After police violence against unarmed black men, 911 crime calls drop

After news broke that a group of Milwaukee police officers savagely beat an unarmed black man named Frank Jude in 2004, the city saw crime-related 911 calls drop by about 20 percent for more than a year—totaling about 22,200 lost reports of crimes—according to a new study by a group of sociologists at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford universities.

The outcome wasn’t unique to Jude’s beating, the researchers found. Looking at the city’s 911 call records from 2004 to 2010, they noted similar drops after other highly publicized local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men.

The findings square with earlier research showing that communities—specifically black communities given recent events—become more cynical of law enforcement after brutality cases. But the new study, published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review, is the first to show that people actually change their behavior based on that elevated distrust. Namely, community members become less likely to report crimes to law enforcement, likely out of fear of interacting with police or skepticism that police will take them seriously and help.

This, in turn, may contribute to crime spikes. In the six months after local media first reported Jude’s beating in February of 2005, homicides surged by 32 percent over the previous six months. The researchers noted it was the city’s deadliest period across the seven years they studied.

“Police departments and city politicians often frame a publicized case of police violence against an unarmed black man as an ‘isolated incident,’” the authors noted. However, “the findings of this study promote a more sociological view of the issue by suggesting that no act of police violence is an isolated incident, in both cause and consequence.”

The drop in 911 calls also cast doubt on another common theory: that crime levels rise following such brutality cases because communities lash out and police become afraid to use force. But reluctance to use force is irrelevant if police aren’t responding to crimes. Instead, it’s the fears of the community members that seem to make a difference, the researchers suggest.

Frank Jude’s beating

The researchers, led by Matthew Desmond of Harvard, chose to analyze 911 call records around Jude’s beating because it was one of the city’s most publicized cases and was also shockingly brutal. According to news reports and court documents, on October 23, 2004, Jude and his friend, Lovell Harris (both black), accompanied two women to the house-warming party of Milwaukee police officer Andrew Spengler. Jude and Harris quickly became uncomfortable in the company of Spengler and his officer friends, who were largely white. They decided to leave. But as the four were pulling away from the house in their truck, a group of at least 10 officers surrounded them and accused Jude of stealing Spengler’s police badge. The officers pulled the four from the truck and began assaulting Jude and Harris and used racial slurs. After Harris had his face slit with a knife, he ran and escaped. Jude however, didn’t. As summarized by Desmond in the study (warning: the following includes graphic detail):

Spengler and several other off-duty police officers began beating Jude about the face and torso while another pinned his arms behind his back. When Jude collapsed to the ground, the officers kicked his head. A pair of on-duty officers arrived around 3:00 a.m. (Jude’s female companions had called 911 before partygoers seized their phones.) One uniformed officer, Joseph Schabel, stomped on Jude’s face until he heard bones breaking. The other on-duty officer watched. An off-duty officer picked Jude up and kicked him in the crotch with such force his feet left the ground. Another took one of Schabel’s pens and pressed it deep into Jude’s ear canals. Another bent Jude’s fingers back until they snapped. Spengler put a gun to Jude’s head. Jude was left naked from the waist down lying on the street in a pool of his own blood.

When more on-duty officers arrived, Jude was taken to the hospital. In addition to bruises, broken bones, and cuts all over his body, his left eye bled for 10 days. He also suffered permanent damage in one hand, vision problems, as well as night terrors and PTSD. Meanwhile, all of the officers continued working and refused to cooperate with an internal investigation into the incident. Spengler’s badge was never found and Jude was never charged.