Reassessing Political Explanations for Murders of Police

• NCJ Number: 225844
• Journal: Homicide Studies Volume: 13 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2009 Pages: 3-20
• Author(s): Robert J. Kaminski; Thomas D. Stucky
• Date Published: February 2009
• Length: 18 pages
• Grant Number(s): SES-0002291
• Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article discusses how an analysis of Jacobs and Carmichael (2002), drawing on the racial threat thesis, argues that the overrepresentation of African-Americans among felons who murder police is in part explained by African-Americans’ conscious or unconscious responses to political subordination by the state.

Abstract

The analysis produced four important findings regarding political explanations for violence against the police and include: (1) a replication of Jacobs and Carmichael’s (2002) model did not suggest support for their conclusion that the presence of an African-American mayor reduced fatal assaults on police during the 1980s; (2) an extension of Jacobs and Carmichael’s model found that the average number of African-American city council members was significantly and inversely related to the killings of police across all models; (3) the measure of African-American-White economic inequality was not found to be a robust predictor across samples; and (4) although the percentage of the African-American population was consistently and positively associated with homicides of police across all models, the inclusion of a quadratic term produces negligible and statistically insignificant effects. It is recommended that further research be conducted to tease out the theoretical and empirical effects on homicides of police as a result of racial threat. In 2002, Jacobs and Carmichael hypothesized that the overrepresentation of African-Americans among felons who murder police is in part explained by their economic and political subordination by the state. In testing this argument, they found that their key theoretical variable, the presence of an African-American mayor in 11 of 165 cities, was inversely related to police homicides across many alternative model specifications. Further research is recommended to identify predictors of police killings. Tables, figures, notes and references