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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]