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Research Summary: Place‐based conditions are well‐established predictors of police behavior, but the literature lacks nuanced examinations of how place‐based factors influence officer decision making, especially by citizen race/ethnicity and from officers' perspectives. We investigate officers' accounts regarding how they weigh place‐based factors into their arrest decisions of Black, Hispanic, and White drug suspects in Newark, New Jersey from 2011 to 2016. Our analysis of 438 filed drug arrest reports revealed that most arrestees, especially Black Americans, became susceptible to heightened police scrutiny because of their presence in stigmatized, criminalized areas. Although place‐based stigma and individualized prohibited behavior coalesced to guide police contacts with Hispanic and White residents, officers made contacts with Black Americans based on a lower legal basis, often irrespective of their individualized behavior in stigmatized places. Policy Implications: Officers' differential, racialized reliance on place‐based conditions supports the need for effective, evidence‐based, community‐centered social services that reduce crime, overreliance on police, and opportunities for discriminatory policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends Brunson and Weitzer's 2009 endeavor to elucidate the influence of race and place in policing by reexamining enforcement practices across disadvantaged urban neighborhoods but from the purview of police. We investigate the impact of race and neighborhood context on officer decision making and routine enforcement practices by analyzing 144 official reports of drug arrests made between 2009 and 2013 in a similarly disadvantaged majority White, majority Black, and racially mixed neighborhood in St. Louis. Our analysis reveals the importance of place and race for helping to shape officers' decision making and investigation practices. In particular, proactive traffic and pedestrian stops, motivated by officers' views of criminogenic neighborhood conditions, drove most drug arrests in the three study settings. Enforcement practices differed, however, in the racially mixed neighborhood where proactive encounters were more frequent, capricious, and seemingly driven by race. Our findings have important implications for research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of race disparities in policing, scholars generally employ quantitative methodologies with the goal of determining whether race disparities exist or, in fewer instances, of ruling out correlates. Yet, lacking from theoretical and empirical efforts is an elucidation of how and why on‐the‐ground policing produces race disparities that are justified in legal, race‐neutral terms. To address this knowledge gap, I analyze officers' self‐reported accounts of their enforcement activities, justifications, and decision‐making in a representative sample of 300 official reports of drug arrests made in St. Louis from 2009 to 2013. These accounts are analyzed across neighborhood racial contexts and arrestee race, revealing important differences that help illuminate the race disparity problem. Unlike drug arrests in White neighborhoods or of White citizens that primarily stem from reactive policing, drug arrests in Black and racially mixed neighborhoods and of Black citizens result from officers' greater use of discretionary stops based on neighborhood conditions, suspicion of ambiguous demeanor, or minor infractions. During such stops, officers' discovery of drug possession often results from discretionary Terry frisks or searches incident to arrests for outstanding bench warrants. These findings fill important theoretical and empirical gaps and have implications for reforms toward racially just policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the source of Black–White differences in drug arrests by conducting a neighborhood-level test of the differential police scrutiny and racially discriminatory policing hypotheses. The study examines drug arrests made across 78 neighborhoods in St. Louis between 2009 and 2013. Results from the negative binomial regression analyses lend the greatest support to the racially discriminatory policing perspective. Neighborhood racial composition significantly shapes drug law enforcement practices, net of neighborhood-level violent and property crime rates, drug-related calls for service by citizens, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Specifically, findings suggest that officers engage in "out-of-place" racial profiling in drug law enforcement, as they tend to target suspects whose race is incongruent with the neighborhood racial context. Implications of the study findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]