663494
2016

ASRXXX10.1177/0003122416663494American Sociological ReviewDesmond et al.

Police Violence and Citizen
Crime Reporting in the Black
Community

American Sociological Review
1­–20
© American Sociological
Association 2016
DOI: 10.1177/0003122416663494
http://asr.sagepub.com

Matthew Desmond,a Andrew V. Papachristos,b
and David S. Kirkc

Abstract
High-profile cases of police violence—disproportionately experienced by black men—may
present a serious threat to public safety if they lower citizen crime reporting. Using an
interrupted time series design, this study analyzes how one of Milwaukee’s most publicized
cases of police violence against an unarmed black man, the beating of Frank Jude, affected
police-related 911 calls. Controlling for crime, prior call patterns, and several neighborhood
characteristics, we find that residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, especially residents of
black neighborhoods, were far less likely to report crime after Jude’s beating was broadcast.
The effect lasted for over a year and resulted in a total net loss of approximately 22,200 calls
for service. Other local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men also
had a significant impact on citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee. Police misconduct can
powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters
of personal and public safety.

Keywords
crime reporting, police, police violence, race, crime, inner city

High-profile cases of police violence against
unarmed citizens can undermine the legitimacy of legal authority. Numerous studies
document stark racial disparities in police
maltreatment, finding that black boys and
men are disproportionately subject to excessive and sometimes deadly police force, even
after accounting for situational factors of the
encounter (e.g., resisting arrest) and officer
characteristics (e.g., age, training) (Terrill and
Reisig 2003). Studies show that police disproportionately use improper and deadly force
on black men (Matulia 1982; Worden 1996).
With the proliferation of portable video
recording technology, police misconduct that
was once witnessed only by immediate
bystanders can now be viewed around the

world; and the rise of Internet-based news
sources and 24-hour news networks provide a
powerful medium for broadcasting police misconduct. In recent years, the American public
has been captivated and outraged by such
events. The fatal 2012 shooting of 17-year-old
Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch
coordinator, for example, was the most
a

Harvard University
Yale University
c
University of Oxford
b

Corresponding Author:
Matthew Desmond, Department of Sociology,
Harvard University, William James Hall, 33
Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: mdesmond@fas.harvard.edu

 2  

followed news story in the United States for
several straight weeks (Pew Research Center
2012). Other instances of law-enforcement
officers killing unarmed black men—such as
Eric Garner in New York City (July 2014);
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (August
2014); and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland (April 2015)—became national news stories and sparked widespread protest.
Previous research shows that negative
encounters with law enforcement, as well as
high-profile cases of police misconduct, contribute to the spread of legal cynicism within black
communities (Kirk and Papachristos 2011;
Sampson 2012; Weitzer 2002). Less well understood, however, is the extent to which legal cynicism affects citizens’ reliance on police. In the
aftermath of publicized police violence against
unarmed black men, do residents of black neighborhoods disengage with the police, especially
when it comes to reporting crime via 911? Police
work of every kind relies on citizen participation, especially reports of law breaking (Banton
1964; Black 1970). If police misconduct lowers
crime reporting throughout black communities,
it directly threatens public safety within those
communities, many of which already face high
levels of crime.
This study examines how incidents of
excessive police violence influence citizen
crime reporting. As our main case study, we
examine one of Milwaukee’s most publicized
moments of police brutality: the 2004 beating
of an unarmed black man, Frank Jude, by
white police officers. Using an interrupted
time series design, we analyze patterns of
police-related 911 calls before and after the
Jude beating was made public in the Milwaukee press. Controlling for several neighborhood characteristics, along with fixed effects
for neighborhoods and months, we find that
residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods
were far less likely to report crime after
Jude’s beating was broadcast. Over half of the
total loss in 911 calls occurred in black neighborhoods. Supplemental analyses of other
local and national cases of police violence
against unarmed black men also had an
impact on crime reporting in Milwaukee.

American Sociological Review

Legal Cynicism and
Citizen Crime Reporting
A spirit of legal cynicism—the deep-seated
belief in the incompetence, illegitimacy, and
unresponsiveness of the criminal justice system (Kirk and Papachristos 2011)—is thought
to pervade many poor, minority communities.
Legal cynicism is widely believed to result in
citizens withdrawing from the police, particularly by refusing to report crime to the authorities (Baumer 2002). What emerges, in
Anderson’s (1999:66) classic formulation, is
the code of the street, “a kind of people’s law”
based on respect and payback. Residents who
refuse to seek help from the police are thought
to rely on the code to dole out sanctions
through violence or other informal means
(Kirk and Papachristos 2011; Sampson 2012).
The vast majority of research on citizens’
views toward the police and law breaking is
based on interviews (e.g., Brunson and Miller
2006; Carr, Napolitano, and Keating 2007) or
surveys (e.g., Avakame, Fyfe, and McCoy
1999; Baumer 2002). Interviews and surveys
can serve as effective methods to capture
individuals’ attitudes and cultural scripts, but
studies show surveys are less reliable when it
comes to measuring interactions with the
police (Rosenfeld, Jacobs, and Wright 2003).
Moreover, a close reading of ethnographic
reports reveals that the code’s manifestations
may not be as uniform as is often believed. At
some points, Anderson (1999:72–73, 112)
refers to the code as a belief system or cultural frame, but at others he presents it as a
dissemblance designed to prevent, not encourage, violence. Cold looks and bold boasts
aside, the people Anderson observed often
relied on the police, a pattern observed by
other urban ethnographers as well (e.g.,
Sánchez Jankowski 1991; Venkatesh 2000).
When it comes to relying on and cooperating with the police, what one does might not
resemble what one says one will do. The legal
cynic may report crime just as regularly as the
citizen who views the criminal justice system
with reverence. Studies that measure attitudes
toward the police and hypothesized citizen

 Desmond et al. 

crime reporting find racial differences in the
former but not the latter. Bobo and Thompson
(2006) asked respondents (1) if they would
call the police and file a report if their house
was burglarized and (2) if they believed their
complaint would be taken seriously. The vast
majority of both white and black respondents
(90 and 93 percent, respectively) said they
would call the police; however, only 35 percent of blacks expected to be taken seriously,
compared with 60 percent of whites. Although
sizeable racial differences were observed in
peoples’ attitudes toward the police, respondents were virtually identical in their surmised
actions with law enforcement. People’s attitudes toward the criminal justice system
might be poor, even misleading, indicators of
their real-life dealings with the police.

