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A Study of Militarization and Use of Force

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LIVING IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY: A STUDY OF MILITARIZATION AND USE OF FORCE Cori Pryor A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2020 Committee: Thomas Mowen, Advisor Steve Demuth Danielle Kuhl ii ABSTRACT Thomas Mowen, Advisor Police militarization is happening on a widespread scale across the United States. However, very little is known about its relationship with use of force. At the same time, there has been a growing focus on community policing. Given the concurrent establishment of both of these trends, it is problematic that we do not know how these two tactics interplay with one another, especially in regard to use of force. Additionally, though force is thought to be a mechanism of social control that is unequally distributed in nonwhite communities, studies examining the link between militarization and use of force have yet to include race/ethnicity into their analysis. This paper attempts to address this important gap in the literature by examining the relationship between militarization and use of force through the lens of minority threat theory. I use data from Law Enforcement Management and Statistics 2013, American Community Survey 2009, and Uniform Crime Reports 2013, as well as item response theory and multivariate regression techniques to study this relationship. Results show that militarization is positive and significantly related to the number of use of force incidents recorded by an agency. Additionally, community policing shares a positive and significant relationship with use of force. However, neither racial demographics nor community policing moderate the relationship between militarization and use of force. These findings stress that law enforcement agencies should proceed with caution when adopting new policing strategies without having a thorough understanding of how they relate to use of force. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It takes a village. This project would not be where it is today without the significant guidance of my advisor, Thomas Mowen, and my committee members, Danielle Kuhl and Steve Demuth. Thank you for all of your comments, your time, and serving as a sound board throughout the writing and analysis process. Also, I’d like to thank my sister, parents, and friends for reading drafts (even if they did not quite understand all of it), being a listening ear, and supporting me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ..... ........................................................................................................... 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................................................... 5 ........... Use of Force ........................................................................................................... 5 ........... Organizational characteristics ....................................................................... 6 ........... Community policing ...................................................................................... 8 ........... Environmental/contextual factors .................................................................. 10 ........... Minority Threat Theory ............................................................................................. 11 ........... Militarization ........................................................................................................... 13 CURRENT STUDY ........................................................................................................... 17 DATA AND SAMPLE .......................................................................................................... 19 Measures: Dependent Variable .................................................................................. 21 Measures: Independent Variables .............................................................................. 25 Militarization ................................................................................................. 25 Community policing ...................................................................................... 27 Demographics ................................................................................................ 28 ANALYTICAL STRATEGY ............................................................................................... 30 Item Response Theory ............................................................................................... 30 Regression Analyses .................................................................................................. 35 RESULTS ........................................................................................................... 36 Supplemental Analyses ............................................................................................. 37 DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................... 39 v REFERENCES .......... ........................................................................................................... 45 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Descriptives ............................................................................................................... 23 2 Two parameter logistic item response theory results for militarization .................... 32 3 Two parameter logistic item response theory results for community policing ......... 34 4 A negative binomial regression regressing use of force on predictors ...................... 36 1 INTRODUCTION Police use of force has been under intense public scrutiny and the subject of scholarly research for decades. Recently this attention has increased, resulting in nationwide protests, the creation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, legislation, and numerous government reports and initiatives dedicated to the topic (United States Department of Justice 2016; United States Commission on Civil Rights 2018). Central to the issue of police use of force is that this mechanism of social control is unequally distributed and disproportionately affects nonwhite communities. Indeed, research supports the assertion that force is deployed unequally to communities of color (Jacobs and O’Brien 1998; Lersch et al. 2008; Smith and Holmes 2003; Smith and Holmes 2014). In addition to increased concern over use of force, there has been considerable attention afforded to the concurrent issue of police militarization. Police militarization refers to a multi-dimensional process where law enforcement agencies pattern their tactics around the tenets of militarism: “a set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that stress the use of force and threat of violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems” (Kraska 2007:3). Research shows that police militarization is widespread, with policing agencies in the majority of U.S. counties purchasing military equipment (Radil, Dezzani, and McAden 2017) and orienting their policing efforts around a militarized framework (Kraska 2007). Importantly, there is growing evidence that police militarization, like use of force, disproportionately affects communities of color (Ajilore 2015; Mummolo 2018). Given the ubiquity of police militarization in the United States along with its potential to perpetuate social inequality, it is crucial to understand the link between militarization and use of force. While scholars assert that militarization has its roots in the War on Drugs in the 1970s (Hall and Coyne 2013), the acceleration in acquisition of military equipment by law enforcement is attributed in part to H.R. 3230 , which gave the Secretary of Defense permanent authority to 2 sell or transfer military equipment to local law enforcement agencies (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 1996; James and Else 2014). Law enforcement agencies apply to and receive military equipment through the 1033 Program, which is often the focus of studies regarding militarization (reviewed later in this manuscript). The effect has been widespread: 80% of U.S. counties received transfers of military equipment and those transfers increased from 2006 to 2013 by over 1000% (Radil et al. 2017). Some legislators, citizens and advocacy groups have spoken against militarization, arguing that city streets are not war zones (Trujillo and Byrnes 2014), while police departments argue that military equipment offers better protection for officers and citizens (Hayes 2017; City of New Hope Minnesota 2019; Welna 2014). Research shows that police militarization may have implications for officer safety (Harris et al. 2017; Mummolo 2018), crime (Bove and Gavrilova 2017; Harris et al. 2017; Mummolo 2018), and use of force against civilians (Williams and Westall 2003). Extant studies also suggest that militarization may harm the public’s perception of police (Mummolo 2018). The latter finding is, perhaps, paradoxical given the growing focus on community-based policing (Skogan 2006), a framework that has been implemented in police departments with the intention of improving police-community relationships. In fact, research confirms that practitioners implement elements of both militarization and community-based policing (DeMichelle and Kraska 2001) and scholars agree that these two trends have developed concurrently (Center for Criminal Justice 1977; DeMichele and Kraska 2001; Wood 2015). Given the ongoing and widespread establishment of both community policing initiatives and militarization of law
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