Peer group aggressiveness and the use of coercion in police–suspect encounters

The aim of this paper is to add the dimension of police ‘peer group’ to our understanding of how officers exercise coercive power in day‐to‐day encounters with citizens. Using data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) collected in St Petersburg, Florida, we examine 1,458 police–suspect encounters to determine whether collective peer group attitudes towards aggressive patrol influences police use of force behavior. Analysis of the direct effect of peer groups’ attitudes toward aggressiveness on the use of force indicates it is not a significant predictor when officer, suspect, and situational characteristics are controlled. Models comparing officers across high and low aggressive peer groups, however, indicate that different factors are salient to the use of higher levels of force across those groups. The implications of these findings and future research are discussed.