Study Design and
Research Questions
This study moves beyond the limitations of
previous research by analyzing the effects of
publicized police violence cases on crime
reporting via 911 calls. The evidence for this
study does not rely on accounts of past behavior or projections of future action but on the
complete universe of every crime reported in
Milwaukee over the course of seven years.
Calling 911 to report a crime is the most basic
act of reliance on (and engagement with) the
legal system in contemporary society (Manning 1988; Reiss 1992). It is also foundational
to public safety, being the first and among the
most important acts of cooperation with the
police, who in many cases can respond to
criminal activity only if it is reported.
In studying the effects of highly publicized
cases of police misconduct on citizen crime
reporting, our study also investigates a possible new mechanism for a reluctance to cooperate with formal law enforcement agencies.
Recent studies find that one’s attitude toward
the police can be influenced by vicarious
experiences of one’s social ties (Brunson
2007; Rosenbaum et al. 2005) and by repeated
exposure to news reports of misconduct
(Weitzer and Tuch 2005). Some studies

3

document a drop in public approval of the
police after publicized cases of police brutality, especially among African Americans (Jefferis et al. 1997; Weitzer 2002). These studies
are primarily descriptive, and they do not
control for crime rates. But they do suggest
that police violence may have reverberations
that extend well beyond the trauma and tragedy of an individual act—or even the neighborhood and city in which it took place.
To examine the relationship between publicized reports of police violence and citizen
crime reporting, we examine 911 calls with
an interrupted time series design, testing for
changes in the volume of 911 calls before and
after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel broke
the story of the 2004 beating of an unarmed
black man, Frank Jude, by white police officers. We are interested in four aspects of calling patterns. First, we examine the direction
of 911 calls reporting crime, observing if they
increased, decreased, or experienced no
change. Second, we examine patterns in different types of calls: namely through analyses
of all calls reporting crime and then separately for calls reporting violence. Third, we
focus on the location of calls, observing if
calling patterns in white and black neighborhoods differed after the Sentinel reported
Jude’s assault. Fourth, should there be a “Jude
effect” on police-related 911 calls, we investigate its duration. Additionally, we examine
if citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee was
affected by three other cases of police violence against unarmed black men: the 2007
assault of Danyall Simpson in Milwaukee;
the 2006 killing of Sean Bell in Queens, New
York; and the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant in
Oakland, California. The Simpson case was
covered in the local press; the other two cases
were major stories in the national press.
In each case we analyze, we assume that
breaking the story in mainstream media outlets was what brought the incidents to public
light, even if community members did not
themselves learn of the incidents through
such outlets. Milwaukee residents could have
learned of these incidents through public protest, word of mouth, and alternative media,

 4  

including the black press and underground
rap songs, which circulated after the deaths of
Oscar Grant and Sean Bell. Nevertheless,
news of such incidents spread through various channels only after major media outlets
broke the story. This was especially apparent
in Frank Jude’s case. More than three months
elapsed between Jude’s beating and it being
reported in the local press. During that time,
there were no public protests; unrest did follow the news story. Additionally, supplemental analyses find that in black neighborhoods,
police-related 911 calls were unaffected in the
weeks immediately following Jude’s beating.
This suggests that although knowledge of an
incident of police violence may spread
through personal networks close to the victim, those networks are not expansive enough
to affect the crime-reporting behavior of an
entire community in a compressed timespan
(see Andrews and Biggs 2006). Even if they
were, media reporting on such episodes draws
on medical and police reports, interviews
with eyewitnesses, and other sources, providing resonance and legitimacy to events that
otherwise could be dismissed as hearsay or
overlaid with multiple interpretations rooted
in assumptions (Koopmans 2004).

The Beating of
Frank Jude
What follows is an account of the events surrounding the beating of Frank Jude based on
news reports and court documents (listed at
the end of the article). To understand how
these events could have affected citizen crime
reporting in Milwaukee, it is necessary to
provide a somewhat detailed account of the
severity of Jude’s beating and its aftermath.
On October 23, 2004, Milwaukee police
officer Andrew Spengler hosted a house
warming party in a middle-class white neighborhood. Several police officers attended.
After 2:30 a.m., Frank Jude and Lovell Harris, both black men, arrived at the party as
guests of two female college students. The
group of four began to feel uncomfortable
and left the party, returning to the truck in

American Sociological Review

which they had arrived. But before they could
pull away, at least 10 men surrounded the
truck and accused Jude and Harris of stealing
Spengler’s police badge. Jude, Harris, and
their hosts were pulled from the truck. After
having his face slit with a knife, Harris would
escape. Jude would not (Diedrich 2005b).
Spengler and several other off-duty police
officers began beating Jude about the face and
torso while another pinned his arms behind
his back. When Jude collapsed to the ground,
the officers kicked his head. A pair of on-duty
officers arrived around 3:00 a.m. (Jude’s
female companions had called 911 before
partygoers seized their phones.) One uniformed officer, Joseph Schabel, stomped on
Jude’s face until he heard bones breaking.
The other on-duty officer watched. An offduty officer picked Jude up and kicked him in
the crotch with such force his feet left the
ground. Another took one of Schabel’s pens
and pressed it deep into Jude’s ear canals.
Another bent Jude’s fingers back until they
snapped. Spengler put a gun to Jude’s head.
Jude was left naked from the waist down
lying on the street in a pool of his own blood.
At 3:09 a.m. other on-duty officers arrived at
the scene. Jude was taken by police wagon to
the emergency room, where the admitting
physician took photographs of him because
his injuries were too extensive to document in
writing. Spengler’s badge was never recovered (Diedrich 2005b; USA v. Bartlett, Spengler, and Masarik 2009).
The police officers returned to work, and
Jude began a slow recovery. But on February
6, 2005, Sunday readers of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel were met with the following
front-page headline: “Police Suspected in
Man’s Beating” (Diedrich 2005b). Next to the
headline was one of the photographs the
attending physician had taken of Jude’s swollen face. The story told of the beating and the
subsequent obstructionism and noncooperation by the police: “Authorities knew right
away who was involved, but more than three
months later no one has been charged or even
arrested.” It also listed Jude’s injuries: a concussion; broken noise and fractured sinus

 Desmond et al. 

cavity; cuts in both ears; cuts and swelling to
the head, eyes, neck, face, legs, and back; a
left eye swollen shut that bled for 10 days;
possible permanent disability in one hand;
compromised vision; night terrors; and panic
attacks.
Citizens, many of them black, took to the
streets in protest. Four days after the story
broke, more than 100 people marched in front
of the District Attorney’s office (Nunnally
2005). A month later, nine officers were fired
and four others disciplined. All but one
appealed and drew their salaries. A year later,
Spengler and two fellow officers were tried
and acquitted of all charges by an all-white
jury (Stingl 2006). More protests followed,
prompting a federal investigation. Later that
year, eight officers were federally charged.
Seven were convicted (Borowski 2007; Diedrich 2007a).

