Date of Conferral
2022
Degree
Ph.D.
School
Psychology
Advisor
Andrea Goldstein
Abstract
As attention to racially charged events and subsequent social activism rhetoric increases, researchers and professionals express a growing interest in understanding the influence of such events on police officers' psyche. Researchers have demonstrated that since the 2014 death of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, widespread media attention of police violence has negatively impacted police officer behavior, attitudes, and self-legitimacy levels. Yet, underrepresented within these empirical studies are the perspectives and experiences of African American police officers. This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of five African American male police officers employed in North Carolina during the post-Ferguson era through semi structured interviews. This study used the social identity approach to explore participants’ professional and personal identities, confidence, and policing behavior following the multiple high-profile fatal police interactions with persons of color in the last decade. Interview data from the five officers were thematically sorted using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings yielded four overarching themes as the most telling and most consistent among the participants’ experiences: (a) recognition of a larger problem, (b) understanding the purpose of policing, (c) awareness of duality, and (d) beaten not broken. Acknowledging and appreciating how African American officers experience and process racially charged police interactions can create positive social change in the work environment of policing, vital to African American officers' wellbeing.
Recommended Citation
Epps, Remy, "Perspectives of African American Police Officers Post-Ferguson" (2022). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 12680.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/12680
