Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 12–20

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Journal of Criminal Justice

Sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect: The role of managerial organizational justice

Justin Nix a,⁎, Scott E. Wolfe b a University of Louisville, 2301 South 3rd Street, Louisville, KY 40292, United States b University of South Carolina, 1305 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, United States

⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: justin.nix@louisville.edu (J. Nix).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2016.06.002 0047-2352/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

a b s t r a c t

a r t i c l e i n f oArticle history: Received 25 May 2016 Received in revised form 27 June 2016 Accepted 28 June 2016 Available online 6 July 2016

Purpose:We argue that the police have been adversely impacted by Ferguson-related negative publicity in ways beyond the supposed increase in crime (e.g., reduced motivation and increased perception of danger). Further, we suggest that organizational justice is a key factor that influences officers’ sensitivity to such Ferguson Effects. Methods: We used a sample of 510 sheriff’s deputies surveyed 6 months after the incident in Ferguson. We ex- plored whether organizational justice is associated with deputies’ sensitivity to several manifestations of the Ferguson Effect using OLS and ordered logistic regression models. Results: The results demonstrated that deputies who believed their supervisors were more organizationally fair were less likely to feel unmotivated, perceivemore danger, believe their colleagues have been negatively impact- ed, or feel that US citizens and local residents have become more cynical toward the police in the post-Ferguson era. Conclusions: Police supervisorswho use organizational justice as a guidingmanagerial philosophy aremore likely to shield their officers from the negative work-related outcomes that can follow recent Ferguson-type publicity. Supervisors should be fair, objective, honest, and respectful when dealing with their subordinates in order to communicate that the agency has their back even when it may appear the community does not.

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Policing Police management Organizational justice Ferguson Effect

1. Organizational justice and sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect

Over the last eighteen months, there has been much debate about the so-called “Ferguson Effect” on US police. This idea holds that in re- sponse to heightened scrutiny of the police following the fatal shooting of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, offi- cers are less motivated to aggressively perform their duties and are pulling back from proactive strategies. Proponents suggest that this “de-policing” will result in increased crime rates throughout the US. Themost robust empirical assessment of this argument to date recently revealed that the Ferguson Effect has not caused increased crime across the US (Pyrooz, Decker, Wolfe, & Shjarback, 2016; but see also Rosenfeld, 2016). While this evidence is good news and puts to rest any worries of a nationwide crime wave (see Mac Donald, 2015), there may in fact be other ways in which the Ferguson Effect manifests itself. For instance, research has shown that negative publicity sur- rounding the police in the aftermath of Ferguson was associated with lower levels of officer self-legitimacy (Nix & Wolfe, 2015) and reduced willingness of officers to engage in community partnerships (Wolfe & Nix, 2016a). These are important findings because extant research has demonstrated that officers with greater self-legitimacy are more

committed to using procedural justice with citizens (Bradford & Quinton, 2014) and less reliant on physical force to gain compliance (Tankebe &Meško, 2015), while community partnerships are an essen- tial aspect of community and problem-oriented policing (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001; Gill, Weisburd, Telep, Vitter, & Bennett, 2014). Thus, while systematic crime rate increases do not seem to be a direct consequence of the Ferguson Effect, there is reason to believe that police officers have been adversely impacted by the Ferguson controversy (and related incidents across the US), which in turn has implications for crime. In this way, sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect can be viewed as a negative work-related outcome for officers, their supervisors and agencies, and the communities they serve.