Data and Methods
Calls for Service Data
We obtained every 911 call placed in Milwaukee between March 1, 2004 and December
31, 2010 (N = 1,104,369). These data, provided by the Milwaukee Police Department
(MPD), include the date and address of each
call, a city code and description of each call,
and a disposition code reporting how the call
was resolved. This information allowed us to
limit our analysis to police-related calls by
dropping those having to do with traffic and
vehicular accidents; injuries, fires, and medical emergencies; internal police calls (recovered property, assisting an officer); and calls
triggered by security alarms.1 Our analyses
focus on 911 calls placed the year before and
after a given event: for example, we examine
police-related calls in 2004 and 2005 when
estimating the impact of the Frank Jude beating on citizen crime reporting.
Our analyses draw on all 596 city block
groups, the average population of which is
roughly 1,000 people. We exclude from our
analyses any 911 calls made from block
groups beyond Milwaukee city limits,

5

bringing the total number of calls reporting
crime to 883,146. We use “neighborhood”
and “block group” interchangeably and designate a neighborhood as black or white if these
respective groups account for at least twothirds of neighborhood residents. Last, all
crimes recorded by the MPD between 2004
and 2010 were geocoded, aggregated to the
block group, and merged with our dataset.

Measures
Dependent variables. We examine the
weekly number of 911 calls at the blockgroup level. Calls are divided into two categories: total and violent calls. Total calls
include all police-related 911 crime reports,
not only those for violent and property crime
but also reports of public disturbances and
nuisances. Calls for violence include those for
battery, robbery, weapons/shootings, sexual
assault, kidnapping, and threats to person.
When attempting to isolate the effect of the
beating of Frank Jude on citizen crime reporting, the dependent variable is the number of
weekly calls per block group during the
observation period: March 2004 to December
2005.2 This observation period centers on the
date the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first
reported Jude’s beating (February 6, 2005),
allowing us to analyze roughly the same number of weeks before and after the story broke.
Pre-intervention time trend. Two
parameters define the pattern of 911 calls
prior to the Sentinel’s report of Jude’s beating:
the initial level of calls and the slope indicating the time trend. The intercept value in our
models indicates the estimated number of 911
calls per block group at the beginning of the
observation period. The weekly pre-Jude time
measure indicates the pre-intervention change
in the volume of 911 calls over time (Singer
and Willett 2003). Modeling the time trend
allows us to establish a counterfactual for
what the calling pattern would have been like
in the absence of Frank Jude’s story. We estimated the pre-intervention time trend with a
linear specification as well as a quadratic

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6  

specification, comparing model fit between
specifications using the Bayesian Information
Criterion. A linear pre-Jude specification provided a better fit to the data (see Table A1 in
the Appendix).
Explanatory variables. To assess the
impact of the Jude beating on 911 calling
behavior, we test for possible shifts in the level
of 911 calls in a block group as well as changes
in the slope of the time trend. We do so by
including a binary measure equal to 0 for observations prior to the news story of Jude’s beating
and equal to 1 for the period after the story
broke. To measure an interruption in the slope
of the time series, we include linear and quadratic time variables, measured as the number of
weeks since the story broke. For observations
prior to the story, these time variables are set to
0. As with the pre-intervention time trend, we
use model fit statistics to assess whether the
post-intervention trend is more appropriately
modeled with linear or quadratic time specifications (see Table A1). The quadratic post-Jude
specification fits best. By including a quadratic
term for the post-Jude time period, we are
effectively testing for a discontinuous effect of
the Jude beating on 911 calls as well as modeling the possibility that 911 calls eventually
drift back to the pre-Jude trend.
Fixed effects. We include block-group
and month fixed effects in our models. Blockgroup fixed effects control for all time-invariant
block-group-specific factors potentially correlated with 911 calls. Month fixed effects
control for seasonal variation in crime and
crime reporting, as calls peak in the summer
and slump in the winter.
Control variables. To account for the
structural characteristics commonly associated with neighborhood-level crime (Land,
McCall, and Cohen 1990), we draw on U.S.
Census data and calculate the following
measures at the block-group level: percent of
the population that is non-Hispanic black;
percent of the population that is Latino; percent of households below the poverty line;
and percent of households that rent.

Our models also include weekly crime
counts to rule out the possibility that the
observed levels of 911 calls are nothing more
than an indicator of neighborhood crime levels (Kirk and Matsuda 2011; Klinger 1997). In
our models, the control variable reported
crime corresponds to the total number of
weekly crimes in each block group during the
observation period. Derived from aggregate
data generated by the Milwaukee Police
Department for the FBI’s Uniform Crime
Report, this variable is organized into two
categories: total and violent crimes. When our
outcome is all 911 calls, we control for all
reported crime during the same week; when it
is calls for violence, we control for violent
crime. If legal cynicism increased after the
media broke the story of Frank Jude’s beating,
then it is likely that crime also increased during this time period. For the same reason, it is
also likely that some crime went unreported to
the police (Kirk et al. 2012). If neighborhoods
experienced a concomitant increase in crime
and decrease in citizen crime reporting, then
any negative estimate of the effect of Jude’s
beating on citizen crime reporting is conservative. In other words, we model a counterfactual 911 calling trend based on pre-Jude
calling and crime patterns, but the gap between
estimated and counterfactual calling trends is
probably larger than we observed because,
post-Jude, unreported crime likely increased.
Descriptive statistics are presented in
Table 1, which reveals a picture of the city’s
social, demographic, and crime patterns. In
the average Milwaukee neighborhood, there
are approximately three 911 calls a week.
However, there is wide variation in call levels, ranging from 0 to 41 weekly calls per
neighborhood.

Methods
To assess the effect of the Frank Jude beating
on citizen crime reporting, we use an interrupted time series design with block-group
and month fixed effects. With this design, we
assess whether the extensive media coverage
of Jude’s beating that followed the Sentinel’s
breaking story induced an interruption in the

 Desmond et al. 

7

Table1. Summary Statistics for Population, Call, and Crime Variables

Neighborhood Structural Variables
  Percent Black
  Percent Latino
  Percent Poverty
  Percent Renter
Weekly Calls for Service
 Total
 Violence
Weekly Reported Crimes
  Total Crimes
  Violent Crimes

Mean

SD

Min.

.392
.113
.203
.533

.370
.183
.154
.225

0
0
0
0

3.367
.898

3.565
1.437

0
0

1.823
.403

1.950
.753

0
0

Max.
 
