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Journal Article 1: Cobbina, J. E., Conteh, M., & Emrich, C. (2017). Race, gender, and responses to the police among Ferguson residents and protesters. Race and Justice.

Abstract: A large body of research has examined police behavior toward citizens and shown that police practices are geographically patterned. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to receive punitive policing than more affluent communities. However, little is known about how citizens manage encounters with police when they occur and few studies have examined how gender intersects with race and neighborhood context in determining reactions to and outcomes of police encounters. Using Black feminist theory as an analytical framework, we draw from in-depth interviews with Black residents and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri to analyze men and women’s narrative accounts of involuntary police encounters to investigate how they respond to encounters with officers, how such tactics shaped police–citizen outcomes, and whether these patterns vary by gender. Our findings suggest that the strategies that citizens employed are common across both genders; however, the police–citizen outcome is demonstrably shaped by gender.

Journal Article 2: Russell, E. K. (2017). A ‘fair cop’: Queer histories, affect and police image work in Pride March. Crime, Media, Culture, 13(3), 277–293.

Abstract: This article investigates how proactive police image work contends with the politics of queer history by drawing from aspects of affect theory. It asks: How does police image work engage with or respond to ongoing histories of state violence and queer resistance? And why does this matter? To explore these questions, the article provides a case study of the Victorian Pride March in 2002. It analyzes textual representations of Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon’s participation in the parade to show how histories of homophobic police violence can be used strategically to fortify a positive police image among LGBT people and the wider community. Police image work carried out at Pride March becomes a means of legitimizing past policing practices with the aim of overcoming poor and antagonistic LGBT-police relations. The visibility of police at Pride March, this analysis suggests, contributes to the normalization of queerness as a site to be continually policed and regulated. Image work here also buttresses police reputation against the negative press associated with incidents of police brutality. This investigation contributes to the literature on police communications and impression management by demonstrating how police can mobilize negative aspects of their organizational history as an important part of police image work in the present.