Insiders and Outsiders

Being an Insider and Outsider

An insider and outsider approach to research recognizes complete objectivity espoused in much of quantitative research simply is not possible (Gravelle, 2014), nor desirable, in qualitative research. Adler and Adler (1987) and Duran (2009) contended researchers have histories and experiences that should be considered because individuals themselves serve as a tool of data collection. Similarly, in the study of race/ethnicity and gender, feminists and scholars of color have described how dynamics of power between the researcher and the community shape the research process (Andersen, 1993; Lomba de Andrade, 2000; Zavella, 1996). For example, after leaving the field, Zavella (1996) realized she had influenced the people she studied unintentionally by asking biased interview questions that divulged to the female interviewees her personal political beliefs. The insider/outsider approach attempts to recognize how the race, gender, class, and sexuality, among other factors, for both the researcher and participants, are central to one’s research (Lomba de Andrade, 2000). It is an attempt to move beyond the notion that only insiders (e.g., the police, women, people of color), can study themselves; by examining and reflecting on our insider/outsider status, we are attempting to determine how the researcher shapes the production of knowledge (Merton, 1972).

There are advantages and disadvantages associated with being an insider and/or an outsider when conducting research on the police (see Merton, 1972). Westmarland (2001) observed that the concepts of insider and outsider are not dichotic categories, but rather exist on a continuum that should be carefully evaluated. For example, police officers who become researchers may experience difficulties adjusting to their new role. Horn (1997) suggested, “police officers turned researchers, were ‘insiders’ who became ‘outsiders’—a particularly dangerous breed since they have special knowledge of the police, and aim to make public the secrets of police work” (p. 299). In the same way, Westmarland (2001) argued that outsiders, “who have never experienced the way of life of those studied, lack understanding of the nuances and may be self-absorbed and unreflective” (p. 2). Nevertheless, being an outsider according to Bucerious (2013) should not be perceived as a liability, but instead being an outsider “trusted” with “inside knowledge” can offer meaningful results. She found that becoming a trusted outsider (researcher), actually made her privy to information that some of the insiders (social workers) overlooked because they assumed to know everything about a group of delinquent youths at a recreation center. She concluded, “Researchers often make a mistake by assuming that the identity markers which render us as outsiders will compromise our efficacy—that they are liabilities that must be overcome…. I discovered quite the opposite—they were key to garnering ‘inside’ information” (Bucerious, 2013, p. 28).

Contemporary observational studies describe how researchers who study the police negotiate the insider and outsider status. Huggins and Glebbeek (2003) described unique challenges, such as being a woman and middle class, in the course of studying a primarily male (i.e., the police) occupation in South America. Not only did they find that men were often uncooperative, dismissive, and patronizing, but also these men misinterpreted the interview appointment as a desire to “date” them. Horn (1997), alternatively, argued that certain gendered social constructions such as the perception of being unthreatening, harmless, and even incompetent could be advantageous in securing access to the police. Gurney (1985) stated that, “youthful appearance and the fact that I was a graduate student and a woman helped create the impression that I was nonthreatening and naïve” (p. 47). Easterday, Papademas, Schorr, and Valentine (1977) also found that, “If a researcher is not taken seriously because she is a young female, this can facilitate entrée into an otherwise difficult or inaccessible setting” (p. 344). Horn (1997) also documented that some officers adopted a paternalistic approach toward her, calling themselves “her uncle,” which opened access to the research site and key participants. She warned that such “protection” and paternalism may also be disadvantageous, making female researchers less privy to information to safeguard them from the most frightening and dangerous aspects of police work. Gurney (1985) found it exhausting to negotiate and navigate a male-dominated field and felt forced to trade “admiration” for information. Gurney (1985) frustratingly concluded, “I often wished I were a more militant feminist who could lecture staff on their chauvinism and insensitivity…I…tolerated things that made me uncomfortable, but convinced myself they were part of the sacrifices a researcher must make” (p. 55). While studying female officers, female researchers experienced more compliance and rapport but also encountered other obstacles such as paternalism (Horn, 1997; Huggins & Glebbeek, 2003).

