Perceptions of the U.S. Police Among Latin-American Immigrants: A Bifocal Lens View

Abstract

The current study aimed to identify Latin-American immigrants’ bifocal lens views of the U.S. police and compare them to their contact experiences with their home-country police. We performed semi-structured interviews with twenty-one Latin-American immigrants who have resided in the Birmingham metropolitan area in Alabama. An inductive analysis approach was employed to analyze the qualitative data. The results showed that the Latin-American immigrants’ direct contact experience with the U.S. police has mainly been positive, but they still felt targeted. Even if their indirect experiences lead them to perceive a violent and biased image of the U.S. police force, participants appreciated the U.S. police as honest and not corrupt. Besides, while most participants expressed willingness to report crimes, they simultaneously recognized that other Latin-American immigrants would not feel comfortable reporting crimes due to the fear of deportation. Finally, we found that the perception of the U.S. police among Latin-American immigrants was primarily the result of the juxtaposition of the U.S. police's professionalism against their home-country police. We further discuss policy implications and study limitations in this study.