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Stopping and questioning citizens is an important policing tactic. Prior research explores citizens’ perceptions of stop and question policing, or “SQP”, by municipal police, yet campus police also use this tactic. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether and why college students believe campus police should have the right to engage in SQP.

Data come from 73 in-depth interviews with students attending a university in metropolitan Atlanta, GA. The sample was obtained through convenience and purposive sampling methods. Data were analyzed using the ethnographic perspective.

Most participants said campus police should practice SQP for three reasons: it is their job; SQP is an effective crime fighting tactic; and SQP is useful given the features and functions of college campuses. Among participants who said campus police should not practice SQP, they were concerned that officers would use it in unwarranted situations.

Findings suggest that the police might be able to reduce resistance to SQP by clearly explaining to suspects why they are being stopped and also clarifying to the public the legal thresholds for stopping and questioning citizens.

This is the first study to consider perceptions of SQP by campus police. The findings also shed light on how campus and municipal police are (dis)similar in perceptions of their SQP practices.

Black Canadians have a historically tenuous relationship with the police. Negative perceptions of the police held by Black people have traditionally resulted from high levels of police contact and perceived negative treatment during these encounters. Well-publicized instances of police violence involving Black civilians have also fostered hostility and mistrust of the police, often resulting in social unrest. Recently, in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of American police, people across Canada rallied in support of the Black Lives Matter social movement and calls to defund the police entered mainstream political consciousness. At the same time, police leaders have vehemently argued that racial bias within Canadian policing has been greatly reduced as the result of various reform efforts.

This paper explores the police racism debate in Canada through an analysis of three waves of survey data collected between 1994 and 2019.

Despite well-publicized reform efforts, the authors' findings demonstrate that little has changed over the past 25 years. Black people still report much higher rates of police stop and search activity than people from other racial backgrounds. Furthermore, racial disparities in negative police contact remain strongly significant after controlling for other theoretically relevant factors, including self-reported deviance and community crime levels. Finally, reflecting their negative experiences, most Black people still perceive Canadian law enforcement as racially biased. Nonetheless, the data do reveal one significant change: the proportion of white people who perceive police discrimination against Black people has increased dramatically over this same time period. The paper concludes by discussing the prospects of meaningful reform in light of the current findings.

This paper contributes to the literature on race and policing through an examination of 25 years of survey data across three waves of collection.

This paper analyzes micro-political strategies that police officers use during police stops, mostly based on their professional or personal life experience. Police stops take place in an asymmetric power relationship. Actions of police officers during a stop are backed by strong legal powers, and citizens typically do not negotiate how the stop should be carried out.

The paper is based on ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with German patrol officers.

The authors demonstrate that micro-political strategies relying on the officers' personal experience, rather than on strategies developed by the police agency based on empirical evidence, are highly problematic. Depending upon the acting officer, micro-political strategies can vary considerably according to the individual officer’s experience and attitudes. This leads to a risk of discrimination in police stops and of potential infringements on the citizens’ fundamental rights.

See the paper’s methodology section on the limitations of the empirical approach.

The paper suggests improvements for the practice of police stops.

The article provides new empirical insights in the practice of police stops in Germany and situates the findings in a broader international debate on police stops and shortcomings of the legal rules that govern the police stops.

This research study evaluates an innovative community-oriented policing program, designed to enhance officer accountability, thereby informing the scholarly community and agency decision-makers.

A multi-method approach was employed, leveraging pre- and post-implementation data collection phases. Data were collected via surveys of officers and focus groups with officers, as well as interviews with agency decision-makers.

While officers were originally resistant to the STOP Card program, postimplementation perceptions, evinced through both survey and focus group data, were supportive. Agency administrators were consistently supportive of the initiative.

This is a novel program, implemented by a university police agency set in an urban area. The utility of this and similar efforts may influence agency initiatives.

The paper aims to relocate discussions on police stops and police interactions from the Anglophone world to the particularistic context of the post-colonial state of India. The paper further frames the everyday policing practices in a theoretical dialog between questions of legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities. For that purpose, the author contextualizes the discussion in the post-colonial state of India, in the jurisdictions of two police stations (PSs), in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the State of Kerala.

The author conducted ethnographic studies in one station each in Kerala and Delhi, India, from February to July 2019 and July 2019 to January 2020, respectively. The study mapped everyday power relations as the relations manifested within the site and jurisdiction of the PSs.

Through the research, the author found that to fully understand everyday practices of policing, especially police interactions and police stops, one must contextualize the police force within the administrative power-sharing relations, police force's accountability structures, legal procedures and class dynamics, which mark the terrain in which personnel function. In that terrain, the author found that the dialog between particularistic legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities offered an important framework to interpret the everyday policing practices.

Through the paper, the author seeks to expand the analysis of ethnographic descriptions of policing by contextualizing them in the political economy of the state. In doing so, the author aims to provide a framework through which police interactions in post-colonial India could be understood

This study aims to demonstrate the need for further examination of legal judgments and the exercise of discretion in policing.

A factorial vignette survey with traffic stop scenarios based on US Court of Appeals decisions was administered to 396 police officers across six states. Officers were asked to indicate their assessment of the presence of reasonable suspicion and the likelihood that they would extend the stop for investigatory purposes.

Officers' reasonable suspicion judgments are significantly influenced by the vignette facts and align with court ruling expectations. However, even in the presence of reasonable suspicion, responses indicate a limited use of officer discretion to extend the stop.

Analyses of officer decision-making often rely on large datasets with easy indicators of location, officer demographics and citizen demographics, but rarely consider the facts of individual cases. This study suggests more experimental research is needed to consider the impact of case facts on officer judgments and discretionary activity.

Prior analyses of racial bias in the New York City’s Stop-and-Frisk program implicitly assumed that potential bias of police officers did not vary by crime type and that their decision of which type of crime to report as the basis for the stop did not exhibit any bias. In this paper, we first extend the hit rates model to consider crime type heterogeneity in racial bias and police officer decisions of reported crime type. Second, we reevaluate the program while accounting for heterogeneity in bias along crime types and for the sample selection which may arise from conditioning on crime type. We present evidence that differences in biases across crime types are substantial and specification tests support incorporating corrections for selective crime reporting. However, the main findings on racial bias do not differ sharply once accounting for this choice-based selection.

This paper aims to use three theoretical perspectives to understand variation in public opinion regarding the frequency with which police use race/ethnicity unfairly in making stops: procedural and instrumental justice, local government responsiveness, and intra‐racial differences.

The paper looks at data from a telephone survey of 1,431 Oregon residents: 741 from a stratified state‐wide random sample by county; 164 African‐Americans and 161 Hispanics over samples.

Perceived negative treatment during recent involuntary police contacts is related to a perception that police are more biased. Instrumental judgments regarding local government responsiveness to constituent needs and personal safety showed a negative relationship to perceptions of police bias. African‐American respondents exhibited the strongest police bias opinions; however, intra‐racial analyses showed that perceptions of government responsiveness weaken bias perceptions across race/ethnicity.

Research needs to explore how the public's relationship to their local government influences perceptions of police. The conclusions of the study are limited by the cross‐sectional design.

The study illustrates that proper police‐citizen communication tactics, stop and investigatory procedures, and ethical decision making should continue to be reinforced along with better promotion of local government and police success in meeting constituent needs through the media.

The paper examines the influence of both procedural and instrumental justice perceptions, and voluntary and involuntary police contacts. The sample contains sufficient numbers of African‐Americans and Hispanics and diverse communities (urban, suburban, and rural) to gain a representative view.