.990
.828
.817
1
 
41
17
 
35
9

Note: Summary data for 596 Milwaukee block groups. Here, crime and 911 call statistics pertain to the
observation period before and after the newspaper broke the story of Frank Jude’s beating: March 1,
2004 to December 31, 2005.

level and slope of the time series of 911 calls.
We use a negative binomial specification to
account for the skewness of the 911 calling
pattern, with many block groups reporting
few or no 911 calls in a given week. We measure exposure as the number of residents in a
block group, which we determine from Geolytics annual population estimates.
Previous research suggests that African
American communities would be more
affected than white communities by the Jude
beating (Kirk and Papachristos 2011; Sampson 2012). Hence, in addition to analyzing all
block groups, we also estimate models separately for black and white neighborhoods. We
hypothesize that the effect will be more pronounced in black block groups.
Additionally, we replicate our analyses on
the number of weekly calls for automobile
accidents, a “nonequivalent dependent variable” that should have been unaffected by the
Jude beating (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell
2002:184). Because calls related to car accidents are typically made to report injuries or
for insurance purposes, having little to do
with trust in law enforcement, we expect
them to be unaffected by the incident.

Additional Cases
To examine if the Frank Jude case was
unique, we also investigate if three other

cases of police violence against unarmed
black men affected citizen crime reporting in
Milwaukee. The news reports and court documents on which this section draws are listed
at the end of the article.
Danyall Simpson, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; story broke in the local press on
February 18, 2007. On May 21, 2006, Danyall Simpson, a 19-year-old black man, was
confronted in the driveway of his mother’s
home by police officer James Langer, a
32-year-old white man. Simpson was suspected of throwing a brick through a neighbor’s window. The interaction between
Simpson, Langer, and Langer’s partner grew
confrontational and resulted in Simpson being
taken to the ground. While Simpson was
lying on his back with his arms pinned,
Langer hit him in the face with his flashlight.
The blow broke Simpson’s eye socket and
cheekbone. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported the story on February 18, 2007 (Diedrich 2007b). Readers learned that Langer
had a history of using excessive force but was
not reprimanded; that it took the MPD three
months to deliver the case to the District
Attorney’s office; and that according to a witness, Langer’s hit “sounded as if someone
threw a melon in the air and smashed it with
a baseball bat.” The Sentinel printed a photograph of Simpson’s bloodied face.

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8  

Sean Bell, Queens, New York; story
broke in the national press on November 27, 2006. In the morning hours of
November 25, 2006, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old
black man due to be married later that day,
was shot and killed by New York City police
officers. Five plainclothes officers conducting
an undercover investigation of a prostitution
ring fired over 50 rounds at the car that held
Bell and two friends. Bell had been celebrating his last night of bachelorhood at a Queens
strip club and was unarmed when killed. The
story made national headlines the following
day, with coverage in the New York Times,
CNN, and other major outlets, eliciting large
protests in New York City and beyond (Buckley and Rashbaum 2006; Fransisco, Frieden,
and Rose 2006).
Oscar Grant, Oakland, California;
story broke in the national press on January 8, 2009. In the first hours of 2009, Oscar
Grant III, a 22-year-old black man, was
detained on the platform of the Fruitvale Station by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officers,
who had received word of a possible fight
underway in a crowded train returning from
San Francisco. Two officers were attending to
Grant, who was lying face down with his
hands behind his back, “restrained and
unarmed” according to court documents. One
of the officers, Johannes Mehserle, a 26-yearold white man, then pulled out his .40 caliber
sidearm and shot Grant in the back, puncturing
his lung. Grant died the following morning.
The incident was recorded by multiple bystanders using portable cameras and disseminated to
Internet and media outlets. Protests immediately followed in Oakland, but it took a week
for the story to receive widespread coverage in
the national press. Mehserle was later found
guilty of involuntary manslaughter (Chideya
2009; McKinley 2009).
We selected the Simpson case because it
enables us to observe if a local incident of
police violence less extreme than Jude’s beating also affected citizen crime reporting in
Milwaukee. We selected the killings of Sean
Bell and Oscar Grant because they were the

most nationally publicized cases of police
violence that took place during our study
period. These two cases allow us to investigate if national reports of deadly force used
against unarmed black men in other locales
had any observable impact on citizen crime
reporting in Milwaukee. For each case, we
estimate an interrupted time series model
with block-group and month fixed effects, as
with the Frank Jude case. In contrast to the
Frank Jude analyses, model fit statistics
revealed that a specification with quadratic
time trends for both pre- and post-intervention
periods resulted in better model fit.

Results
We begin by mapping 911 calls against the
racial composition of Milwaukee neighborhoods. Figure 1 shows two maps of the city:
panel A displays the percent of neighborhood
residents who are black; panel B depicts the
total number of police-related 911 calls
between March 2004 and December 2005.
Side-by-side, the maps reveal that predominantly black neighborhoods have higher call
volumes. In an average week, residents in
black neighborhoods made 5.64 calls to 911
(min. = 0, max. 41), more than triple the calling rate of residents in white neighborhoods
(1.7 calls per week; min. = 0, max. = 17).

Did the Beating of Frank Jude Affect
Citizen Crime Reporting?
Table 2 displays the results of negative binomial regression models estimating the relationship between neighborhood characteristics
and citizen crime reporting, first for all block
groups in the city, then for subsamples of predominately black and white block groups.
Model 1 takes as its outcome all 911 calls
reporting crime recorded in Milwaukee
between March 1, 2004 and December 31,
2005. Model 2 focuses on a subset of calls
reporting violent crime. All three models
include block-group and month fixed effects,
sociodemographic controls, and the number of
reported crimes during each observation week.

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9

Figure 1. Milwaukee Maps Showing (A) the Percent of Neighborhood Residents Who Are
Black and (B) the Total Number of Police-Related 911 Calls: March 2004 to December 2005
Note: Darker shading indicates a larger percentage of black residents or a higher 911 calling rate.

Looking first at all neighborhoods, the
overall trend for total calls (as seen in the
weeks pre-Jude story coefficient) is positive
and significant, indicating that police-related
911 calls trended slightly upward during the
observation period.3 The non-significant
coefficient for Jude story indicates that the
weekly number of 911 calls did not shift
abruptly in either direction immediately following the publication of Jude’s beating.
However, the negative linear post-intervention slope trend (weeks post-Jude story) finds
that 911 calls for service declined significantly in the period after the story broke. This
observed decline is net of controls for reported
crime, neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics, and fixed effects for time-invariant
block-group characteristics and month fixed
effects for the seasonality of 911 calls. The
small, positive quadratic time term reveals
that the “Jude effect” diminished over time,

with 911 calls eventually returning to expected
levels. Calls for violent crime declined significantly following Jude’s story before eventually returning to pre-intervention levels.
Figure 2 displays the estimated pattern of
911 calls before and after the press reported
Frank Jude’s story. We estimated counts using
Stata’s margins command following the execution of our negative binomial regressions.
The dotted line represents a counterfactual
calling pattern that extends the pre-Jude time
trend into the post-intervention period. It estimates the expected number of 911 calls in the
absence of Jude’s story. As Figure 2 shows,
the number of calls reporting crime declined
substantially in the wake of Jude’s beating,
relative to the counterfactual, and did not
return to expected levels for more than a year.
Table 2 also contrasts the estimated effect
of the Jude beating in black and white neighborhoods. In tabular form, the results appear

