Researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial in which police officers in New Haven, Connecticut made community policing visits to the homes of 1,007 residents between September and October 2018, and found that a brief, positive nonenforcement interaction with an officer improved public attitudes toward police, including improved trust and willingness to cooperate with police; the effects were nearly twice as large among black individuals as white individuals, and strongest among individuals who held the most negative views toward police prior to the intervention, suggesting that positive police-public interactions can improve public attitudes toward police.
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Article #19-10157: "A field experiment on community policing and police legitimacy," by Kyle Peyton, Michael Sierra-Arévalo, David G. Rand.
MEDIA CONTACT: Kyle Peyton, Yale University, New Haven, CT; email: kyle.peyton@yale.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences