Skip to main content

ETHNOS_APP

Home • Search • Journals • List 0

The Role of Individual Officer Characteristics in Police Shootings

Bibliographic Data

ID5742012
AuthorsGreg Ridgeway (0000-0001-6911-0804, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume687
Issue1
Pages58-66
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0002716219896553
OpenAlexW3006247169
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited7

Assessing whether individual characteristics of police officers such as age, race, and prior performance influence police behavior has been a long-standing topic of social science research. The effect of officer characteristics on their risk of shooting people is confounded by police assignments and by the environmental factors associated with those assignments. This article provides a method to separate out the influence of individual officer characteristics from environmental factors. Using data from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Major Cities' Chiefs Association (MCCA), the analysis finds that police officers who join the NYPD later in their careers have a lower shooting risk: for each additional year of their recruitment age, the odds of being shooters declines by 10 percent. Both officer race and prior problem behavior (e.g., losing a firearm, crashing a department vehicle) predict up to three times greater odds of shooting, yet officers who made numerous misdemeanor arrests were four times less likely to shoot

Criminology · Misdemeanor · Odds · Officer · Police department · Political science · Race (biology) · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Demography · Gender Studies · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · Law · Medicine · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology

  • Peer Influence and Use of Force

    Open Access•David S Kirk, Alexandra Ciomek et al.•Journal of Quantitative Criminology•2026

  • Is Police Misconduct Contagious? Non-trivial Null Findings from Dallas, Texas

    Open Access•C R Simpson, David S Kirk•Journal of Quantitative Criminology•2023

  • The Promise of a Network Approach for Policing Research

    Open Access•M Ouellet, Sadaf Hashimi et al.•Justice Quarterly•2020

  • How many complaints against police officers can be abated by incapacitating a few “bad apples?”

    Open Access•AARON CHALFIN, Jacob Kaplan•Criminology & Public Policy•2021

  • Does racial congruence between police agencies and communities reduce racialized police killings of civilians

    Open Access•Shytierra Gaston, Matthew J Teti et al.•Criminology & Public Policy•2021

  • An Exploration of Officer Gender and Use of Force Incidents in a Transit Police Department

    Natalie Schell‐busey, Natalie Schell-Busey et al.•Women & Criminal Justice•2025

  • Black Lives Matter’s effect on police lethal use of force

    Open Access•Travis Campbell•Journal of Urban Economics•2024

  • Police use of firearms

    Open Access•Richard Stansfield, Ethan Aaronson et al.•Journal of Criminal Justice•2021

  • Leadership Matters

    Open Access•Stephen Wu•Social Science Quarterly•2021

  • Community representation and policing

    Open Access•Joseph Risi, C Graif•Criminology•2024

  • Officer diversity may reduce Black Americans’ fear of the police

    Open Access•Justin T Pickett, Amanda Graham et al.•Criminology•2024

  • Reducing Violent Incidents between Police Officers and People with Psychiatric or Substance Use Disorders

    Open Access•Harold Pollack, Harold A Pollack et al.•The Annals of the American…•2020

  • Sources of organizational variability in fatal police shootings in the USA

    Open Access•Roland Neil, John M Macdonald et al.•Nature Human Behaviour•2025

  • Police Education, Experience, and the Use of Force

    Open Access•Eugene A Paoline, William Terrill•Criminal Justice and Behavior•2007

  • Police Officer Characteristics and the Likelihood of Using Deadly Force

    Open Access•James P McElvain, A J Kposowa•Criminal Justice and Behavior•2008

  • Police use of deadly force

    James J Fyfe•Justice Quarterly•1988

  • Causes of Police Behavior

    Open Access•Lawrence W Sherman•Journal of Research in Crime and…•1980

  • Race and the Police use of Force Encounter in the United States

    Eugene A Paoline, Jacinta M Gau et al.•The British Journal of Criminology•2016

Unique citing works13
Citations per year2,17
Citation span2020 - 2026 (7)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 13
Ethnos_APP • Open Source Project • MIT License • Frontend v2.0.0 • Privacy and Cookies • API Documentation: api.ethnos.app/docs • API Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17049435 • Frontend Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17050053 • cruz.rio.br • Expectantes Misericordiae