People's Perceptions Towards Police Militarization in the U.S.

Abstract

Abstract: Police militarization is a process that does not only impact the police, but it likewise has an effect on the public it has sworn to serve and protect. The project at hand focuses on the effects that police militarization practices have on the public’s perceptions of the police, as it seeks to study whether police militarization promotes a sense of protection, trust, and approachability towards the police by the public; or whether these militarization practices generate feelings of threat, and/or other detrimental effects towards the public’s perceptions of the police. Through a survey research methodology, two survey versions of the same questioner but variant on the status of an accompanying primer survey picture as a militarized police picture or a not militarized police picture were distributed among eight-hundred New York state respondents; each half of the sample received one version. Upon statistical analysis of the survey responses, it was found that a militarized police does not necessarily promote a significant sense of protection, trust, or approachability towards the police by the public, but does in fact promote a significant lower sense of threat than the not militarized police on the specific instance when people find the equipment of the police to not be representative of their local police. Additionally, military service, racial demographics, among other independent variables described in context below, yielded significant results when analyzed in respect to the main dependent variables of Protection, Approachability, Trust, and Threat.