The problem, however, is that we know very little about what is as- sociated with officers’ sensitivity to such Ferguson Effects. In other words, what is it thatmakes a police officer more or less likely to feel af- fected by negative publicity and public discontent stemming from Ferguson? This is an important policy question for police agencies and command staff. What can supervisors do to help prevent their officers from being adversely impacted by negative publicity stemming from high-profile incidents like that in Ferguson? Organizational justice the- ory offers a sound framework for such an understanding (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Sheppard, Lewicki, & Minton, 1992). Within the business management literature, studies have shown that greater perceived supervisor organizational justice is associated with

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beneficial work-related outcomes such as increased productivity and greater organizational commitment among employees (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). And although relatively few stud- ies have applied the organizational justice framework to the study of police behavior, the available evidence suggests that officers who per- ceive their supervisors as being fair are more likely to identify with their organization, comply with procedures, and hold more favorable attitudes toward community policing, procedural justice, and the public more generally (Bradford, Quinton, Myhill, & Porter, 2014; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2014). On the other hand, officerswho believe their supervisors are unfair express less trust in their agency (Wolfe & Nix, 2016b) and are more likely to engage in misconduct (Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). It is with these results in mind that we argue organiza- tional justice may also be associated with less sensitivity to negative publicity stemming from Ferguson-related public discontent. Officers who feel fairly and respectfully treated by their supervisors may be par- tially shielded from the effects of negative press surrounding their occu- pation. This is particularly important in agencies across the US that may not have experienced a high-profile police shooting but are neverthe- less dealing with the fallout of such events in other jurisdictions. Such organizational justice likely communicates to officers that they can trust their agency and supervisors and that theywill be there to support them in the face of public scrutiny.

Accordingly, the present study considered whether perceived orga- nizational justice was associated with several different indicators or manifestations of the Ferguson Effect.We accomplished this using a sur- vey of sheriff’s deputies (N = 510) employed by an agency in a south- eastern US metropolis. Multivariate regression equations were estimated to determine the extent to which organizational justice was associated with sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect and to rule out the possible confounding influence of other individual traits (e.g., self-legit- imacy). Our findings provide valuable insight for police executives who wish to protect their officers from the public outrage surrounding their profession in the post-Ferguson era of policing. In this way we are not interested in finding ways for officers and their agencies to skirt ac- countability for wrong-doing. Rather, the overarching goal of this study was to provide empirical evidence concerning the type of police supervisor actions that can help ensure officers do not become less mo- tivated, withdraw from their duties, or become less effective cops be- cause of the threat of media scrutiny and cell phone video recording. The implications of this study are important from a police policy stand- point but also because internal fairness within a police agencymay ulti- mately impact public safety by creating better street cops.

2. The Ferguson Effect

Dating back to the summer of 2014, there have been several highly publicized fatal encounters between white police officers and unarmed black citizens. The first occurred in Staten Island, NY, when Eric Garner died after being placed in a choke hold by NYPD officers. A bystander captured the incident on video –which includedGarner sayingmultiple times “I can’t breathe” – and it ultimately went viral on the internet. Shortly thereafter, in Ferguson, MO, unarmed Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. This encounter was not captured on video, but several witnesses claimed that Brown had his arms raised over his head as if to be surrendering when he was shot. Although the officer’s use of force was later ruled justified by the US Department of Justice (i.e., evidence suggested that Brown attempted to grab the officer’s gun), the incident sparked civil unrest that lasted several weeks in Ferguson and captured extraordinary media attention.

Eight months later, in North Charleston, SC, cellphone video emerged ofWalter Scott being shot five times in the back as hewas flee- ing Officer Michael Slager, who has since been indicted for murder and is awaiting trial. Just one week after Scott’s death, Freddie Gray went into a coma while being transported by a Baltimore Police van for pos- session of an illegal switchblade. The media suggested Gray (who died

from his injuries one week later) had been the victim of a “rough ride,” and six officers were ultimately indicted for various charges in- cluding false imprisonment (the knife turned out to be a pocket knife) and manslaughter.1 Days after Gray’s funeral, televised protests in downtown Baltimore turned violent: rocks were thrown, fires were started, patrol cars were destroyed, and many people (including police officers) sustained injuries. The rioting eventually forced the governor of Maryland to declare a state of emergency and call in the National Guard.

