The Cumulative Discretion of Police over Community Complaints

Abstract

Many policing practices that scholars have identified as deeply flawed are precisely those demanded in police-community meetings. How do initiatives intended for police reform become dominated by demands for more policing? I analyze 1.5 years of ethnographic data on the New York Police Department’s neighborhood policing meetings. Amid highly publicized police violence, America’s largest police force is curating the public’s complaints—not ignoring them—from constituents strategically cultivated through community initiatives. Whereas existing studies conceptualize complaints as grievance tools or liability risks, this case reveals how police conceive community complaints as endorsements of services. This conception guides “cumulative discretion” or selective decision-making across multiple stages: police mobilize, record, internalize, and represent complaints demanding police services, while excluding those seeking reforms to over- and unequal policing. Gaps thus persist between the reforms that some residents seek and the services that police offer. This article offers insights into how organizational imperatives for legitimacy can undermine institutional reforms.