The insider and outsider concepts are not abstract and arbitrary distinctions in field research. Some ethnographic works have produced fierce controversy, partly because those researchers failed to carefully consider their insider and outsiders status, how such a dynamic affects the behavior and responses of the studied population, the interpretation of their observations, as well as the implications of their work to both the scientific community and society at large. Bourgois (1995) in his famous work, In Search of Respect, an ethnography about an inner-city Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York, has been charged with falling prey to a culture of poverty framework and its perceived failure to recognize how positionality (e.g., being an elite, middle-class researcher) structured his observations and interpretations of the neighborhood studied. Goffman’s (2014) On the Run faces similar criticisms, not only on the account of unintentionally contributing to mainstream images of Black men as being criminally inclined but also in terms of violating ethical guidelines during the research process. In addition, in her book, she seems to suggest that it is possible to camouflage one’s racial identity. Studying a fully African American community, as a White middle-class researcher, Goffman assumed that it is possible to sit on a porch stoop and position herself behind a group of Black people she was observing to ensure her racial identity would not obstruct or influence a conversation. Alternatively, she did carefully consider the role of being a young White woman and her sexuality, and how such a dynamic had to be negotiated while studying males in an African American community.

Venkatesh (2008) in Gang Leader for a Day demonstrates a similar bravado, to some short of a fiction novel, in his action-packed glimpse into the ghetto lifestyle in a Black community in Chicago. The borderline pandering, which has become standard practice in many fields to accentuate book sales, unfortunately blurs the line between truth and fiction. Rios (2011) has referred to some of these works as the “Jungle Book” trope, where the gullible and innocent researcher walks into the jungle, becomes fully immersed in the thrills of that violent lifestyle, goes native, and by the kindness of beasts lives to tell the tale.

More sympathetic academic circles contend that these researchers are just “telling it like it is,” applaud their raw/real participant observations, and praise the opposition to the distorted images and unabated romanticism often applied to lower income and marginalized neighborhoods. Bourgois (1995) stated, “Intellectuals have retreated from the fray, and have unreflexibly latched on to positive interpretations of the oppressed, that those that have been poor or have lived among the poor, know to be completely unrealistic” (p. 15). The most passionate critiques against the aforementioned works do not rest on the fact that the researchers are often White and middle-class, work at elite universities, or that outsiders should not study the oppressed. Rather, the gripe rests on the notion they ignored or downright violated the established parameters, obligations, and social responsibility that are critical to ethnographic work (e.g., reflexivity, ethical and moral considerations for the population, and policy implications of their work; see Huggins & Glebbeek, 2003; Westmarland, 2001). There is considerable value in having outsiders study a group they are not a part of (Merton, 1972), which is often the case in social science, but it is important to consider the long-standing lessons that have been established by previous ethnographic scholars. For us, reflexivity allows us to consider the challenges associated with studying what is often perceived a controversial, secretive, population of power (e.g., police organizations), despite the fact that we are both insiders (e.g., males) and outsiders (e.g., not police officers).

Observational Studies, Race, and Insider/Outsider Status

Early police studies, for example, Matrofski and Parks (1990), acknowledged that the bulk of police studies have been quantitative (e.g., Barlow & Barlow, 2002) and narrow in scope as opposed to observational research. These studies on the police have centered on a limited range of behaviors (see Black, 1970): use of force, arrest, field interrogations, conflict settlement, and taking reports (Matrofski & Parks, 1990). Despite the many advances by this quantitative work, substantial empirical and theoretical gains can be made through observational studies (Matrofski & Parks, 1990).

Albert Reiss conducted a seminal observational study on the police during the 1960s. Partly inspired by the conflicts between the police and people of color during the 1960s, the methodological strategy was to send trained researchers to the field, observe interactions between police and those stopped, and take copious field notes (Reiss, 1967). Black and Reiss (1970), in a follow-up study, conducted ride-alongs to test whether racial profiling motivated police–resident encounters. Contrary to the widespread belief at the time that police officers were hunting and arresting minorities, they found that (a) the majority of youth–police contacts were citizen initiated (e.g., people calling the police) and (b) African American residents lobbied for the arrest of youth more than Whites. In a different observational study, Black (1970) found no difference in preference for arrest based on the complainant’s race; however, white-collar complainants were more likely to leverage arrest than blue-collar complainants in felony scenarios. In later studies (see Caldwell, 1978), these approaches were modified with the hope of garnering more objective data. For example, trained observers were advised to “fit in,” to refrain from intervening in police work, to limit the range of the conversations with officers, and most importantly to remain objective. Matrofski and Parks (1990) criticized these methodologies on the grounds they offered descriptive accounts of what police do, but not why they do it.