Though allegations of excessive use of force against unarmed black citizens are nothing new (e.g., Rodney King in Los Angeles), these and related events have resulted in unprecedented levels of police scrutiny in recent months (Weitzer, 2015). This is due in large part to the advent of social media and the ease with which citizens can record police be- havior on cell phones and upload to the Internet for millions to view. Such continuous negative publicity surrounding the police at a national level has led some to argue that the police are withdrawing from their duties in order to avoid being the next viral video on YouTube (Martinez, 2015; Sutton, 2015) – an argument that has become known as the “Ferguson Effect.”2 One month after the Baltimore riots, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Heather Mac Donald (2015), in which she argued that crime increases being experienced in several major US cities were precursors to a nationwide crime wave that is the direct result of the Ferguson Effect and de-policing. Top law enforcement officials such as St. Louis Chief Sam Dotson (who coined the term “Ferguson Effect”), FBI Director James Comey and DEA Chief Chuck Rosenberg, city mayors such as Rahm Emmanuel, and others have all echoed concerns over de-policing stemming from the Ferguson Effect.

2.1. The evidence concerning the Ferguson Effect

Until recently, the Ferguson Effect debate has been “long on anec- dotes and speculation and short on data” (Pyrooz et al., 2016:3). For ex- ample, the FBI Director warned of the Ferguson Effect and President Obama argued it may not exist, but both suggested we need data to an- swer such questions. To determine whether Ferguson was associated with changes in crime rates at the national level, Pyrooz and his co-au- thors analyzed monthly UCR Part I offenses in 81 large US cities 12 months before and 12 months after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. They found no evidence of a post-Ferguson change in overall, violent, or property crime trends – although disaggregated analyses suggested that robbery rates were on the rise in the post-Ferguson era. Importantly, they did reveal that a handful of cities—those with higher than average crime rates, larger African-American populations, and greater police per capita—experienced increases in violent crime starting at about the same time as the Ferguson incident. Substantively, however, themagnitude of such crime rate changeswas quite small. For example, in the “Ferguson Effect cities” it would take nearly two years to witness a one-unit increase in homicides, on average. A Ferguson Effect? Probably – but certainly nothing to sound alarm bells over.3

What Pyrooz and colleagues’ analyses could not speak to, however, was whether Ferguson and related events have resulted in de-policing. In a recent report for the 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Morgan and Pally (2016) explored this possibility in Baltimore by examining trends in both crime and arrest data from 2010 to 2015, which captures the deaths of both Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. With respect to crime, the authors found that shootings, homicides, robberies, carjackings, and automobile thefts all increased in the three months following Gray’s death. Yet despite these crime in- creases, the arrest count over the same period declined by 30% (in fact, arrests had been declining during the 8 months prior to Gray’s arrest, which is perhaps attributable to the events surrounding Brown’s death in Ferguson). Thus, the authors found that negative publicity sur- rounding Gray’s death in Baltimore was associated with both increases in crime and a slowdown in police activity. Together, these studies

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suggest that there is no Ferguson Effect on national crime rates; howev- er, negative publicity stemming from events like Ferguson and Balti- more do appear to have an effect on police behaviors. Importantly, such an effect seems to occur regardless of whether a city has experi- enced a high-profile incident of its own (e.g., Baltimore’s de-policing after Brown’s death, but before Gray’s death).

Equally important is the possibility that, in response to bothnegative media attention and public discontent, the police have begun to ques- tion the confidence they have in their ownmoral authority, or self-legit- imacy (see Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012). Indeed, Nix and Wolfe (2015) demonstrated that reduced motivation due to negative publicity in the months following Ferguson was associated with lower levels of self-le- gitimacy among officers in their sample. This is especially troubling given that higher levels of self-legitimacy have been linked to greater organizational commitment and less dependence on physical force to gain compliance (Tankebe & Meško, 2015), as well as greater commit- ment to using procedural fairness (Bradford & Quinton, 2014).

