5.1 Introduction
Corruption and racism are conceptually distinct pathologies, but in practice they can entwine in ways that are deeply unjust, difficult to alleviate, and – as we shall see – can be fatal. This chapter examines some of the connections between structural corruption, as outlined in Chapter 1, and the concepts of structural or institutional racism (sometimes subsumed under the term “critical race theory”) that have become more relevant, compelling, and controversial in recent years (Iati, Reference Iati2021; Sawchuck, Reference Sawchuck2021; Mandavilli, Reference Mandavilli2021). Not only are corruption and racism fundamental moral and ethical concerns in the United States, but also they are embedded in powerful institutions; in enduring characteristics of states, localities, and their political and social makeup; and in past and current public policy. Influences such as political culture; affluence, poverty, and their distributions across society; and patterns of distrust, racial segregation, and party competition, to name some prime examples, reflect and perpetuate the imbalances of power at the heart of corruption and racism both.
Now we consider one tragic manifestation of the corruption-and-racism nexus: police killings of Black Americans. (In a later chapter, we consider the disproportionate effects of the COVID pandemic upon Black communities in the context of corruption issues in public health.) We will show that while it is hardly the sole cause of those killings, structural corruption – like structural racism, a matter not only of everyday interactions but also embedded in longer-term characteristics of states, localities, institutions, and public policies – contributes to police killings in distinct and demonstrable ways.
5.2 Enforcement, Violence, and Control: Police Killings of Black AmericansFootnote 1
The tragic killing of George Floyd, a Black American, by Minneapolis police during a May 2020 arrest caused major protests that spread from that city across America and into over fifty other countries. The fatal police beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in January 2023 kept the issue of police brutality against Black Americans at the forefront of the national agenda. In the wake of those events, and the earlier deaths of Breonna Taylor inside her Louisville home, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City – among others – we must ask why so many Black Americans are killed by the police.
Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans, often with impunity, because of a lack of accountability and impartiality, of which corruption is both a cause and a symptom. We do not focus here upon individual cases. Rather, we are concerned with the ways a problem that is national in scope is embedded in the politics, economics, and demographics of the communities and states within which it occurs. Examining police killings of Black Americans in that wider context is emphatically not to normalize, much less excuse or justify, police violence. It is, instead, a way to challenge the argument that such killings, like corruption, are the work of a few “bad apples” in otherwise well-functioning institutions. Our findings point to ways in which the responsibility for police killings is deeply rooted in the values of the wider society.
5.2.1 Police and Society
Sarat et al. (Reference Sarat, Douglas and Umphrey2011) characterize the law as a means of punishment and of regulation. Therein lies a chronic hazard: laws would seem to have little value in either sense unless backed up by coercion or its credible threat, and yet that coercion itself must be regulated by law. Punishments are difficult to regulate, for reasons ranging from the ways police encounters often take place (outside of public view, in situations marked by confusion, vulnerability, and ambiguity) to the human failings and outright biases of those responsible for enforcement. All too often the measured and proportional application of coercion gives way to violence – or death. Similarly, maintaining necessary social order can easily give way to social control of more sinister sorts, including, but hardly limited to, the perpetuation of class, racial, and other inequalities, and the imposition of political, policy, and cultural preferences, again facilitated by coercion. What constitutes excessive force by police is a controversial issue. Killings, by tragic contrast, are unambiguous outcomes, and we have data on their occurrence. Those data, in turn, are indicators of a larger dilemma – one our analysis seeks to draw out by emphasizing a range of possible causes.
Using annual data from fifty states covering the period between 2013 and 2019, we find a positive relationship between corruption and police killings that remains robust when alternative influences are taken into account. We discuss, first, the channels through which corruption and other political variables – political culture, party competition, ideology, and the power of special interest groups – could affect police killings of Black Americans. We then describe our data, methodology, and results and examine important issues raised by the research.
5.2.2 The Thin Blue Line?
Civilians’ risk of being killed by police in America is considerably higher than in similar countries, but for Blacks, the risk is approximately three times higher than for Whites (Buehler, Reference Buehler2017; DeGue et al., Reference DeGue, Fowler and Calkins2016). The American Public Health Association (APHA) argues that even when no one has been killed, the extended consequences of police violence include mental and physiological harm disproportionately affecting Black individuals and communities and their ability to achieve positive health outcomes (APHA, 2018; see also Alang et al., Reference Alang, McAlpine, McCreedy and Hardeman2017; Sewell, Reference Sewell2017; Bor et al., Reference Bor, Venkataramani, Williams and Tsai2018; Das et al., Reference Das, Singh and Kulkarni2021).