Observational studies on the police have mostly been conducted by White, middle-class, males and females, forming a narrative of the police from a perspective that could be described as elitist (see Duran, 2013). hooks (1984) contended that Black women have a unique vantage point to view the multiple ways in which they are marginalized. Unlike White middle-class researchers, male Latino researchers who have resided in marginalized communities of color are more likely to have experienced various forms of aggressive policing, have had contact with and have been personally affected by criminal justice agencies, and have seen criminal justice organizations not only abstractly, thus those experiences may offer researchers of color with a different vantage point to study police and community relations. Duran (2013) argued he was better able to conduct research with gang members because he grew up in the barrio, and his negative interactions with the police provided him with an insider’s access to understanding gang life. Gonzalez Van Cleve (2016) reports that although she is Chicana, because she is light-skinned and could replicate the vernacular of the middle-class Whites she studied, she was able to more easily gain access and become an insider. She quickly learned that to gain access to middle-class White professionals, she had to ignore the racism and differential treatment of people of color. For example, she noted that her researcher court observers, who were people of color, were able to personally observe and experience the racialized injustice that was delivered by court officials (Gonzalez Van Cleve, 2016).

Currently, the primary gap in the literature is that Latino researchers are virtually nonexistent from the discussion of the insider and outsider status within the field of policing. Some of the early observational studies, in their attempt to remain objective, may have treated the concept of the insider and outsider as a potential bias. By standardizing what field researchers did, in terms of observations, questions they were allowed to ask and not ask, and the aspects of police work they should focus on, yielded important insights into police work but assumed the researcher would be equivalent to a “fly on the wall,” insisting that observations could objectively occur without any researcher influence. We assume the opposite and make no claims to objectivity. Instead, we assume that our identity as Latino researchers, males, students from a university, straight, of working-class status, relatively young, and nonpolice were not overlooked by police officers and had to be negotiated throughout the research process.

Research Questions

Previous studies have ignored the experiences of Latino researchers who study the police, and the extent to which their status as insiders and outsiders matter. Therefore, our first research question is the following: What challenges do Latino male researchers face as both insiders and outsiders during the course of studying the police? Alternatively, policing studies tend to focus on youths’ and adults’ experiences with the police but less frequently on the perspectives of officers who work in low-income, high-crime, and Latino and African American neighborhoods. As such, our second research question is the following: What type of policing practices are observed in Latina/o and African American neighborhoods, and does race play a role in officers’ interactions with the public?

Ride-Alongs as an Observational Strategy

The objective of the ride-alongs was observational and descriptive. The purpose was to offer a rich description of police work in low-income neighborhoods and explore how officers negotiate interactions with community residents. Researchers who have conducted observational studies with the police have used similar methods (see Black & Reiss, 1970). Gravelle (2014) described observation research with the police as, “invaluable in gaining first-hand experience and understanding of the systems and working practices of the police” (p. 61). Both projects were a part of larger studies where additional observations were conducted to understand how communities of color were policed from a law enforcement and community perspective. In Chicago, the purpose of the larger study was to document aggressive styles of policing, where police officers saturate high-crime (largely minority) neighborhoods and participate in a large number of enforcement “missions.” In Phoenix, ride-alongs were the second phase of a larger qualitative project studying police interactions in a Latina/o community.

Ride-alongs in both cities were conducted either in predominantly Latina/o or African American neighborhoods. In Phoenix, AZ, the police department was demographically different from the one in Chicago. In Phoenix, the officers were 82% White, 12% Latina/o, 4% Black, and 0.04% Other. In Chicago, approximately 52% of the officers were White, 19% Latina/o, 25% Black, and 4% Other (CPD, 2010). Furthermore, approximately 70% of the police force was male and 30% was female. In Arizona, 90% of the police force is male and 10% is female. Ride-alongs in Chicago were conducted in the summer of 2007 and in Phoenix in spring 2002 and occurred in neighborhoods where concentrated levels of gang violence, drug sales, or serious offending occurred. Ride-alongs involved either two officers or a single officer in the patrol car. Since police officers invited researchers out of the patrol unit, we informally spoke to and observed, but not interviewed, many officers who initiated contact at crime scenes.

