining how government actions can cause citizens to misperceive the social world. Focusing on the case of police militarization, I use survey experiments to show that the appearance

Shelf Number: 145220

Keywords:
Militarized Police
Police Militarization
SWAT Teams

Author: Mummolo, Jonathan

Title: Militarization fails to enhance public safety or reduce crime by may harm police reputation

Summary: The increasingly visible presence of heavily armed police units in American communities has stoked widespread concern over the militarization of local law enforcement. Advocates claim militarized policing protects officers and deters violent crime, while critics allege these tactics are targeted at racial minorities and erode trust in law enforcement. Using a rare geocoded census of SWAT team deployments from Maryland, I show that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, even after controlling for local crime rates. Further, using nationwide panel data on local police militarization, I demonstrate that militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime. Finally, using survey experiments-one of which includes a large over-sample of African American respondents-I show that seeing militarized police in news reports may diminish police reputation in the mass public. In the case of militarized policing, the results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is a false choice.

Details: Online article, 2018. 6p.

Source: Internet Resource: accessed August 27, 2018 at: http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/08/14/1805161115.full.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/08/14/1805161115.full.pdf

Shelf Number: 151266

Keywords:
Militarized Police
Police Militarization
Police-Community Relations
SWAT Teams