Social scientists in several disciplines have investigated these issues from the standpoint of conflict theory, racial threat hypotheses, and a range of demographic and economic variables (see, e.g., Tolliver et al., Reference Tolliver, Hadden and Snowden2016; Edwards et al., Reference Edwards, Esposito and Lee2018; and Moore et al., Reference Moore, Robinson and Clayton2018). Racial diversity and segregation are consistently found to be important factors explaining variations across counties, cities, and states in police killings of Blacks (Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty, and Fernandez, Reference Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty and Fernandez2017; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Vil and Gilbert2019). Size of the Black population and the degree of segregation in a community are positively related to police killings of Blacks, pointing to racial bias, be it explicit or implicit (Siegel et al., Reference Siegel, Sherman and Li2019; Mesic et al., Reference Mesic, Franklin and Cansever et al.2018). Experimental evidence shows that being Black is strongly associated with others’ perceptions of threat (Eberhardt et al., Reference Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies2004) and affects police decisions to shoot (Correll et al., Reference Correll, Park and Judd2002, Reference Correll, Park and Judd2007). Class conflict is important as well (Jacobs and O’Brien, Reference Jacobs and O’Brien1998); according to Blalock (Reference Blalock1967), Turk (Reference Turk1966), and Quinney (Reference Quinney1970), poor people are more likely to be perceived as threatening. The more economically unequal the society, the greater the likelihood that dominant interests enforce their control through coercion (Chambliss and Seidman, Reference Chambliss and Seidman1982). Coercion is a key factor sustaining de facto systems of order in unequal societies (Jacobs and Britt, Reference Jacobs and Britt1979).
The role of police in maintaining such hierarchies is exemplified in many ways. During his 2015 presidential campaign, Donald Trump referred to the police as “the force between civilization and total chaos” (Chammah and Aspinwall, Reference Chammah and Aspinwall2020). Such “thin blue line” imagery is particularly powerful for some: black-and-white American flags with a blue line dividing an upper segment from the lower were displayed by white supremacists during the 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and are a common sight elsewhere. Defenders of the symbol describe it as only expressing respect for law enforcement, but others see it as symbolizing the police as a force suppressing a segment of society, or as openly racist (Chammah and Aspinwall, Reference Chammah and Aspinwall2020). Whatever one’s interpretation, there is no doubt that deeper questions of race, justice, accountability, and the proper role of coercion are embedded in controversies regarding law enforcement in America.
5.3 Political Determinants of Police Killings
Policing in America is generally regarded as a local government function: police departments’ jurisdictions usually follow municipal or county lines, and local governments play a major role in funding police budgets, selecting leadership, and (subject to Civil Service laws) recruiting the rank-and-file. Crime and law enforcement issues figure prominently in local politics, and former police officers often run for, and win, elective offices. But less widely recognized is the fact that under the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution, in all but a few instancesFootnote 2 local police departments exercise the police powers of the states. Those powers are subject to both legal and constitutional limits, but typically, like the existence and functions of local governments themselves, are matters in which the states may intervene at their pleasure. Even “home rule” localities are merely exercising such expanded discretion as their states may allow.
Thus, state laws, politics, and social values play major political as well as legal roles in empowering and defining the limits of local police. For much of the nation’s history, the politics and legislatures of many states have been dominated by rural and/or suburban interests hostile to cities (Graham, Reference Graham2017; Gamm and Kousser, Reference Gamm and Kousser2013). In recent years, those groups have if anything become more assertive and more willing to preempt local decisions (Boso, Reference Boso2019; Fowler and Witt, Reference Fowler and Witt2019). Both recent police killings and mass responses to them have exacerbated those political frictions. In Texas, for example, several legislators have proposed laws that would withhold significant funding from any municipality that “defunds the police,” as defined by various standards or declared by the Governor (Knight, Reference Knight2021). The Governor himself has gone even further: his proposal would require, inter alia, a de-funding city to allow any area annexed in the previous thirty years to hold a de-annexation referendum (Engel, Reference Engel2021). In Texas’s rapidly expanding urban areas such a process might amount to a dismemberment of the city.