The fieldwork took place in Chicago on days peaking in activity (e.g., Thursday, Friday nights), while in Arizona peak and nonpeak days were included. No names or identifying information were taken (e.g., police car number or star number) other than the officers’ race, sex, and the district/precinct where they worked. In total, this method produced approximately 44 hr in the field in Chicago and 100 hr in Phoenix. This observational strategy across both cities (Phoenix, AZ, and Chicago, IL) allowed us to discover rich patterns in terms of the following: (a) police practices, strategies, and approaches; (b) interactions between the police and African American and/or Latina/o residents; (c) motives for stops and questioning of residents; (d) the challenges police officers encountered while working in low-income neighborhoods; and (e) how our insider and outsider status affected studying the police.

In Chicago, 26 police officers were interviewed (24 males and 2 females). Ethnically, 21 of the officers were White, 3 were Latina/o, and 2 were African American. In Phoenix, 12 semistructured interviews were conducted with police officers (10 males, 2 females). Ethnically, 6 officers were White and 6 were Latina/o. The researchers also frequently observed other officers during roll call, during police stops, and occasionally when calls for assistance were not pending.

Analytic Techniques

Throughout both research projects, the researchers wrote analytic memos. Analytic memos were utilized to record observations, insights, and explore theoretical directions during the research process. In Chicago, the researcher would arrive at the police station prior to the beginning of the ride-alongs and had the opportunity to speak to watch commanders and sergeants that would offer invaluable insight about policing. Similar to Chicago, in Phoenix, the researcher would attend preshift meetings (i.e., roll call), and instead of speaking to administrators, the researcher would sit watching the officer’s interactions.

The coded themes were generated systematically. For a theme to be considered valid, at least 30% of the sample had to demonstrate some evidence of the finding. Depending on the unit of analysis, this meant that at least a third of the officers reported such a finding (e.g., problems with cruising, residents’ faulty work ethic, etc.). Most themes, however, exceeded this modest benchmark. For example, 100% of officers described in the Chicago sample described pressure to produce numbers (i.e., arrests). Every coded theme followed the described procedures.

When possible, a process of triangulation and comparisons to past research were performed. Triangulation between watch commanders, sergeants, and ride-along data confirmed the validity of some themes. This triangulation, an invaluable source of insight, offered more nuanced descriptions of policing. Finally, past research was utilized to confirm, challenge, or expand the development of generated themes.

Gaining Access and Trust

No methodological manual could have prepared us for interviewing police officers who work in poverty-stricken areas, undergo constant criticism, face heightened levels of neighborhood violence, and are under continuous pressure to produce results (e.g., arrests and keep the crime down). These institutional and social pressures cultivated a police solidarity and insularity documented in previous research (Westley, 1970). It was not uncommon, at the beginning of the project, for officers to literally interrogate the researchers about the project. In some instances, officers nonchalantly inquired about the nature of the project, asked leading questions, techniques that are useful in the field for extracting information from informants and community members alike. Various officers asked the researchers to show their university ID, to provide verification of their identity, and even refused to sign the university consent forms. In Chicago, the research had to be modified and reapproved by the institutional review board to employ verbal consent as opposed to signed consent because not one officer signed the forms.

As outsiders, gaining access and cooperation from police organizations and officers was cumbersome and remained a challenge during the research. The literature on studying the police reveals researchers typically must gain access through gatekeepers (Brewer, 1990); sometimes the process is fairly easy (Punch, 1989; Van Maanen, 1978) and in other instances more burdensome (Brewer, 1990). Our outsider status (e.g., researchers) did not facilitate the process. For example, in Phoenix, the researcher was required to meet with multiple Latina/o administrative officers, provide detailed justification for the study, before the police department finally allowed the ride-alongs. In Chicago, the process was more seamless since the project was part of a larger protocol funded by the National Institute of Justice, whose primary investigator had a long-standing relationship with the Chicago police. Without the primary investigator’s contacts, the research in Chicago may not have been conducted.

After gaining access from the Chicago and Phoenix Police Department, obstacles remained. In both contexts, the ride-alongs were initially viewed as a nuisance. To officers, the ride-alongs were inconvenient, invasive, and to a certain extent, an obstruction to police work. As a result, the officers’ supervisors assigned the COs to ride with officers. Once again highlighting our outsider status, officers would inform researchers they were reluctant to take on COs because the officers assigned COs were prevented from engaging in important aspects of police work (e.g., car chases). Therefore, on some occasions, officers would transfer the researcher to other officers in the middle of the ride-along under the pretext that “you should get these other officers’ perspectives as well.” Being transferred from one police car to another actually worked to the researcher’s advantage because it opened opportunities to observe and interview multiple officers. This also allowed the opportunity to observe differences between the styles of policing in one shift, allowing for a more comprehensive overview of police work. We also had the opportunity to informally speak to multiple officers while waiting at the police station, in the gang or tactical unit offices, when we went to lunch or dinner, or during the multiple contexts where other officers were available.

