What Do Citizens Think About Police Accountability Measures? Lessons From Community Attitudinal Surveys

Abstract

A growing body of survey research has consistently demonstrated variation among different racial and ethnic groups in terms of their attitudes toward the police. Partly as a result of dissatisfaction among marginalized community groups, municipalities in the United States have increasingly sought to implement new police accountability and reform measures, often with the explicit goal of rehabilitating public perceptions of both the police and municipal government. This article uses logistic regression and multi-year community-level survey data from one Western U.S. city (N = 3,891) to examine the predictors of satisfaction with that city’s police accountability framework. More specifically, the article attempts to disentangle the distinct effects of race/ethnicity, community context, and contact with the police on public satisfaction with that city’s efforts to manage the conduct of police officers. The article also considers the potential policy implications of using community-level surveys to inform the work of police accountability agencies.