Daniel Elazar (Reference Elazar1984), whose analysis of states’ political cultures we will consider later, has argued persuasively that the American states are civil societies in their own right. Local governments are immersed in those civil societies through their histories, politics, economies, mass media ecosystems, and popular images. The claim here is not that states and their local governments are sui generis, but rather that which state one lives in can affect local processes and outcomes in many ways. Similarly, we do not suggest that state-level influences upon localities are devoid of internal contrasts, tensions, and contradictions. Far from it: quite a few American states are more populous, larger in area, and more socially diverse than many other countries. Their political arenas, while usually not as fragmented or competitive as the federal system as a whole, encompass many contentious interests and values. Moreover, as civil societies, the states are exposed to differing economic, political, demographic, and technological trends and stresses. How the states reconcile diverse pressures and demands, how people and groups interact with each other, what values and traditions are seen as justifying a state’s social order (a potentially crucial consideration in racial terms), and how such political controversies and settlements can affect local policing will be central concerns in our discussion of political culture. That in turn is just one of several possible political factors influencing the pattern of police killings of Black Americans.
5.3.1 Corruption
Corruption, particularly of the structural sort, is not merely a matter of misconduct by individuals. Rather, it is a manifestation of broader “bad governance” in public institutions (Rose-Ackerman and Palifka, Reference Rose-Ackerman and Palifka2016). According to Rothstein and Teorell (Reference Rothstein and Teorell2008), “good governance” requires political equality on the input side to be complemented by impartiality on the output side of the political system – that is, in the exercise of authority. Rose-Ackerman and Palifka (Reference Rose-Ackerman and Palifka2016) argue that “good governance” requires accountability as well. Corruption impedes both accountability and impartiality in public institutions including police departments, and thus could contribute to police killings of Blacks.
When corruption takes hold, the uses of police powers – including coercion – can become more arbitrary, negotiable, and discriminatory in ways that reflect officers’ own interests and preferences, not the law and justice. According to the Mollen Commission, formed to investigate New York Police Department (NYPD) corruption in the early 1990s, police corruption and police violence often go hand in hand. Comparing a sample of 234 problem officers that NYPD selected based on corruption allegations and comments from field commanders to a random sample of 234 officers from similar commands, the Commission found that the officers alleged to be corrupt were over five times as likely to have five or more unnecessary force allegations against them than the officers from the random sample group (Mollen Commission, 1994, 46).
Lack of impartiality in the form of racial bias, explicit or implicit, is a major problem in many police departments. Over the last two decades, law enforcement officials with alleged connections to white supremacists have been exposed in many states (German, Reference German2020). Implicit bias is harder to show, but experimental studies (e.g., Correll et al., Reference Correll, Park and Judd2007; Sadler et al., Reference Sadler, Correll and Park2012) find evidence of bias against Blacks among police stemming from implicit attitudes and stereotypes. Compounding those problems is that police are rarely held accountable for their actions. Although approximately 1,000 police killings are reported each year in America, as of 2021, only 139 police officers had been arrested since 2005 for murder and manslaughter – a 1 percent arrest rate. Of those 139 officers, only forty-four (with forty-two cases still pending in 2021) were convicted, with most convictions coming on lesser charges, and some serving no prison time (Lopez, Reference Lopez2021). With little or no accountability and impartiality, the police can become a powerful force not only in themselves but for themselves, fostering an us-versus-them mentality. Based on data from two million 911 calls in two cities, Hoekstra and Sloan (Reference Hoekstra and Sloan2022) find that while White and Black officers dispatched to White and racially mixed neighborhoods fire their guns at similar rates, White officers are five times more likely to fire their guns when they are dispatched to predominantly Black neighborhoods.
Bad policies led by bad governance only exacerbate the problem. Since the 1990s, police departments in many cities have implemented variants of the policy known as “broken windows” policing, encouraging aggressive enforcement against minor offenses. That strategy has eventually morphed into “quota-based” policing. Arrest and ticket quotas are informal, and even illegal in several states, but they exist. A 2015 lawsuit filed by a group of police officers claimed that members of the NYPD were coerced into targeting Black men to fulfill their arrest quotas (Goldstein and Southall, Reference Goldstein and Southall2020). In 2019, three officers, including a police chief, in Florida were sentenced to prison for falsely arresting Black men in order to keep their department’s burglary clearance rate at 100 percent. Such policies have caused the number of contacts – often physical – between police and Black Americans to increase, increasing the likelihood of more deaths of Blacks. George Floyd, for example, was accused of passing a bad $20 bill, while Eric Garner was suspected of selling cigarettes illegally on a street corner.