Officers were often distrustful of the researchers assigned to them for a ride-along, assuming their CO may be IA or a special agent out to get them. After a ride-along had ended, in Chicago, an officer politely walked the researcher out of the police station, apologized about the aloof nature of his partners, and stated, “I don’t know if you are FBI, maybe you are I don’t know, or internal affairs…. I wish we could have shown you more.” He assured the officer that he was just a graduate student, thanked him for his time, shook his hand, and was on his way. As a result, once we gained access to the police department, we had to utilize various strategies to develop trust with the officers.

One such strategy to forgo officers’ suspicion involved different techniques of note-taking while observing police and community interactions. As outsiders, we felt police officers would be skeptical of researchers who had recording devices, notebooks, or laptops to record observations. As we discuss earlier, officers were already distrustful of the purpose of our research, and as a result, we utilized different note-taking strategies that we hoped would allay some of this suspicion. In fact, academics who study the police recognize individual behaviors may change if the researcher is overtly taking notes (Brewer, 1990; Gravelle, 2014). Therefore, some researchers who study the police strategically take notes outside the view of police observers (e.g., during a bathroom break), or they take notes after the observations are completed. Similarly, observations were also recorded using a digital voice recorder after the completion of a ride-along. Then, those recordings were transcribed using a speech recognition program, and the transcripts were later saved in Microsoft Word format.

Since women researchers were also sent to the field in Chicago, this offered the opportunity to observe gender dynamics in the setting. When women conducted ride-alongs, officers took paternalistic precautions to protect them by not allowing women out of the police car during citizen–police encounters, adopting them as surrogate family members, or exercising extreme caution in situations that involved danger. Conversely, officers treated us (male researchers) differently. Officers were not particularly preoccupied with male researchers’ safety. In fact, one of the researchers in Chicago was told, “if anything goes down [violence in the streets], you got our backs right?” In both research settings, over the course of a ride-along some officers instructed the male researchers how to use the radio to call for assistance, how to respond to a situation if the officer was in danger, and in one instance offered access to the officer’s drop gun. In another situation in Chicago, after a sergeant became accustomed to us, the sergeant told the male researchers to stay safe and joked about the officers putting us to “chase bad guys.” The fact that both researchers were involved in a high-speed pursuit is a testament of how officers treated male researchers as men. These incidents do not suggest officers were careless about the researchers’ safety, but rather that gender dynamics shaped a paternalistic stance toward the female academics and less so toward the male researchers. This is not unexpected, as research finds that policing is a site of gendered action where women in general are devalued, including women police officers, and where male police officers are viewed as doing real police work (Garcia, 2003; Messerschmidt, 1993). As male researchers, we observed and utilized these gender dynamics to our advantage in establishing rapport with police officers.

As men growing up in a patriarchal society, we recognize how gender talk helps to develop trust between the officers and researchers. On several occasion officers would leer at attractive women and objectify women’s bodies, and we would nod in agreement. For example, during one ride-along in Phoenix, a woman who the officers described as beautiful was a victim of domestic violence. The officers who responded to the domestic violence call took note of her aesthetic appearance and underscored that they would help her get over her husband through their sexual prowess. After these kinds of sexist statements were made, laughter burst out and researchers gained trust by our uncomfortable yet strategic complacency. Throughout the ride-alongs, officers frequently objectified women’s bodies through jokes and comments about their physique, and as male researchers who wanted to gain access to the department, we understood that “gender talk” would help build rapport and gain some level of trust from officers. We never became comfortable with the demeaning language; however, we had a difficult decision to make of whether to assert our pro-feminist views and end access or be uncomfortably compliant to gain trust. This ethical dilemma is commonly discussed in observational studies, and like us, researchers choose to conceal their disapproval of the officers’ actions and comments to ensure continued access to law enforcement (Gurney, 1985; Huggins & Glebbeek, 2003; Punch, 1989)

The researchers also realized that once some trust was gained, to continue to have access to the department, we had to negotiate our discomfort with ethically questionable practices. For example, during another ride-along in Phoenix, officers found a couple of people inside a truck whose windows were fogged. Since this couple was either engaging in sexual activity in public or a potential victim of sexual assault, officers had to investigate. However, after questioning the suspects in their vehicle, the officers concluded the couple was participating in consensual sex. As part of their investigation, they asked the woman to sit on the hood of their patrol car to determine if she was wearing panties. These particular officers, under the guise of official police work, and pretense of investigating a crime, participated in unethical behavior. Although the behavior observed was offensive, the researcher made a difficult decision to document it but not report the incident, due to fear that reporting would altogether terminate access.