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10  

Table 2. Negative Binomial Regressions with Neighborhood and Month Fixed Effects
Estimating the Effect of Frank Jude’s Beating on Citizen Crime Reporting: All, Black, and
White Neighborhoods

 
Intercept
 
Weeks Pre-Jude Story
 
Jude Story
 
Weeks Post-Jude Story
 
Weeks Post-Jude Story
(squared) 
Reported Crime
 
Percent Poverty
 
Percent Renter
 
Percent Black
 
Percent Latino
 

All
Neighborhoods

Black
Neighborhoods

White
Neighborhoods

Total
Calls

Violent
Calls

Total
Calls

Total
Calls

−6.378***
(.087)
.036***
(.008)
−.009
(.034)
−.088***

−7.876***
(.140)
.019
(.015)
−.021
(.065)
−.117**

(.021)
.002***
(.000)
.039***

(.040)
.003***
(.001)
.202***

(.002)
.999***
(.224)
.314*

(.005)
1.338***
(.299)
.547**

(.150)
1.030***
(.092)
.634***

(.209)
1.353***
(.130)
.919***

(.158)

(.219)

Violent
Calls

−6.436*** −7.594*** −6.679***
(.418)
(.538)
(.173)
.031**
−.007
.044*
(.011)
(.020)
(.022)
−.005
.036
.114
(.048)
(.089)
(.095)
−.069*
−.019
−.192**
(.030)
(.053)
(.061)
.001
.000
.004***
(.001)
(.001)
(.001)
.037***
.171***
.036***
(.002)
(.006)
(.004)
1.087**
2.000*** 1.733
(.330)
(.422)
(1.113)
−.166
−.304
.550
(.294)
(.367)
(.295)
1.330**
1.511**
2.369**
(.437)
(.549)
(.857)
2.775
1.159
.907
(1.502)
(1.694)
(1.050)

Violent
Calls
−8.574***
(.348)
.037
(.051)
.005
(.224)
−.281*
(.137)
.008**
(.003)
.465***
(.023)
2.736
(1.706)
1.107**
(.424)
1.797
(1.122)
.685
(1.520)

Note: These models focus on the observation period of March 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005. The
reported crime variable represents all reported weekly crimes when the outcome is total police-related
911 calls and violent crimes when the outcome is calls reporting violence. Black/white neighborhoods
are defined as those in which at least 65 percent of residents are black/white. Coefficients and standard
errors (in parentheses) for the week measures of time were multiplied by 10 for ease of interpretation.
N = 596 neighborhoods.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed test).

similar across neighborhoods. In both subsamples, the change in the intercept (denoted
by the coefficient Jude story) is not significant, but the linear post-story trend is significant and negative, with the effect appearing
larger in white neighborhoods. The quadratic
term is positive but non-significant in the
black-neighborhoods subsample but positive
and significant in the white-neighborhoods
subsample, indicating that the initial decline
in calls diminished with time in white but not
black neighborhoods.
Figure 3 reveals the benefit of visually displaying these results. In black neighborhoods,

the decline in 911 calls is large and durable,
with citizen crime reporting dropping and staying lower than expected for over a year after
the story broke. In white neighborhoods, by
contrast, a small decline in 911 calls followed
Jude’s story, but the effect dissipated rapidly as
911 calls eventually surpassed the counterfactual line within a year’s time. The beating of
Frank Jude had a much more substantial effect
on citizen crime reporting in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. With
respect to reporting violent crime in particular,
calls declined temporarily in white but not
black neighborhoods after the story broke.

 Desmond et al. 

11

Figure 2. Estimated Number of Weekly 911 Calls Reporting Crime Before and After the
Frank Jude Story

Figure 3. Estimated Number of Weekly 911 Calls Reporting Crime Before and After the
Frank Jude Story in White and Black Neighborhoods

Drawing on the results presented in Figures 2 and 3, we calculate a “bottom line”
estimate of the total number of police-related
911 calls that were not made in the wake of

Milwaukeeans learning of Jude’s beating. We
do so by summing the difference between the
counterfactual time trend and the estimated
post-Jude trend across different call types. We

 12  

estimate that the police beating of Frank Jude
resulted in a net loss of approximately 22,200
911 calls reporting crime the year after Jude’s
story broke. Over half (56 percent) of the total
loss in calls occurred in black neighborhoods.
For comparison purposes, there were approximately 110,000 police-related 911 calls from
all Milwaukee neighborhoods during this
time period.

Calls for Automobile Accidents
To test whether calls for incidents that should
not have been affected by Frank Jude’s beating
also declined during the observation period, we
analyze calls reporting automobile accidents. If
we find that calls for accidents declined following Jude’s story, we would have reason to be
concerned that some other concurrent event
besides the beating—for example, reductions
in staff capacity at 911 call centers or a local
sports team winning the championship—had
influenced crime reporting.
As with our previous analyses, we compared model fit to different specifications of
the pre- and post-Jude time period, finding
that a model with a linear specification for
both time periods provided the best fit. As
Table 3 shows, 911 calls related to traffic accidents increased during the weeks following
Jude’s story, net of sociodemographic controls
and weather conditions (weekly rainfall and
snowfall).4 These findings show that the
observed decline in police-related 911 calls
that followed Jude’s story was not a product of
a general decline in all 911 calls; rather, the
decline was specific to crime reporting.

