RACE AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF DRUG DELIVERY LAWS IN ...

HYPOTHESIS 4B: THE FOCUS ON CRACK COCAINE REFLECTS RESIDENT COMPLAINTS ABOUT
NARCOTICS ACTIVITY
When asked to explain drug law enforcement patterns in Seattle, police and city
officials have suggested that SPD deployment decisions are driven primarily by
public complaints. 124 Civilians may register complaints regarding drug activity in
two ways. First, a civilian complaint regarding narcotics activity is sometimes
recorded by SPD personnel as a “Narcotics Activity Report” (NAR).
Alternatively, civilians may call 9-1-1 to report perceived and ongoing drug
activity. In the previous analysis of civilian complaints about drug activity, 125
only NARs were made available by the Seattle Police Department for analysis.
For the 2005–2006 time period, however, both NARs and civilian 9-1-1 calls
initially coded as narcotics-related by the 9-1-1 dispatcher received in April and
May 2005 and May 2006 were made available for analysis.
It is important to note at the outset that civilian reports of drug activity may or
not be accurate. Indeed, civilian complaints registered via 9-1-1 calls were not
infrequently determined by police officers to have been incorrect and/or
unreliable. For example, some 9-1-1 callers reported what they perceived to be a
large group of black teenagers smoking crack cocaine; when the police arrived,
they found instead a few youths, some of whom were smoking cigarettes (see
Appendix B for this and other examples of unreliable civilian reports of drug
activity). 126 Because officers are often unable to locate suspects upon arrival, and
because this failure to locate suspects may or may not mean that the call was
unreliable, it is not possible to determine the relative frequency of accurate and
inaccurate reports. 127 Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that officers responding to 9-
1-1 calls about perceived narcotics activity typically responded in a timely
fashion: the average (mean) number of minutes lapsed between the time the call
was received by 9-1-1 dispatchers and the time officers arrived on the scene was
less than 26; officers arrived at the scene within 15 minutes half of the time. Still,
124 See Klement and Siggins 2001: 26; Deposition of Robert Scales in State of Washington v.
Richard Nelson, March 12, 2008, at p. 185; on file with author.
125
Beckett 2004.
126 An emerging body of research suggests that racial stereotypes shape perceptions of the
seriousness and/or dangerousness of potentially crime-related situations, particularly when
information about those situations is limited (Quillian and Pager 2001; Sampson and
Raudenbush 2004).
127 Although officers may enter a disposition code that signifies the determination that the call
was unfounded, officers do not always clear the call with this code even when they indicate in
their response to dispatcher that the call was unreliable, unfounded or “bogus.” It is therefore
not possible to count the number of unfounded or false complaints.
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