Only with constant contact through the ride-alongs, and evidence that our role was not to act as whistle-blowers, did officers eventually begin to trust us. In another example, during one of the ride-alongs in Chicago, officers pursued a suspect while one of the researchers was in the vehicle. The officer asked the researcher to remove his identifying information because he could get in trouble for having civilians in the car while conducting a high-speed pursuit. Both researchers observed police practices that appeared ethically or legally questionable, and perhaps violated departmental policy, yet our observations never produced disciplinary action. As the literature suggests, if we had acted as whistle-blowers, we risked losing the trust of officers or access to law enforcement (Huggins & Glebbeek, 2003; Punch, 1989).

As a result of our strategies to develop trust with officers, we observed the patriarchal, sexist culture of law enforcement that is often obscured from the rest of society. Once we were able to develop a rapport with officers, we developed a more nuanced narrative of police and community relations. For example, in Phoenix, one officer’s stated goal was that he wanted the researcher to see a dead body before he left the field. The officer was finally successful, when he showed the CO a homicide victim laying in a parking lot who had been shot after leaving a bar. We recognize that we probably never became true insiders, which was not our goal, but instead only built rapport with police officers. Establishing trust with officers was important to observe gender dynamics but also introduced dilemmas associated with race and aggressive policing.

Self-Reflexivity, Race, and Policing

Being Latino had advantages and disadvantages, depending on the context. When interviewing police officers, they were initially reluctant to discuss issues of race, possibly because both of the researchers were Latino, relatively young at the time, academics, and outsiders (e.g., beliefs of being Federal Bureau of Investigation or Internal Affairs). The researcher in Chicago assumed that being Latino would be an obstacle, but it was rarely an issue. This may be because the Chicago police are one of the most diverse police departments in the country. Chicago, an international city, is historically known for its eclectic yet segregated ethnic groups. In this context, a tall light-skinned Latino becomes more racially ambiguous. This racial ambiguity allowed the researcher to navigate the police departments and ride-alongs with relative ease. In Phoenix, the researcher was Latino, with a dark complexion. The researcher routinely observed racial mocking between officers of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. During the interviews, officers expressed the racial joking observed was one strategy that relieved officers’ stress associated to patrolling a high-crime area. Perez (2017) argues that in today’s color-blind era, racist jokes help the circulation and reproduction of racism in society, and that groups often use them for social bonding and group formation.

In addition, the researchers employed their bilingual skills and their Latino appearance as language brokers between the police and Spanish-speaking residents. Working with communities composed largely of first-generation Mexican immigrants prompted a need for Spanish speakers. As a result, sometimes during calls for service, community members noted the researcher’s appearance, and in their frustration to communicate assumed the researchers were Spanish-speaking, asking them to relay information to White officers who were not bilingual. For example, during one ride-along in Phoenix, a Spanish-speaking woman was ticketed by an officer who only spoke English. She did not understand why she was ticketed and turned to the researcher to inquire about the driving infraction. Also, during the course of small talk, officers learned the researchers could speak Spanish and asked them to translate instead of waiting for a bilingual officer to arrive on scene. For example, in Phoenix, during a traffic accident, the officer became frustrated during his investigation because the Spanish speaker could not answer his questions in English. The officer turned to the researcher and asked him to help translate. Being language brokers, with Spanish-speaking residents, further helped to establish rapport and trusting relationships with officers, permitted us to do something officers believed to be useful, and underscores how being outsiders (Spanish-speaking language brokers) could be an incredible asset during the research process.

Although police officers explained the dangerous nature of police work, there was little recognition about the impact of police practices on communities of color. Instead, officers discussed how specific law enforcement strategies such as aggressive and proactive policing were instrumental to combat serious criminal behaviors in the neighborhoods they policed. In Chicago, aggressive institutional strategies such as wolf packs (i.e., officers aggressively stopping people), contact cards (i.e., officers taking down youths’ information even when crimes were not committed), and an emphasis on arrests, just to name a few, were common policing strategies in low-income areas. In fact, in Chicago, a sign away from public view read, “Quality comes before quantity only in the dictionary, so go get some heads.”