5.3.2 Political Culture
We would expect social values to influence the laws, the social order police are expected to uphold, and the powers and limits – both intended and actual – shaping their conduct. To incorporate those values into our analysis, we draw upon Elazar’s (Reference Elazar1984) typology of American political subcultures. Elazar, as noted in Chapter 3, classified the states by three political subcultures or combinations among them: Moralistic (M), Individualistic (I), and Traditionalistic (T).
Elazar’s view of states as civil societies is important here. Political culture as an attribute of a civil society is not merely an overall balance of public opinion, much less a harmonious consensus. Rather, it is a dynamic but lasting pattern of relationships among segments of the population and the wider society. Internal diversity is a fact of life in most states but its significance, and how a state deals with it, is part of what Elazar’s theory compares and contrasts. A state’s political culture is not a matter of formal agreement; indeed, it is unlikely to be fully spelled out anywhere nor be consciously articulated by anyone. It is more a set of longstanding, overarching beliefs about what the civil society is; what defines and justifies relationships among government, public interest, and self-interest; acceptable tactics and limits of political contention and social competition; and expectations regarding the ways people will deal with each other. Larger and more diverse states can reflect a mix of political cultures, and social change may gradually reshape the political culture over the long term. Moreover, segments of the population may well dissent from the dominant settlement – sometimes, sharply. Thus, a state’s law enforcement and policing, involving as they do the implementation and defense of laws, policies, underlying values, and visions of the social order, will be the focus of strongly held – at times, clashing – values, aspirations, and fears. States embodying contrasting political cultures deal with those internal issues in distinctive ways, as we shall see.
A focus on state political cultures in a discussion of killings by police may strike many as misguided, particularly when the scheme dates back to the 1960s and characterizes states based on migration and settlement patterns in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Elazar makes it clear, however, that American states as civil societies have longstanding and distinctive histories, value systems, and responses to change. Moreover, as local police forces exercise powers delegated by their respective states, they are at least theoretically accountable to state laws, and routinely deal with people and expectations originating well beyond the city limits. Those expectations can vary significantly: according to a recent report by Amnesty International (2015), only eight states require that a warning be given (where feasible) before lethal force is used, and no state meets the requirement for a warning under international standards. Moreover, none of the states’ “use of lethal force” laws include accountability such as obligatory reporting for the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officers.
In the absence of mandated standards governing the use of force, we might well expect local values, traditions, and political dynamics to play a critical role in shaping police behavior. As for the time dimension, a strength of Elazar’s scheme is that it spells out influences that are deeply rooted, slow to change, and reflect long-term influences upon matters of current concern – a key issue when considering systemic racism and corruption. Political cultures are integral to the systems of social order police are expected to maintain, and it seems more likely they would be widely expected to moderate major social change (hence, the “thin blue line”) than to facilitate it.
5.3.3 Political Ideology
Political culture is not the same as political ideology. As Fisher (Reference Fisher2016) argues, states exhibiting any of the three political cultures can be either liberal or conservative or some mixture of both. Utah, for example, is a moralistic state, as is Minnesota, but while Utah is one of the most conservative and Republican states, Minnesota is liberal and Democratic.
According to social dominance theory (Sidanius and Pratto, Reference Sidanius, Pratto, Sniderman, Tetlock and Carmines1993), conservatism and racism are correlated because both seek to uphold the superiority of one group over others. Social dominance theory views all societies as group-based hierarchies in which at least one dominant group enjoys a disproportionate share of positive social value (e.g., wealth, health), and at least one subordinate group endures a disproportionate share of negative social value (e.g., incarceration). Politics becomes an exercise in intergroup competition over scarce resources, with political ideology supporting claims upon these resources (Sidanius et al., Reference Sidanius, Pratto and Bobo1996). Liberals, by contrast, tend to be more sensitive to, and upset by, inequality than conservatives (Napier and Jost, Reference Napier and Jost2008; Jost et al., Reference Jost, Federico and Napier2009), which helps explain why liberals are more likely than conservatives to perceive racism as a problem (Cooley et al., Reference Cooley, Brown-Iannuzzi and Cottrell2019). Not surprisingly, there is also a big divide between liberals and conservatives in how the police are perceived. According to a Cato Institute survey, Democrats (40 percent) are about half as likely as Republicans (78 percent) to believe the police are impartial. Some 80 percent of Republicans believe that police only use lethal force when necessary, while 63 percent of Democrats believe police are too quick to use it (Ekins, Reference Ekins2017). Quite apart from the attitudes of police officers themselves, ideology seems likely to influence the ways the police and their conduct are perceived, as well as community expectations and responses integral to encounters with the public.