Similarly, Wolfe and Nix (2016a) found that officers who felt less motivated as a result of negative publicity surrounding lawenforcement indicated less willingness to engage in community partnerships – a key component of policing in the community-problem solving era. Impor- tantly, however, the study also revealed that officers’ lack of willingness to work with community members was more a result of perceived su- pervisor unfairness and lack of self-legitimacy. Finally, some commenta- tors and law enforcement officials have proclaimed that policing has become more dangerous in the wake of Ferguson due to officers being more hesitant to use force when the situation calls for it (Canterbury, 2016; Reese, 2014; Safir, 2015). Some have even suggested that the number of police officers being assaulted and killed in the line of duty has increased sharply (Hattem, 2015), though empirical evidence sug- gests otherwise (Maguire, Nix, & Campbell, 2016).

Anecdotes and opinions concerning the Ferguson Effect abound and many cops argue that it is real. The problemwith most media attention concerning the Ferguson Effect is that it is treated often as a singular phenomenon. The reality is that there may be many Ferguson Effects. While research suggests that a Ferguson Effect on crime rates appears to be confined to select cities in the US, there are many other conse- quences experienced by officers that have resulted from negative pub- licity. In this way, empirical evidence confirms much of the conjecture and anecdotes. Some cops are less motivated and confident, view the job as more dangerous, are arresting fewer people for minor offenses, and are more hesitant to engage with community members in the post-Ferguson era. Again, it is important to emphasize that social media contagion has allowed Ferguson-type incidents to be experi- enced in agencies that have not experienced their own high-profile po- lice shooting (see Pyrooz et al., 2016). Ultimately, social media has created a situation where citizens and officers alike can reap the nega- tive effects of such incidents regardless of geographical proximity. Offi- cers need to be held accountable for wrongdoing but this evidence suggests that a sizeable portion of police officers are feeling the ill effects of intense public scrutiny. These are important observations not only for police agencies but the communities they serve. Ultimately, officers im- pacted in this manner are less effective than they should be. This has di- rect implications for the safety of citizens and the wellbeing of communities. Unfortunately, we know very little about what factors are associated with officers’ sensitivity to Ferguson-related negative publicity. Organizational justice theory offers one possibility for us to begin to establish an evidence-based understanding of the phenomenon.

3. Organizational justice

Organizational justice theory has a long history in the businessman- agement literature (see, e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988). In fact, several meta- analyses have demonstrated strong empirical support for the conclu- sion that employees are more likely to engage in a wide-range of

beneficial work-related behaviors when they perceive their organiza- tion as fair (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001). There are three primary components to organizational justice, the first of which is distributive fairness. Employees base their evaluations of su- pervisors partially on the extent to which they perceive organizational outcomes, such as salary and promotion decisions, as being distributed evenhandedly across the organization (i.e., such decisions are not based on individual characteristics or “who you know”). The second compo- nent, interactional justice, concerns the degree to which employees feel they are treated with respect and politeness by supervisors. The third, and most important, element of organizational justice is proce- dural fairness. Over and above outcome-based equity, employees look for supervisory decisions and organizational processes to be handled in procedurally justmanners—decisions are clearly explained, unbiased, and allow for employee input.

Given the overlap between the management of cooperate busi- nesses and police organizations, a wave of organizational justice re- search in policing contexts has occurred in the past few years. Wolfe and Piquero (2011), for example, showed that officers were less likely to engage in misconduct when they viewed their agency and supervi- sors as organizationally fair. Other research has echoed this finding and revealed further beneficial outcomes that stem from organizational justice. Officers are more likely to identify with their agency and its goals, holdmore favorable views of community policing (and the public more broadly), use procedural justice, and have higher levels of self-le- gitimacy when they perceive their supervisors as organizationally fair (Bradford & Quinton, 2014; Bradford, Quinton, Myhill, & Porter, 2014; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2014; Tankebe & Meško, 2015; Tyler, Callahan, & Frost, 2007). Relatedly, but using slightly different ter- minology, recent studies have underscored the importance of “internal procedural justice” within police departments (Trinkner, Tyler, & Goff, 2016; Van Craen, 2016). The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015) even included internal procedural justice as a corner- stone of building trust within the community—trust must start from the inside before being sustained in communities. Taken together, the literature demonstrates that officers who feel their supervisors are pro- cedurally fair, distribute outcomes based on objective criteria, and treat subordinates with respect, engage in more organizational citizenship behaviors and harbor positive attitudes that are beneficial to both the agencies they work for and the communities they serve.