In Phoenix, AZ, law enforcement experienced a unique problem with Latina/o youth where car shows are popular and common events. On any given weekend night, after a low rider show in Phoenix, AZ, there were hundreds of cruisers driving the “loop.” Some members of the local community complained about the cruisers and asked the police to do something to prevent this activity. More specifically, business owners complained there were so many cruisers that patrons could not visit their stores and business activity plummeted. They also complained that stores were vandalized. As a result, some community leaders went to the city council and demanded law enforcement “crackdown” on cruisers and other related activities.

The police department also felt justified in its draconian approach because it identified several problems associated with the cruising. They found an increase in littering, violent activities, and underage drinking. The police department also described problems with the way women dressed, “in a very loose way,” which officers believed to be associated with them stripping in public and then having sex in cars. Other community members voiced their opposition to the “crack down” on cruising because of its cultural value (to the Latina/o community), arguing that it prompted unnecessary harassment and arrests of youth, and unfairly targeted the Latina/o community. Officers’ goal was to reduce the number of cruisers on the street by punishing youth with arrests and without exception, ticketing youth for any possible offense to financially discourage them from cruising the streets. For example, an officer stated the following about the purpose of the crackdown. “Our philosophy is trying to get rid of it [cruising] and to make it as miserable as possible. You slam it down to one lane and you write everybody for everything [give tickets].”

Officers described the first weekend of the crackdown as a major success. Over one weekend, the cruising squad seized 31 cars and 18 guns, produced 600 tickets, arrested 70 people, and 15 of the 70 arrests were for felonies. Although the police department described the crackdown on cruising as successful, it accompanied 24 complaints from the community. Law enforcement failed to recognize the way in which aggressive policing strategies contributes to long-standing community distrust and resentment of law enforcement. Instead, officers assumed that in high-crime areas, zero tolerance, and aggressive policing practices would unequivocally benefit the community. However, research shows such police practices can target both criminals and law-abiding individuals further eroding trust between officers and the communities they serve (Vera Sanchez & Adams, 2011).

As Latino males who have similar backgrounds to the people policed, grew up in similarly situated neighborhoods, and have even experienced negative encounters with the police (e.g., stopped and mistreated), our background cannot be divorced from the interpretation of observations. A number of officers who shared their stories and points of view with us and genuinely appeared to care about neighborhoods residents challenged our previous negative experiences with the police. For instance, many police officers were quick to reveal their vulnerability. A Chicago officer stated the following, “You may never think of a police officer this way, but I am afraid. At the end of the day I just want to go home to my wife and kids.” In both locations, we observed officers who consoled people during crises they experienced (e.g., domestic violence incidence, car accidents, shootings) and we observed some officers deescalate situations by speaking calmly with residents. In contrast, we also encountered officers who clearly undermined the policing profession and contributed to a historical legacy of conflict between the police and minority communities. In both research cites, youth expressed their dissatisfaction with how police treated them in an undignified manner as exemplified in Chicago with the following quote, “Why do they have to tell you, get off the corner you little nigger, why do they have to put you down because of your race like that?” These conflicting feelings are what we have struggled with during our careers as researchers attempting to understand the relationship between the police and communities of color.

Culture of Poverty, a Police Perspective, and Self-Reflexivity

For us, it was equally important to understand how officers perceived the low-income and high-crime communities they policed to offer a much-needed, and often undocumented, police perspective. Police officers identified not only the crime and delinquency in the neighborhood but also the perceived cultural deficiencies of the African American and Latina/o residents they policed. Officers would draw on culture of poverty arguments such as ineffective parenting, faulty socialization of children, intergenerational transmission of anti-police values, a nonexistent work ethic, and indifference to education, which are consistent with mainstream notions of how communities of color allegedly operate (see D’Souza, 1995). Officers were convinced that the problems they experienced with residents in the neighborhood began at home. This was exemplified in the following quote by a Chicago police officer who stated, “They don’t have respect for mom and dad, why would they have respect for the police?” Officers acknowledged that many families were diligent and were just trying to survive by exhibiting prosocial behaviors, but the crime-prone individuals in the community made it nearly impossible for future generations to emancipate themselves from the cycle of poverty:

If you notice, everyone around here drinks. Sometimes it’s nine o’clock in the morning and people are drinking, kids are out super late. My thing is, look at this a**hole [guy drinking in plain view]. Some of these people bring it upon themselves. (Chicago Tactical Unit, Field Notes)