5.3.4 Special Interest Groups: The Influence of Police Unions
Police cannot police themselves, and ordinarily will not be policed by civilian elected officials, for familiar reasons including their effective monopoly on legitimate coercion in most situations and the us-versus-them outlooks noted already. But another major factor contributing to weak police accountability has only come in for public debate relatively recently. That is the way police unions push back in almost every state against laws intended to hold police accountable and the influence they exercise in prosecutorial and other local and state elections via contributions and endorsements. Officers who see themselves as beyond the control of civilian officials, and who view prosecutors as reliable allies, may be less constrained by restrictions on the use of force. While police are theoretically accountable to elected officials in their jurisdictions, if they are not just a political force in themselves but a force for themselves such accountability may be weak. When district attorneys run for office, they often get donations and public backing from powerful police unions representing the officers they are supposed to prosecute in the event of misconduct. District Attorneys are not the only ones receiving donations from police unions. According to a report published by Campaign Zero, a police reform group launched in 2015, over a ten-year period Governor Jerry Brown and 118 of California’s 120 state legislators received contributions from police unions (Campaign Zero, 2018). In 2016, a bill that would have allowed public access to police misconduct records was killed in that state’s Senate Appropriations Committee (Thompson, Reference Thompson2016). In New York, it took almost a decade and the killing of George Floyd to repeal Section 50A of New York’s Civil Rights Law, which exempted police misconduct records from disclosure under the state’s open records law. In recent years, police unions spent more than $1 million supporting vulnerable incumbent legislators who opposed the repeal. In more than two-thirds of the states, a police officer’s disciplinary history is mostly unavailable through public records requests (Barkan, Reference Barkan2020). Indeed, fourteen states have “police bill of rights” laws giving special protections to police officers under investigation for misconduct (Campaign Zero, 2018).
5.3.5 Political Party Competition
Political parties offer special interest groups access to policymaking in exchange for their support, typically in the form of campaign contributions and endorsements. While competing with each other in some respects, parties have issues they “own” in the sense that voters consistently consider one better than others at dealing with those issues (Otjes and Green-Pedersen, Reference Otjes and Green-Pedersen2019). While the Republican Party is known as the “party of law enforcement,” Democratic Party is known as the “party of labor.” Republicans oppose unions in the public or private sector unless they represent the police – because police tend to vote Republican and the union is an effective way to mobilize them. Thus, police unions differ from the rest of the labor movement; they rely on the conflict symbolized by the “thin blue line” rhetoric and view themselves as police first, with other issues being secondary. Even their terminology differs: they are generally called “associations,” not “unions,” and their chapters are usually called “lodges,” not “locals” (Williams, Reference Williams2015). Most are not affiliated with the nation’s major labor federations: the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), for example, is the only police union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Nevertheless, IUPA is very influential. For example, while one AFL-CIO union passed a resolution urging that IUPA be disaffiliated after the killing of George Floyd, the move was rejected by the larger Federation: because of the continuing decline of unionization in America, the AFL-CIO could not afford to lose any members (Kelly, Reference Kelly2020). Similarly, the Democratic Party could not afford to lose police union support; while Democrats want police reform, as the “party of labor,” they also support public sector unions, including police unions. Moreover, neither party can afford to be viewed as “soft on crime.” In these ways, police unions have accumulated significant influence in both political parties.
Via public endorsements, campaign contributions, and personal connections, police unions can build lasting political relationships in either party, weakening pressures for accountability. From the unions’ point of view, such relationships reflect important long-term political investments – relationships expected to withstand short-term controversies. In more competitive states, both parties will compete for police unions’ support. In Illinois, for example, Rahm Emanuel, then the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, did not mind picking a fight with the Chicago Teachers Union but took care to maintain a friendly relationship with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (Emmanuel, Reference Emmanuel2020).
5.4 Empirical Analysis
5.4.1 Data
Our dependent variable is the percentage of Blacks among people killed by the police (% Black Civilians Killed) in each state from 2013 to 2019. The data are from mappingpoliceviolence.org, an advocacy group collecting data using sources such as fatalencounters.org as well as social media, obituaries, and police reports. The data from both mappingpoliceviolence.org and fatalencounters.org have been used by Nicholson-Crotty et al. (Reference Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty and Fernandez2017) and Johnson et al. (Reference Johnson, Vil and Gilbert2019). Police killings are defined as a person killed as a result of being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police, be they on-duty or off-duty. Over the years covered in our study, more than 7,500 people were killed by the police in America; 23 percent of them were Black. A 2019 Census Bureau estimate put the Black share of the United States population at 13.5 percent.
