In the wake of George Floyd’s death, United States law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system have been under heightened scrutiny. Given the polarizing nature of public conversations, my research seeks to understand the gender and race patterns of both officer-involved homicides (OIHs) and public opinion on officers. I use a mixed methods approach in which I first document approximately 20 years of race-gender patterns of OIHs and legal outcomes of these deaths using The Fatal Encounters dataset. The qualitative component interrogates opinions of police officers and individuals, hoping to gain an insight on how social characteristics affect a person’s beliefs. I specifically performed semi-structured interviews of five individuals of different genders and races and asked them a series of questions regarding how they identify, how they view law enforcement officers, and social causes like the Black Lives Matter movement, and used value coding to organize responses. I found that women in general feel more vulnerable around police officers, but race plays the biggest role in the feeling of vulnerability. My quantitative analysis helps to frame these results, using the risk of OIHs among women and individuals of color, the risk of losing a loved one, and the rare legal repercussions for officers to better understand public opinion. With this data, we are able to take a comprehensive look at what influences opinions and how to better support those who feel the most vulnerable.
