Demeanor, crime, and police behavior: A reexamination of the police services study data

Recent research has called into question the seemingly well-established conclusion that the likelihood of arrest by the police rises when suspects display a disrespectful or hostile demeanor toward the police. In this article we reanalyze data collected for the Police Services Study, on which a substantial body of supporting evidence for this conclusion is based, to determine whether previous analyses of these data have misestimated the effects of demeanor on police behavior We find that, insofar as the data permit us to address the criticisms, the original findings hold.