Police Unions, Race, and Trust in the Police

It has long been recognized that trust critically influences the effective functioning of political institutions, yet the determinants of trust in the police—a classic order institution—are still not well understood. We examine the effect of police unionization on trust in the police and, in particular, in mediating the adverse impacts of police killings of civilians on trust within the U.S. multiracial context. We analyze trust responses and corresponding demographic data on approximately 5,000 respondents across eleven metropolitan statistical areas from the 2006 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, matched to relevant city- and state-level correlates from three additional data sets. Our results confirm prior studies’ findings of a large gap between Black and non-Black trust. Although police killings of civilians normally reduce trust among non-Black people while leaving Black levels of trust unaffected, we find that in jurisdictions where police bargain collectively the drop in non-Black trust is effectively eliminated, suggesting that police unionization essentially abets the polarization of trust in the police between Black people and non-Black people.