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The Use of Lethal Force by Canadian Police Officers: Assessing the Influence of Female Police Officers and Minority Threat Explanations on Police Shootings Across Large Cities

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Abstract

This study examines the applicability of several theoretically derived accounts used to explain the variations in police killings across 39 of Canada’s largest cities over a 15-year period. Pooled time-series negative binomial regression results are consistent with the ethnic threat hypothesis by indicating that lethal police action is associated with the size of the ethnic minority population in each city. Political accounts are supported as non-linear specifications suggest that once ethnic minorities reach a numerical majority in our sample of cities there is a decline in police killings. Findings also support expectations that greater female representation within policing will reduce the use of lethal force by changing the overall culture of the department. Theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The search sting used in ProQuest’s Canadian NewsStand was: ((Police NEAR/4 Kill) OR (Police NEAR/4 DEATH) NOT (world OR Iraq OR Afghanistan OR Mexico OR Soldier OR Israel OR Pakistan OR India OR Mexico OR France OR Germany))

  2. VIF scores were based on our base model without interactions which produce high levels of unavoidable multicolinearity. Also, the scores were from a model that did not include the presence of immigrants. As mentioned in the text, the percentage immigrant and percentage visible minority are highly correlated. We account for this by testing each in separate models, thereby removing the threat of collinearity.

  3. The negative sign on the squared terms suggests that the relationship is best described as an inverted U-shaped curve.

  4. We do not include a non-linear test of the presence of Aboriginal peoples because they do not make-up a large enough proportion of any city to trigger the type of threshold effect discussed.

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Acknowledgments

Early drafts of this research were presented at the Canadian Sociological Association annual meeting (2013) in Victoria, BC.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture, Québec (FQRSC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Room 713, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2T7, Canada

    Jason T. Carmichael

  2. Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Stephanie L. Kent

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Correspondence to Jason T. Carmichael.

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Carmichael, J.T., Kent, S.L. The Use of Lethal Force by Canadian Police Officers: Assessing the Influence of Female Police Officers and Minority Threat Explanations on Police Shootings Across Large Cities. Am J Crim Just 40, 703–721 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9283-1

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