With such results in mind, there are several reasons why we would expect organizational justice to be associated with less sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect. First, it is important to emphasize that we view sensi- tivity to the Ferguson Effect as a negative work-related outcome given the many potential negative consequences of such an orientation. If of- ficers feel less motivated or believe citizens have worse opinions of the police in the wake of Ferguson, for example, they may be less likely to engage in successful crime reduction strategies such as using procedural justice, community-oriented policing, or order-maintenance policing. Empirical evidence supports this conclusion (Morgan & Pally, 2016; Wolfe & Nix, 2016a). On the other hand, officers may be protected from such negative outcomes when they are treated in a fair manner by their supervisors. Organizational justice communicates to individual officers that their supervisors and the broader agency have their back—they are there to support them.4 Furthermore, being treated fairly and respectfully by supervisors lets officers know that they have a voice in their agency and they are a part of the department, not simply a sub- ordinate employee. Most importantly, supervisors who use organiza- tional fairness are indicating to officers that “we are in this together” regarding public scrutiny and Ferguson-related negative media atten- tion. This sends an important psychological message to officers that if something does go wrong it will be dealt with fairly.

It is important to determinewhether organizational justice is related to officers’ sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect because of relatively easy- to-implement policy implications that would follow. Organizational fairness can be used as a management philosophy by ensuring that

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supervisors treat officers in a procedurally fair, unbiased, and respectful manner, and by offering them a voice in decisions. In turn, this strategy can help stave off any negative psychological effects ofmedia and public scrutiny. This is important in itself but using organizationally fair super- vision techniques also has a number of other benefits that come with it such as creating officers who are more committed to and trusting of their agency, more willing to work with the community and use proce- dural justice, and less likely to engage in counterproductive work be- haviors (e.g., misconduct). Organizational justice is also likely to help lead to needed reforms in agencies with strained police-community re- lations. In short, the organizational justice return on investment is great.

4. The current study

Accordingly, the present study explored whether officers’ percep- tions of organizational fairness within their agency was associated with their sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect. We examined this question with a survey of sheriff’s deputies that was conducted about six months after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. This was a time period when the “Ferguson Effect”was receiving a great deal of attention on so- cial and conventional media sites and when high ranking officials were warning of the ill-effects of the phenomenon (see, e.g., Anderson, 2014; Frizell, 2014; Matt, 2014; Reese, 2014). We use a variety of measures to explore officers’ attitudes concerning various possible manifestations of the Ferguson Effect. The purpose of the present study was to provide a theoretically sophisticated understanding of the correlates of sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect in order to provide evidence-based police policy recommendations. The overarching goal was to further demonstrate the utility of organizational fairness within police agencies.

5. Methods

5.1. Data

Shortly after the beginning of 2015, we surveyed 510 full-time, sworn sheriff’s deputies employed by an agency in a southeastern US metropolis (response rate=85%).5 The surveywas administered online at a password-protected website and participation was encouraged by ensuring anonymity and securing the endorsement of the agency’s Deputy Advisory Council – a group of deputies who represent the inter- est of their colleagues and is very respected throughout the agency. As is typical of survey research, some respondents returned incomplete sur- veys, which resulted in a small amount of missing data. We employed multiple imputation using chained equations (MICE; 10 imputations) to handle missing data, which is available in Stata 14 (Andridge & Little, 2010; Fuller & Kim, 2005).

5.2. Dependent variables

We measured sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect with five separate dependent variables meant to capture various consequences attribut- able to the Ferguson controversy. Specifically, we considered whether the respondent felt s/he has been impacted, his/her colleagues have been affected, and the public has been affected by the Ferguson contro- versy, respectively, in the wake of Michael Brown’s death and subse- quent related events in the ensuing months.