Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation
@article{Mummolo2018MilitarizationFT, title={Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation}, author={Jonathan Mummolo}, journal={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, year={2018}, volume={115}, pages={9181 - 9186} }
Significance National debates over heavy-handed police tactics, including so-called “militarized” policing, are often framed as a trade-off between civil liberties and public safety, but the costs and benefits of controversial police practices remain unclear due to data limitations. Using an array of administrative data sources and original experiments I show that militarized “special weapons and tactics” (SWAT) teams are more often deployed in communities of color, and—contrary to claims by…
99 Citations
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- LawProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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It is demonstrated that positive nonenforcement contact can improve public attitudes toward police and suggests that police departments would benefit from an increased focus on strategies that promote positive police–public interactions.
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- Political ScienceSmall Wars & Insurgencies
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ABSTRACT Is militarized policing an effective way to combat insurgency? This article uses new global data on policing practices to evaluate whether states with militarized police perform better than…
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