There is another really bad spot around here, a lot of a**holes. Interviewer, “What makes this spot so bad?” I don’t know, there’s just a lot of a**holes. You know the way you were raised? These people weren’t raised that way. (Chicago Gang Unit, Field Notes)

When asked to clarify what made these parental figures so ineffective, officers underscored parents’ criminal activities. For example, in Chicago one officer stated, “think about it, if the father figure is running from the police with a gun, they stay up as late as they want, him and I [referring to his partner] are not going to have any effect.” Therefore, officers were convinced that these children had nonexistent chances for upward mobility because their role models helped to indoctrinate a type of moral bankruptcy and criminal mind-set. Officers went further and assumed that some parents even exploited young people within the underground drug economy, which forced officers to make multiple arrests of children:

Chicago Officer 1: Sometimes the mom will come to the station and do this song and dance [by saying] ‘I’m going to get you when you get home’…they know that a juvenile will be out within the hour and an adult may do a year. The mom will ask us ‘Did you find any money on him?’ and ‘Can I have that money?’ Chicago Officer 2: There’s been times when we have arrested the same kid for possession two or three times that day.

Previous research in Phoenix (Portillos, 2015) has documented how police officers viewed the local community as a “cesspool’ and a “war zone” (p. 107). Some officers were fearful of working in the neighborhood because of the increased calls for service related to drugs and violent crime (Portillos, 2015). Similar to Chicago, some officers did not recognize how structural disadvantages informed the choices individuals would make but often attributed their plight to personal responsibility. In Phoenix, officers expressed frustration when responding to domestic violence calls and arresting people who did not go to trial because the victim decided against testifying. To officers, this was an example of how “lower class” women call for help but are insincere about changing their personal lives. In addition, some officers recognized how some resources were distributed differently throughout communities in Phoenix which helps explain the different types of crimes. For example, one officer stated, “the precinct I came from has a higher socioeconomic demographic, there is a larger percentage of Anglo-Americans and more money. So, the types of crimes we have over there were much more petty.” In comparison to Chicago, Phoenix police officers tended to focus on socioeconomic differences in racialized communities but embedded in those comments remain how cultural practices or behaviors shape poor people’s plight.

In contrast, conversations with officers also offered an opportunity to capture a broader image of policing. When officers were asked to describe the most challenging aspect of the job, officers often identified harm to children. In Chicago, an officer stated, “I would say you never get used to kids getting hurt…. There was a baby that kept crying, so they [step parents] beat the girl to death. Another girl had a baby and put it in a towel and in a washing machine, and we found the child dead.” Despite the fact that officers often drew on their experiences with the criminals in the neighborhoods, they also described good people without being prompted. For example, a Chicago officer stated “There’s a lot of good people here, church going, but all we see [have contact with] are the bad.” Furthermore, when some officers in Chicago were asked to describe the difference between Latina/o and African neighborhoods, they identified the inequalities prevalent in many Black neighborhoods, “It is painful to see those areas [African American]. There is more unemployment there than in the Mexican community.” Despite the fact that officers are routinely exposed to danger and traumatic events, they were not invariably desensitized to violence. In one ride-along in Chicago, during a domestic disturbance where the husband was chasing a woman with a knife, he fell down the stairs, and stabbed himself with the weapon. When the paramedics came, the officers stepped away to avoid seeing the blood and more than one officer stated, “I don’t want to see that [blood all over].” Some officers also described how children viewed them in the neighborhood and desire to contribute to a more positive view of the police. For example, in Phoenix, an officer stated, “We are social workers with a gun…if you treat every call like that then you are going to be okay…. Every time I run into kids…. I want to make a good first impression.”

Despite the sensationalized images about bold, unfeeling, uncaring, and aggressive officers, we observed in both settings that other officers appeared concerned about the welfare of children, describe the pain associated with inner-city areas, and are not all desensitized to violence. Our time in the field allowed us to develop rapport with officers, which helped facilitate a critical and nuanced examination in the ways in which some officers make culture of poverty arguments that blame the victim for their precarious social position. Alternatively, some police officers were emphatic regarding the social plight experienced by residents in the communities they policed. We suggest that officers’ perceptions of the crime rate and beliefs about the origin of the social problems in the area shape how they police the neighborhood (Klinger, 1997). However, police officers who report a nuanced view of the community and believe that the social problems are associated with structural forces than individual choices are likely to police differently.