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Previous research has linked protests against police violence with reductions in police-involved killings. However, the conditions under which these protests are most effective remain largely unknown. This study draws on insights from protest scholarship and theories of institutional anomie, social capital, and collective efficacy to explore whether social institutions shape the geographic distribution of police killings and moderate protest efficacy. Findings from county-level negative binomial regression models reveal that Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020 were associated with a decline in deadly police-citizen encounters. Local commitments to the economy and military had direct and positive correlational effects on police-caused deaths, while commitment to education and family significantly reduced fatalities. The local polity and education moderated protest efficacy, whereby the protective role of BLM protest was strengthened at high levels of electoral participation and in counties with low educational commitment. Marginal effects for measures of family vitality and military veteran concentration approached conventional levels of statistical significance, suggesting potential moderating effects warranting further investigation. Together, these results suggest that local institutional contexts shape police killings of American civilians and help explain why protests appear more effective in some areas than others.
Reid et al. (Thu,) studied this question.