Iliana Morgan Chevres
Research Mentor(s): Kenneth Lowande
Mentor Department: Political Science
Authors: Iliana Morgan Chevres
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 54
Abstract
Police violence is a commonly used term in today’s media to describe violent crimes committed by police officers. However, what is not explained is where the police get these weapons. Police militarization is defined as equipping police departments with military grade equipment, tactics, and training. The 1033 program is a federal grant program that allows police departments to acquire military-grade equipment. This program is used as a key measure of police militarization as it tracks the type of equipment departments are receiving as well as where weapons are being requested and sent. This study examines whether there is a relationship between police militarization and community trust, measured through social capital. We are using the publicly available Social Capital Atlas dataset from 2022 to compare social capital and the number of weapons received by the same county in 2022. The Social Capital Atlas uses three measures of social capital: economic connectedness, civic engagement, and cohesiveness. Through comparing these two datasets we hope to determine if there is any relationship between the number of weapons a county´s police department received in 2022 and that county´s levels of social capital, also referred to as community trust. Our goal in this project is to understand what factors may potentially affect police militarization. This is important because understanding what contributes to police having military-grade weapons can help us to understand what factors create an environment where departments commit more violence and therefore how we can change it. If a relationship exists, it could inform strategies for communities to use in order to reduce excessive police militarization and its potential consequences.
