Public attitudes toward the police: The primacy of citizens' perceptions of their neighborhoods (California)

In this dissertation, I investigate determinants of public attitudes toward the police. To understand the importance of this topic, I discuss how dissatisfaction with the police has been linked with negative attitudes toward the state and other agents of social control as well as the influence of these views on the evolution of the policing occupation. I evaluate the relative impact of personal experience with the police, the incidence of crime, ethnicity, and elements of neighborhood context on attitudes toward the police. This research is based on open-ended interviews with residents of Santa Ana, California as well as information about their neighborhoods from the 1990 United States Decennial Census and homicide figures from the Santa Ana Police Department. My analyses suggest that the single most important factor predicting negative attitudes toward the police is the perception by residents that there are problems in their neighborhoods about which the police might do something. This suggests that the police should systematically gauge citizens' assessments of their neighborhoods and focus resources on the issues they raise.