Danyall Simpson, Sean Bell, and
Oscar Grant
Having found evidence indicating that the
story of Frank Jude’s beating depressed citizen crime reporting, particularly in Milwaukee’s black neighborhoods, we now investigate
whether 911 calls were affected by other cases
of police violence against unarmed black men
documented in the local and national press.
We replicate our fixed-effects regression analyses for Danyall Simpson’s beating and the

American Sociological Review
Table 3. Nonequivalent Dependent Variable
Models Estimating the Effect of Frank Jude’s
Beating on Calls for Automobile Accidents
Accident Calls
Intercept
 
Weeks Pre-Jude Story
 
Jude Story
 
Weeks Post-Jude Story
 
Percent Poverty
 
Percent Renter
 
Percent Black
 
Percent Latino
 
Weekly Rainfall
 
Weekly Snowfall
 

−8.371***
(.287)
−.004
(.003)
−.128
(.165)
.016***
(.003)
.315
(.597)
1.116**
(.387)
−.303
(.229)
−.663
(.358)
.031
(.023)
.051***
(.012)

Note: N = 596 neighborhoods. Standard errors are
in parentheses.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed test).

fatal shootings of Sean Bell and Oscar Grant.
Table 4 displays the results for all neighborhoods and a subsample of black neighborhoods. We focus on the weekly number of 911
calls at the neighborhood level, following the
reporting of each incident (for Simpson: February 18, 2007; for Bell: November 27, 2006;
for Grant: January 8, 2009).5
Consistent with our findings from the
Frank Jude case, 911 calls reporting crime
declined significantly following the breaking
of Danyall Simpson’s beating. Both the level
and slope of crime reporting declined. This
finding holds when examining calls reporting
violent crime. Likewise, citizen crime reporting fell significantly in black neighborhoods
after publication of the Simpson beating.
Local incidents of police violence, when
publicized in the press, dampen crime reporting in Milwaukee. But could non-local incidents reported in the national press also affect
citizen crime reporting? Our findings suggest

 Desmond et al. 

13

Table 4. Negative Binomial Regressions with Neighborhood and Month Fixed Effects
Estimating the Effect of the Danyall Simpson, Sean Bell, and Oscar Grant Stories on Citizen
Crime Reporting: All and Black Neighborhoods
Danyall Simpson
 
Intercept
 
Weeks Pre-Story
 
Weeks Pre-Story (squared)
 
Story
 
Weeks Post-Story
 
Weeks Post-Story (squared)
 
Reported Crime
 
Percent Poverty
 
Percent Renter
 
Percent Black
 
Percent Latino
 
 
Intercept
 
Weeks Pre-Story
 
Weeks Pre-Story (squared)
 
Story
 
Weeks Post-Story
 
Weeks Post-Story (squared)
 
Reported Crime
 
Percent Poverty
 
Percent Renter
 
Percent Black
 
Percent Latino
 

Total
Calls

Violent
Calls

−4.116***
(.311)
−.221***
(.047)
.001***
(.000)
−.032*
(.015)
−.014
(.011)
−.001***
(.000)
.053***
(.001)
.294
(.176)
.348**
(.116)
.892***
(.075)
.402**
(.127)

−5.333***
(.579)
−.293**
(.089)
.001**
(.000)
−.041
(.028)
−.062**
(.020)
−.001***
(.000)
.231***
(.003)
.208
(.214)
.835***
(.154)
1.192***
(.095)
.690***
(.163)

−5.980***
(.535)
−.098
(.068)
.000
(.000)
−.029
(.022)
.031*

−5.685***
(.867)
−.247*

(.016)
−.001**
(.000)
.049***
(.001)
.346
(.266)
−.176
(.229)
2.477***
(.335)
2.323*
(1.045)

Sean Bell
Total
Calls

Violent
Calls

All Neighborhoods
−6.386***
−7.737***
(.070)
(.115)
.093***
.061***
(.008)
(.015)
−.000***
−.000
(.000)
(.000)
−.090***
−.152***
(.016)
(.030)
.014
.009
(.011)
(.021)
.000
−.001
(.000)
(.000)
.049***
.229***
(.001)
(.003)
.596**
.443
(.179)
(.239)
.348**
.745***
(.118)
(.172)
.965***
1.236***
(.076)
(.106)
.478***
.718***
(.128)
(.180)
Black Neighborhoods
−7.012***
−7.587***
(.327)
.080***

(.440)
.070***

(.121)
.001
(.000)
−.034
(.039)
−.032
(.028)
−.001*

(.011)
−.000***
(.000)
−.056*

(.020)
−.000
(.000)
−.108**

(.023)
−.029
(.017)
.001**

(.000)
.185***

(.000)
.045***

(.041)
−.022
(.029)
.000
(.000)
.186***

(.004)
.111
(.315)
.467
(.293)
1.717***

(.001)
.798**

(.004)
.687*

(.273)
−.036
(.239)
1.895***

(.346)
.351
(.323)
1.276**

(.421)
.049
(1.220)

(.353)
2.840*
(1.220)

(.468)
.390
(1.425)

Oscar Grant
Total
Calls

Violent
Calls

−12.532***
(1.141)
.629***
(.098)
−.001***
(.000)
.167***
(.015)
.061***
(.012)
.002***
(.000)
.056***
(.001)
−.003
(.161)
.150
(.103)
.939***
(.069)
.391**
(.113)

−11.451***
(2.106)
.344
(.181)
−.001
(.000)
.022
(.028)
.047*
(.022)
.001
(.000)
.244***
(.003)
.041
(.197)
.853***
(.135)
1.328***
(.087)
.796***
(.148)

−12.874***
(1.700)
.634*

−17.424***
(2.932)
.863**

(.144)
−.001***
(.000)
.201
(.023)
.070**

(.025)
−.002***
(.001)
.074
(.039)
.108***

(.018)
.002***

(.031)
.002***

(.000)
.055***

(.001)
.196***

(.002)
.122
(.242)
.023
(.214)
1.374***

(.004)
.417
(.287)
.309
(.260)
1.511***

(.320)
1.411
(.945)

(.379)
1.729
(1.148)

Note: The reported crime variable represents all reported weekly crimes when the outcome is total police-related
911 calls and violent crimes when the outcome is calls reporting violence. Black neighborhoods are defined as those
in which at least 65 percent of residents are black. Coefficients and standard errors (in parentheses) for the week
measures of time were multiplied by 10 for ease of interpretation. N = 596 neighborhoods.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed test).

 14  

they do, although not to the extent of local
events. After Sean Bell’s killing made national
headlines, the level of 911 calls declined significantly—in all Milwaukee neighborhoods
and in black neighborhoods, particularly—
however, we do not observe a significant
change in the slope of the post-story time
trend. By contrast, the killing of Oscar Grant
in Oakland, California, did not result in a
decline in police-related 911 calls in Milwaukee. In fact, 911 calls increased in the weeks
following Grant’s death, a trend that may
reflect changes within Milwaukee neighborhoods in the wake of the Great Recession.
In two of our three additional cases, we
observed an association between police officers’ use of excessive or deadly force against an
unarmed black man and fewer crimes reported
to the police. The effect of Frank Jude’s beating on citizen crime reporting matched the
severity of the incident, but instances of police
violence less extreme by comparison, as well
as events that took place thousands of miles
away, still appear to have had an impact on
crime reporting in Milwaukee.

