NCJ Number
145655
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Dated: (September 1993) Pages: 417- 440
Date Published
1993
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This research tests two perspectives on the use of deadly force by police officers, the community violence and the conflict hypotheses.
Abstract
The community violence model argues that police use of deadly force is sometimes acceptable but should be limited to situations in which the police officer simply responds appropriately to a violent situation. According to the conflict model, the use of deadly force by police officers is not distributed evenly among those policed and the social standing of persons involved influences the use of deadly force. To test these models, descriptive data on felons killed were obtained from Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR's) collected from local police departments by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Division. At the situational level over the 1976-1988 period, SHR data showed that most police killings of felons resulted from necessity when the officer was being attacked or attempting to stop a crime in progress. Nonelective police shootings made up 65 to 75 percent of all police shootings that resulted in the death of a felon. Most of the felons killed were black, but they were no more likely than whites to be killed in nonelective shootings. Further, black police officers killed black felons at a much higher rate than did white police officers. Findings support the conflict hypothesis more strongly than the community violence hypothesis. In addition, it was determined that a relationship exists between violent crime rates and felon killing, although violent crime most often plays an intervening role between other social factors and the rate of felon killing. The authors suggest that economic inequality should be included in any macro-level explanation of police-caused homicide. 34 references, 10 footnotes, 4 tables, and 2 figures