Our main variable of interest explaining variations in police killings is corruption. We measure corruption using CCI. Because it likely takes time for corruption to affect police behavior, we use moving averages of CCI over five years. The relationship between % Black Civilians Killed and CCI is shown in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1 CCI and % Black Civilians Killed
The other political variables we are interested in are political culture and ideology of the states, the influence of special interest groups – particularly police unions – in state politics, and political party competition. To investigate how political culture affects corruption, an operational measure of Elazar’s (Reference Elazar1984) classification is needed. Following Dincer and Johnston (Reference Dincer and Johnston2017), we create a dummy variable equal to 1 if the dominant political culture in a state is Moralistic and 0 otherwise. To measure how liberal/conservative the voters are in each state, we use the Ideology Index constructed by Berry et al. (Reference Berry, Ringquist and Fording1998, Reference Berry, Fording and Ringquist2013). The index runs from 0 to 100, with 0 representing extremely conservative and 100 representing extremely liberal states. To measure police union influence, we use data from the National Institute on Money in Politics showing the number of special interest groups registered to lobby in each state (Lobby). The influence of police unions in state capitols is positively related to the influence of special interest groups in general. Business associations and labor unions are the two most influential special interest groups in each state, frequently opposing each other. It is interesting to note, however, that no matter who the winner is, police unions never lose. Union-busting bills backed by business associations in Wisconsin in 2011 and Iowa in 2017, for example, both exempted police and firefighters. Finally, political party competition is measured by the Folded Ranney Index, which runs from 0.5 to 1, with 0.5 representing no competition and 1 representing perfect competition in each state (Holbrook and La Raja, Reference Holbrook, La Raja, Gray, Hanson and Kousser2017).
Our demographic and economic control variables follow the literature and reflect our arguments earlier about the importance of policing in maintaining an established social order and, by implication, in dealing with inter-group tensions. We first control for population density (Density) and share of Black population (% Black Population) in each state. We expect more killings in densely populated states with large Black populations. Next, we control for how segregated Blacks and Whites are in the largest city in each state, as segregation might be expected to be associated with more killings. As Enos and Celaya (Reference Enos and Celaya2018) argue, segregation facilitates categorization, making social categories, such as race, more cognitively salient and, thus, leading to stereotyping and discrimination. The most commonly used measure of segregation between two groups is the Dissimilarity Index, measuring the relative distributions of each group across neighborhoods within the same city. The index runs from 0 to 100, with 0 representing total integration – that is, that both groups are distributed in the same proportions across all neighborhoods. An index of 100 represents total segregation, indicating that the members of one group reside in completely different neighborhoods from those of the second group (data from CensusScope). Economic controls are Median Income and Racial Income Gap, measured as the White/Black median income ratio (data from the Bureau of the Census). We expect the Racial Income Gap to be positively related to police killings, but we have no explicit hypothesis regarding Median Income.
Our final three controls relate to police in each state: share of full-time sworn police officers who are Black (% Black Police), share of full-time officers represented by a union (% Collective Bargaining), and share of feloniously killed police officers (% Police Killed). The data for % Black Police and % Collective Bargaining are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), while the data for % Police Killed are from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) Program. Previous studies did not find statistically significant effects of % Black Police on police killings (Hickman and Piquero, Reference Hickman and Piquero2009; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Vil and Gilbert2019), but none of them investigated how share of Black police officers interacts with share of Black population. We expect fewer police killings in states with large Black populations if the police departments in these states employ more Black police officers. With respect to collective bargaining by police, several studies have found that collective bargaining agreements protect police from accountability for misconduct including killings (Dharmapala et al., Reference Dharmapala, McAdams and Rappaport2019; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Vil and Gilbert2019). Jason Van Dyke, for example, convicted for shooting Laquan McDonald in Chicago in 2014, had had twenty citizen complaints, at least ten of them for excessive force; none resulted in disciplinary action. Finally, we expect violence against police officers to increase police shootings in a state. There is anecdotal evidence showing a positive relationship between violence against police and police shootings (BondGraham, Reference BondGraham2019).
5.4.2 Results
We estimate a random effects (RE) model with feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) because some of our variables of interest and some of our control variables are time invariant:
FGLS estimation, which uses both between- and within-groups variation in the data, is efficient, and the Hausman test does not reject the null hypothesis that the RE model is consistent. The results of FGLS estimation are presented in Table 5.1. In all estimations, we control for region and year dummies.
