VICTIMS PERCEPTIONS OF INITIAL POLICE RESPONSES TO ROBBERY AND AGGRAVATED ASSAULT - DOES RACE MATTER

Despite the fact that police officers are usually the first persons wi thin the criminal justice system to respond to a criminal victimizatio n, the majority of research investigating racial discrimination within the system has examined primarily the effects of race on adjudication outcomes which occur after initial police interventions, such as conv iction decisions and sentences. Very little empirical effort has been devoted to examining the effects of race on early police responses to a reported victimization. Using data from the National Crime Victimiza tion Survey from 1987 to 1992, this paper investigates the effects of both the victim's and the offender's race on three police responses to robbery and aggravated assault: (1) police response time to the scene , (2) effort exerted by the police at the scene, and (3) likelihood of arrest. It was found that police were quicker to respond and also exe rted more effort at the scene such as searching and taking evidence to incidents of black on white robbery compared to all other racial dyad s. This relationship held even after controlling for other factors suc h as victim-offender relationship, poverty, injury to the victim, and victim's gender. No significant effects of race, however, were found w hen predicting the probability of arrest in cases of robbery. The effe cts of race on police responses to aggravated assault were more compli cated. For assaults involving strangers, police were significantly mor e likely to exert additional effort at the scene if the victim was whi te and the offender was perceived to be black. This effect was reverse d, however, for nonstranger assault victimizations. Police were signif icantly less likely to exert effort at the scene or to make an arrest in black on white assaults involving nonstrangers. The most consistent predictors of arrest in both stranger and nonstranger assault victimi zations were police response time, injury to the victim, and the incid ent occurring in a public setting.