The impact of neighborhood crime levels on police use of force: An examination at micro and meso levels

• We examined the impact of neighborhood violence on levels of police force.
• We adopted radial buffer zones to measure neighborhood violence using GIS.
• Higher levels of neighborhood violence invite higher levels of police force.

PurposeNeighborhood contextual factors have gained a considerable amount of attention, relating neighborhood crime levels to police force. Prior research mainly examined the relationship either at the police district level or at the city level. The current study intends to investigate the relationship at lower levels of geographic aggregation.MethodsUsing Geographic Information System techniques, the current study utilized four radial buffer zones around each use of force incident location to measure the impact of neighborhood violent criminal activities at the micro level on the level of police force used. In addition, hierarchical linear modeling using neighborhood crime rates within police command areas allowed for a comparison study to measure the impact of neighborhood criminal activities at the meso level on police force.ResultsThe current study found that neighborhood crime levels have a significant and positive effect of increasing the level of police force used at the micro level.ConclusionsThe current study supports the work of Black and Smith, concluding that more training and supervision are required for officers working in high crime areas.