Table 5.1 Corruption and police killings of Black Americans: FGLS estimation (dependent variable: % black civilians killed)
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CCI | .008 | .009 | .022 | 0.008 |
| (.004)Footnote * | (.004)Footnote ** | (.005)Footnote *** | (0.004)Footnote *** | |
| Segregation | .159 | .141 | .135 | 0.131 |
| (0.092)Footnote * | (.071)Footnote ** | (.063)Footnote ** | (0.089) | |
| % Black Population | 1.779 | 1.573 | 1.783 | 1.336 |
| (.396)Footnote *** | (.290)Footnote *** | (.288)Footnote *** | (0.297)Footnote *** | |
| % Black Police | .659 | .608 | .384 | 0.531 |
| (.409) | (.269)Footnote ** | (.247) | (0.341) | |
| % Black Population × % Black Police | –3.766 (.965)Footnote *** | –3.325 (.672)Footnote *** | –3.347 (.614)Footnote *** | –2.547 (0.825)Footnote *** |
| % Police Killed | .046 | .042 | .039 | 0.048 |
| (.024)Footnote * | (.025)Footnote * | (.026) | (0.026)Footnote * | |
| Density | .196 | .196 | .191 | 0.241 |
| (.072)Footnote *** | (.061)Footnote *** | (.055)Footnote *** | (0.068)Footnote *** | |
| Log Median Income | .729 | .584 | 0.613 | |
| (.196)Footnote *** | (.218)Footnote *** | (0.192)Footnote *** | ||
| Racial Income Gap | 3.717 | 2.734 | 3.045 | |
| (1.231)Footnote *** | (1.405)Footnote * | (1.159)Footnote *** | ||
| Log Median Income × Racial Income Gap | −.332 (.111)Footnote *** | −.243 (.126)Footnote * | –0.272 (0.105)Footnote *** | |
| Political Culture | −.086 | −.064 | –0.073 | |
| (.016)Footnote *** | (.015)Footnote *** | (0.019)Footnote *** | ||
| Ideology | −.181 | −.194 | –0.160 | |
| (.071)Footnote ** | (.061)Footnote *** | (0.067)Footnote *** | ||
| Lobbying | 48.333 | 53.563 | 38.968 | |
| (20.544)Footnote ** | (20.273)Footnote *** | (25.326) | ||
| Political Party Competition | .195 | .131 | 0.200 | |
| (.097)Footnote ** | (.090) | (0.095)Footnote ** | ||
| % Collective Bargaining | .143 | 0.172 | 0.119 | |
| (.069)Footnote ** | (.063)Footnote *** | (0.064)Footnote * | ||
| N | 350 | 350 | 336 | 287 |
| R2 within | .011 | .028 | .028 | 0.029 |
| Between | .876 | .925 | .939 | 0.917 |
| Overall | .564 | .602 | .592 | 0.561 |
Robust standard errors are given in parentheses.
*** , **, and * represent statistical significance at 0.01, 0.05, and 0.10 levels, respectively.
We start with estimating a parsimonious model with only a few demographic control variables and end with a comprehensive model with all political variables. The estimated coefficient of CCI is positive and statistically significant in all estimations, indicating that in more corrupt states Blacks are killed by the police disproportionately. The magnitude of the effect is significant as well. A one standard deviation increase in CCI causes % Black Civilians Killed to increase by 0.10 standard deviations, or 5 percentage points. The median value of % Black Civilians Killed is approximately equal to 0.20. The standardized coefficients of % Collective Bargaining and % Black Police (in states with large Black minority populations such as Alabama and South Carolina) are the same.
The signs of the political variables follow our expectations. In Moralistic states, the share of Black civilians killed is significantly lower (more than 5 percentage points). The influence of police unions in state politics and the share of police covered by a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by unions are both positively related to % Black Civilians Killed. Political party competition too increases the share of Black civilians killed by the police.
