Blue, Not Black or White
Your track record matters more than your race – but whose track record, and how, depends on a combination you won’t expect.
Publication
Dunbar, A., Hanink, P.A., & Kyle, B. (2025). Good cop, bad cop, Black cop, White cop: Unraveling public perceptions of police use of force. Crime & Delinquency, 71(12), 3784-3806. https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287241268298
What Was the Issue?
Police departments have been diversifying for decades, with the rationale that more Black officers means better community relations and fewer racially charged incidents. Then Tyre Nichols was beaten to death by five Black officers. The case raised a question that largely got buried: does the race of an officer actually change how the public judges them when force is used? And does their prior conduct record play a role?
How Did They Look at It?
643 adults recruited through Prolific read a news article describing a use-of-force incident – a foot chase ending with a suspect slammed onto the hood of a car and rendered unconscious. The officer’s race (Black or White) and prior conduct record (commendation, misconduct, or no information) were randomly varied across six conditions. Participants then rated officer blameworthiness, justifiability of the force, how severely the officer should be punished, and how redeemable the officer was.
What Did They Find?
Officer race alone had virtually no effect on any outcome. Black and White officers who used force were judged essentially the same on blameworthiness, punishment, justifiability, and redeemability.
The interactions between race and conduct record are where the story gets complicated. A Black officer with a commendation record was seen as more redeemable, deserving of less punishment, and more justified in using force. A White officer with a misconduct record was seen as less redeemable, more blameworthy, and deserving of more punishment – but interestingly, participants also rated police generally as more redeemable after reading that scenario, treating the officer as a bad apple rather than a symptom. A Black officer with a misconduct history was judged as more blameworthy for the incident, but that didn’t translate into increased punishment or reduced redeemability. A White officer with a commendation record saw no benefit from it at all.
The single strongest predictor across every outcome was belief in police racial bias. People who believed racial bias was widespread in policing rated officers as less redeemable, more blameworthy, more deserving of punishment, and less justified in using force – regardless of the officer’s race. Political conservatism predicted more leniency toward the officer.
So What?
The authors argue the race-by-conduct interaction cuts both ways for diversity initiatives. A Black officer who builds a commendation record benefits from it more than a comparable White officer does. The good conduct actively improves public evaluations. That’s an argument for diversity as a legitimacy strategy.
The flip side is a liability: the public appears to discount a Black officer’s misconduct history relative to a White officer’s in the same situation. The authors flag this as a risk. Departments could deploy Black officers in volatile situations precisely because public blowback would be lower, or use diversification as cover for aggressive tactics.
My $.02
The asymmetry in how conduct interacts with race is the most theoretically interesting finding. Why does a White officer’s misconduct stick harder than a Black officer’s? It could be that the mental image of an aggressive cop is predominantly White, so when that expectation is confirmed it provokes a punitive response. When the race-role expectation is violated, participants may lack the cognitive schema to process it punitively in the same way. Whatever the cause, future research should explore this issue. It appears that the “cops are blue, not Black or White” argument only holds for race as a standalone factor – it breaks down when conduct enters the picture.
There are real limits here. The sample is overwhelmingly White and therefore, not representative of communities where most high-profile use-of-force incidents occur. The data were collected in April 2023, three months after Nichols, which may have inflated anti-police sentiment across the board. Whether these findings replicate with a nationally representative or majority-minority sample is an open question.
The practical takeaway: officer track record matters more than officer race in shaping public opinion after a use-of-force incident. Accountability systems that document and publicize commendations – not just complaints may have real value for public legitimacy.