Police/Civilian Encounters: OFFICERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON TRAFFIC STOPS AND THE CLIMATE FOR POLICING

By JAMES B. HYMAN

Periodically, the nation’s attention is captured by press coverage of a needless death of a Black person at the hands of police. And, in each case, the police department of jurisdiction launches an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident. These investigations focus on the actual (or alleged), real-time, behaviors of both the officer and the decedent in an attempt to elucidate the incident and determine culpability. Several questions must be answered. What were the circumstances? How did the incident escalate? What did the deceased do? How did the officer respond? And was the response justified? What these investigations don’t do is shed light on any antecedent factors that may have conditioned the behaviors of either party. Indeed, missing from these investigations, and from research into police-involved deaths more generally, is an understanding of attitudes and perceptions held by the officers and victims prior to their interaction. The pre-dispositions of each, toward each other, may be contributing factors in how these incidents unfold. This study explores only one side of these dynamics – the attitudes and perceptions of police officers with respect to their encounters with civilians during traffic stops. The study gathers information about the officers themselves and their feelings about their jobs. It queries their experiences with, and reactions to their traffic stop civilian encounters – seeking answers to how such stops become contentious and sometimes deadly. It asks whether race plays a role in these encounters. And finally, given the attention paid to these incidents, the study explores the officers’ reactions to declines in public opinion of police and policing. This report presents the results of these explorations in the voices of the officers themselves 

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger Graduate School of Education, 2024. 38p.