The signs of the estimated coefficients of our control variables are mostly in line with the previous literature. In densely populated states in which Blacks and Whites are segregated, Blacks are killed disproportionately. The effect of the size of the Black minority in a state’s population on police killings varies with the Black percentage of officers employed in police departments: a larger Black percentage in the population is related to more police killings of Blacks, but as police departments employ more Black officers that effect decreases. The effects of Racial Income Gap on % Black Civilians Killed are also conditional on how wealthy a state is: in states with higher median incomes, the effect of Racial Income Gap upon police killings of Blacks remains positive but is smaller. Figures 5.2 and 5.3 show the marginal effects of % Black Population (conditional on % Black Police) and Racial Income Gap (conditional on Log Median Income) on % Black Civilians Killed are within the observed range of data. The downward sloping solid line represents the marginal effects, while the dotted lines represent the 95 percent confidence intervals for those estimates. Finally, as expected, there is a positive relationship between violence against the police and the police violence against Black civilians. In several respects, our data are consistent with the view that policing tends to uphold the dominant social order and values rather than impartially applying the law, and that corruption – signaling as it does problems with accountability to legal and professional standards – adds to those problems and their consequences.Footnote 3
Figure 5.2 Marginal effects of % Black Population (conditional on % Black Police)
Figure 5.3 Marginal effects of Racial Income Gap (conditional on Log Median Income)
5.4.3 Robustness of Results
To investigate whether our results are robust with respect to different measures of corruption, we also estimate our regressions using CRI. As with CCI, we use the five-year moving averages. The results of the RE estimation are presented in the first column of Table 5.2. The estimated coefficient of CRI is positive and statistically significant.
Table 5.2 Corruption and police killings of Black Americans: FGLS estimation (dependent variable: % black civilians killed)
| 1 | 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| CRI | .008 | .008 |
| (.005)Footnote * | (.004)Footnote * | |
| Segregation | .183 | .154 |
| (.104)Footnote * | (.086)Footnote * | |
| % Black Population | 1.667 | 1.413 |
| (.438)Footnote *** | (.326)Footnote *** | |
| % Black Police | .835 | .765 |
| (.429)Footnote * | (.277)Footnote *** | |
| % Black Population × % Black Police | –3.879 (1.121)Footnote *** | –3.233 (.826)Footnote *** |
| % Police Killed | .042 | .036 |
| (.023)Footnote * | (.024)Footnote * | |
| Density | .213 | .222 |
| (.074)Footnote *** | (.064)Footnote *** | |
| Log Median Income | .725 | |
| (.222)Footnote *** | ||
| Racial Income Gap | 3.828 | |
| (1.396)Footnote *** | ||
| Log Median Income × Racial Income Gap | −.342 (.126)Footnote *** | |
| Political Culture | −.089 | |
| (.018)Footnote *** | ||
| Ideology | −.183 | |
| (.070)Footnote *** | ||
| Lobbying | 42.337 | |
| (21.533)Footnote ** | ||
| Political Party Competition | .236 | |
| (.095)Footnote ** | ||
| % Collective Bargaining | .136 | |
| (.077)Footnote * | ||
| N | 350 | 350 |
| R2 within | .011 | .026 |
| between | .871 | .922 |
| overall | .561 | .598 |
Robust standard errors are given in parentheses.
*** , **, and * represent statistical significance at 0.01, 0.05, and 0.10 levels, respectively.
The second robustness issue is the estimation method. We also estimate our comprehensive model controlling for state fixed effects, excluding the time invariant control variables. The estimated coefficient of CCI is equal to 0.008 – only slightly lower than the FGLS estimate of 0.009, but only marginally significant statistically, since within-state variation in CCI is not high enough in the period covered in our sample.Footnote 4
5.5 A Systemic Dilemma
Our findings support, for the most part, our hypotheses and the ideas discussed at the outset regarding a link between corruption and more numerous police killings of Black Americans. Moreover, they underline the “embeddedness” of the police killings dilemma and the ways in which corruption both reflects and illuminates deeper social divisions and problems of accountability. We simply cannot write off the results we have seen to a few “bad apples” among law enforcement officers. Rather, the police killings that occur with tragic frequency are rooted in the social structure and racial dynamics of states and local communities and in political processes that too often enable the police to become a powerful interest in and for themselves, able to engage in violence with impunity. Thus, the links among corruption, the social and political characteristics of our states and communities, and police killings of Black Americans are fundamental and troubling. “Thin blue line” styles of thinking and emphasis on coercion must give way to better strategies for maintaining peace and upholding values of justice on behalf of all in society. If events of recent years have shown us anything, we get the kind of policing that unaccountable departments and officers have decided serves their interests, that a share of the population supports, and that the rest of us, knowingly or otherwise, have shown we will tolerate. In Chapter 7, we will revisit similar connections in the context of public health outcomes, particularly as regards racial disparities that have become evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, and there too we will witness significant interconnections between systemic corruption and systemic racism.
