Police legitimacy regimes and the suppression of citizen oversight in response to police violence

Abstract

A lack of formal accountability in the aftermath of police violence against communities of color has long fueled public demands for increased police oversight. Yet, little is known about how interorganizational relationships affect citizen complaint investigations once citizen review boards (CRBs) are established. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and archival sources about the Syracuse Citizen Review Board in New York State, I show how CRBs operate as bureaucratic agencies that ostensibly address police misconduct, yet are managed by municipal power relations that neutralize the agency's ability to actualize change. Specifically, I find that a CRB's embeddedness within a municipality's interorganizational field creates a site of contestation to ensure public legitimation of police despite community concern. To show how the aims of citizen oversight can be upended within the structural and practical politics of local government, I introduce the concept of a police legitimacy regime: a set of (in)formal policies, organizations, and actors that protect and promote the legitimacy of state police power. In Syracuse, police protection happens at the expense of residents’ demands for police reform, and I conclude by outlining the implications of this research for other communities seeking citizen-led approaches to police accountability.