Police-citizen encounters : a content analysis of the New York Times

Abstract

In the past decade, negative police-citizen encounters have received a great amount of attention in both research and in the media. Although prior studies have examined the characteristics associated with negative police-citizen relationships, less is known how police-citizen encounters are portrayed in the media. Using a content analysis of stories published on police-citizen encounters in the New York Times during the past 15 years, this study explores the characteristics (both officer and offender) and outcomes (e.g., arrest, use of force) associated with such stories. In addition, the data collected from the content analysis will be compared to relevant statistics in the real world to determine whether the information reported on police-citizen encounters departs from official statistics.