Discussion
Cities across the United States have experienced
high-profile cases of excessive use of police
force (Holmes and Smith 2008; Ross 2000). Yet
little work has been dedicated to understanding
their effects on police-community relations.
Applying stringent statistical analyses to hundreds of thousands of 911 calls, we sought to
identify a relationship between publicized cases
of police violence against unarmed black men
and citizen crime reporting.
This study shows that publicized cases of
police violence against unarmed black men
have a clear and significant impact on citizen
crime reporting. Once the story of Frank
Jude’s beating appeared in the press, Milwaukee residents, especially people in black
neighborhoods, were less likely to call the
police, including to report violent crime. Both
white and black citizens’ opinions of the
police may drop after a high-profile brutality
case against unarmed black men (Lasley

American Sociological Review

1994; Weitzer 2002), but our study found that
only people living in black neighborhoods
altered their crime-reporting behavior for a
significant period of time after the publication
of such events. The dampening effect of the
Jude beating on citizen crime reporting persisted for months, resulting in a net loss of
more than 20,000 911 calls. It is one thing to
disparage law enforcement in your thoughts
and speech after an instance of police violence or corruption makes the news. It is quite
another to witness a crime, or even to be victimized, and refuse to report it.
The events of that October morning
affected not only Frank Jude and his family
but Black Milwaukee as a whole. To date,
research has mainly focused on how individuals’ personal interactions with law-enforcement officers (Skogan 2006; Tyler and Waslak
2004) or the vicarious experiences of one’s
social ties (Brunson 2007; Rosenbaum et al.
2005) influence attitudes toward the police.
This study, however, shows that in predominantly black neighborhoods, publicized cases
of police violence can have a communitywide impact on crime reporting that transcends individual encounters. An important
implication of this finding is that publicized
cases of police violence not only threaten the
legitimacy and reputation of law enforcement; they also—by driving down 911 calls—
thwart the suppression of law breaking,
obstruct the application of justice, and ultimately make cities as a whole, and the black
community in particular, less safe.
To gather empirical support for this line of
thought, we examined homicides following
the publication of Jude’s beating. Unlike with
other crime, murder records should not be
affected by fluctuations in citizen crime
reporting, owing to the gravity and nature of
the crime. During the six months that followed Jude’s story (March to August 2005),
87 homicides occurred in Milwaukee, representing a 32 percent increase in murders relative to the same six-month period in previous
and subsequent years. In fact, as Figure 4
shows, the spring and summer that followed
Jude’s story were the deadliest in the seven

 Desmond et al. 

15

Figure 4. Homicides in Milwaukee, March through August, 2004 to 2010

years observed in our study. This uptick in
homicides occurred during months in which
citizen crime reporting, especially in the black
community, fell by significant margins.
We also found that it does not take a major
or local event to reduce crime reporting. Milwaukee residents issued fewer calls for service after the local press reported the assault
of Danyall Simpson by a white police officer,
an assault less severe than Jude’s, and they
were less likely to call the police after the killing of Sean Bell (in Queens, New York) made
national headlines. We found no evidence,
however, that the killing of Oscar Grant (in
Oakland, California) lowered crime-reporting
behavior in Milwaukee. We found some evidence, then, that high-profile cases of
unarmed black men being assaulted or killed
by law-enforcement officers may affect citizen crime reporting in cities far removed
from the site of the incident.
Our analyses of the Frank Jude beating
found that crime reporting eventually returned
to typical levels, but it took roughly one year
before they did—and even longer in black
neighborhoods. Other studies that examine
the impact of major, divisive events on attitudes or behavior have observed profound but
short-lived effects, characterized by a sharp

escalation and an equally sharp de-escalation
(King and Sutton 2013; Legewie 2013). The
effect of police violence on citizen crime
reporting documented in this study is considerably lengthy by comparison. This indicates
that high-profile cases of excessive police
force constitute a severe breach in the social
contract that exists between citizens and the
criminal justice system. That breach is so sudden and violent when unarmed black men are
beaten or killed that virtually no institutional
response, from public apologies to sanctioning offending officers, can swiftly repair it.
Crime reporting remained significantly lower
in black neighborhoods weeks after officers
involved in Jude’s beating were charged and
fired.
With time, however, citizen crime reporting returned to normal levels. Police have a
virtual monopoly on crime control, and alternative forms of law enforcement emerge only
under extreme circumstances (see Venkatesh
2000). Accordingly, residents who witness or
are victimized by crime have little recourse
other than to call 911, which is perhaps why
people negatively disposed toward the police
often favor increased law enforcement to promote public safety (Carr et al. 2007; Sampson
and Bartusch 1998).

 16  

Taken together, our findings present a
dynamic, eventful theoretical model that illuminates the relationship between economic
and racial inequality, legal cynicism, and citizen cooperation with the police. Major episodes of police violence against unarmed
black men covered by the press can interface
with a general sentiment of legal cynicism
within the black community to drive behavior, drawing out action from attitudes.
Our findings demonstrate that the media
plays a crucial role in this process, not only
by raising awareness of episodes of police
violence but also by addressing basic questions about such episodes. What exactly happened? What was the race of the victim and
police officer? Was the victim armed? When
these questions are addressed, either by professional reporters (as in Frank Jude’s case)
or “citizen journalists” who video record and
broadcast incidents, that narrows the number
of reasonable interpretations (Koopmans
2004; Scheufele 1999), allowing certain acts
of police force to be seen as unreasonable and
disturbing. This can produce widespread
effects on citizen crime reporting when large
numbers of people learn of an episode around
the same time (see Andrews and Biggs 2006).
In the short run, publicized episodes of
excessive police violence against unarmed
black men can activate legal cynicism within
the black community to diminish residents’
cooperation with law enforcement. In the long
run, such episodes likely contribute to that
very cynicism by being incorporated into the
community’s collective memory.6 We believe
collective memory explains why we found
“the Jude effect” to be particularly strong in
black neighborhoods. Such incidents belong
to a centuries-old tradition of state-sanctioned
assaults on the black body—from slavery and
lynching campaigns to urban riots and mass
incarceration (Muller 2012; Patterson 1998)—
an ugly fact that African Americans are more
likely to recognize and dread. Against this
backdrop, a violent episode carried out by the
police is registered as proof and product of a
violent heritage, rendering victim and perpetrator actors in a larger historical drama. A

American Sociological Review

survey conducted after a white police officer
shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-yearold black man, in Ferguson, Missouri, found
that 80 percent of African Americans believed
the case “raises important issues about race,”
compared to 37 percent of whites (Pew
Research Center 2014). Owing to the legacy
of racism in the United States, many members
of the black community perceive an assault of
a black man by white police officers as an
assault on the black community writ large,
activating a collective response. Within black
neighborhoods, the impact of police violence
on citizen crime reporting results not only
from African Americans identifying with the
victim but also interpreting the moment of
victimization in terms that articulate the
nation’s racial heritage. By extension, we
would not expect an equivalent response in
predominantly white or Latino neighborhoods
after publicized episodes of police violence
against unarmed white or Latino citizens.
Future research can assess this hypothesis.
Because this study relied on administrative
records, its findings can be replicated in other
locales. In racial composition, population
size, and unemployment rate, Milwaukee is
similar to many midsize U.S. cities (Desmond, Gershenson, and Kiviat 2015). Like
many other urban areas—including cities in
which recent well-known cases of police violence have occurred, such as Baltimore,
Cleveland, and New York City—Milwaukee
has high levels of racial segregation. We
might not expect the effect of police violence
on citizen crime reporting to be as acute or
durable in more integrated cities, a testable
expectation. Our findings can also be extended
by investigations of how police maltreatment
of Hispanic victims may affect citizen crime
reporting in Hispanic communities, where
legal cynicism is less pronounced than in
black neighborhoods (Kirk et al. 2012).
Police departments and city politicians often
frame a publicized case of police violence
against an unarmed black man as an “isolated
incident.” If it is determined that the officer
abused his authority, the officer is typically presented as a “bad apple” and may be suspended,

 Desmond et al. 

fired, or arraigned (Kish-Gephart, Harrison, and
Treviño 2010; Lersch and Mieczkowski 2005).
These steps may be an appropriate way of
responding to individual actors, but they may
not be sufficient to repair the damage done to
the black community as a whole. The findings
of this study promote a more sociological view
of the issue by suggesting that no act of police
violence is an isolated incident, in both cause
and consequence. Episodes of police wrongdoing are one ramification of a broader trend
within the criminal justice system that in recent
decades has promoted aggressive law enforcement and severe sentencing. The effect of this
trend on crime reduction has been underwhelming (Travis, Western, and Redburn 2014), and
some policies and practices have brought about
opposite-than-intended effects by making crime
worse. In undermining public safety efforts by
dampening citizen crime reporting and inviting
legal cynicism, police violence is a clear example of this.
Individual instances of institutional failure
can have aggregate and lasting consequences

17

that vitiate police-community relations and
thwart crime-reduction efforts. If acts of
excessive police force result in communitylevel consequences—including the non-reporting of crime, which by undermining public
safety efforts likely contributes to pessimism
about law enforcement’s effectiveness—then
police departments may consider implementing community-level interventions in the
aftermath of such acts.
In recent years, city politicians and law
enforcement agencies have devoted significant attention and resources to what has come
to be known as the “stop snitching” culture.
In disadvantaged neighborhoods, noncooperation with the police is often attributed to
street culture or fear of retaliation (Brown
2007; Natapoff 2009). In some cases that fear
is justified, but one implication of this study
is that should we wish to understand why
some crime goes unreported in the black
community, we should try to understand residents’ collective memory regarding police
violence in their city and others.

Appendix
Table A1. Model Fit Statistics for Frank Jude Analyses: All Neighborhoods
Bayesian Information Criterion
Model
Linear Pre- and Post-Jude
Linear Pre-Jude and Linear + Quadratic Post-Jude
Linear + Quadratic Pre-Jude and Linear Post-Jude
Linear + Quadratic Pre-Jude and Linear + Quadratic Post-Jude

Total Calls

Violent Calls

208,328.2
208,325.2
208,337.9
208,331.3

117,140.4
117,138.9
117,144.8
117,137.0

Acknowledgments

Funding

We thank Javier Auyero, Monica Bell, Lawrence Bobo,
John Diedrich, Felix Elwert, Peter Hart-Brinson, Ryan
King, Nikki Jones, Christopher Muller, Devah Pager, and
Christopher Wildeman for helpful comments; Jeffrey Blossom for geocoding expertise; Deborah De Laurell and
Elizabeth Roberto for research assistance; and the Milwaukee Police Department for supplying data. Earlier drafts of
this paper were presented at the Workshop on Violence at
the Urban Margins, University of Texas at Austin, April 4,
2013, and the American Sociological Association Annual
Meeting, New York City, August 12, 2013.

This research was supported by Harvard University.

Notes
  1.   The MPD redacted addresses from 2.7 percent of
911 calls having to do with crimes against children
and suicides. We dropped these calls, along with
calls having to do with commerce-related crime
(e.g., shoplifting, forgery).
 2.   The City of Milwaukee implemented a new 911
reporting system in early 2004. Because recorded

 American Sociological Review

18  
calls during the implementation period are potentially undercounted, we excluded calls placed during the first two months of 2004.
 3.  Supplemental models (available upon request)
examined 911 calling patterns in Jude’s neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods directly after the
beating, finding no significant effects on call patterns. At the time of his beating, Jude lived in a
majority-white neighborhood on the far south side
of the city.
  4.   We obtained weekly rainfall and snowfall data from
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  5.   Following the procedure used to estimate the effect
of Frank Jude’s beating on citizen crime reporting,
the observation periods for our analyses of these
additional cases were centered on the date the news
reported on them. Thus the observation period in
which we observe crime and 911 calls runs from
January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008 for the
Simpson case; from January 1, 2005 to December
31, 2007 for the Bell case; and from January 1, 2008
to December 31, 2010 for the Grant case.
 6.   For an extended discussion about the interaction
between major events and entrenched beliefs and
prejudices, see Legewie (2015).

Newspaper and Court Documents
Associated Press. 2009. “Police Crack Down after Train
Shooting Protests, Businesses Smashed, Cars Set
Blaze in Oakland after Transit Cop Killed Man.”
January 8.
Barton, Gina. 2006. “2 Plead Guilty in Federal Jude
Case.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 4.
Board of Fire and Police Commissioners of the City of
Milwaukee. 2008. In the Matter of the Appeal of
Police Officer Zoe Jackson from MPD Personnel
Order Number 2007-184, March 5.
Borowski, Greg. 2007. “2nd Jude Trail Stands as a Rarity.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 28.
Buckley, Cara, and William Rashbaum. 2006. “A Day
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American Sociological Review
Matthew Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and the Co-Director of the
Justice and Poverty Project at Harvard University. A
sociologist of urban poverty, racial inequality, housing
insecurity, and public policy, his latest book is Evicted:
Poverty and Profit in the American City.
Andrew V. Papachristos is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Sociology at Yale University. His research
examines neighborhood social organization, street gangs,
interpersonal violence, illegal gun markets, and social networks. He is currently completing a multicity study on the
diffusion of gun violence within high-risk social networks.
David S. Kirk is Associate Professor in the Department of
Sociology and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College at
the University of Oxford. For more than a decade he has
been examining the consequences of the forced migration
from Hurricane Katrina on the lives of former Louisiana
prisoners. One extension to this work involves an experimental housing mobility program for ex-prisoners. Kirk’s
recent research has appeared in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Criminology, Social Problems, and American Journal of Epidemiology.