Viral videos of white people calling, or threatening to call, authorities on Black people in their neighborhoods have emerged frequently over the last few years, generating a national conversation about the ways Black Americans are viewed as suspicious, even when engaging in mundane activities like swimming, barbecuing, or birdwatching. Callers’ language during these encounters reflects common themes: perceived ownership over public space, entitlement to dictate who belongs, and willingness to engage police to enforce social norms.

In this research partnership between the Possibility Lab, the California Policy Lab, and the Los Angeles Police Department, we explored 911 calls to police as a response to shifting neighborhood demographics. Using detailed data on calls and police stops in Los Angeles between 2010 and 2019, we document the share of calls aimed at low-level nuisance complaints (e.g. “suspicious persons”) and the relationship between neighborhood racial composition and call rates.

In these data, we find that shifting racial demographics in the city are associated with a rise in calls for service. In particular, we find that calls for service related to “quality of life” complaints increase as neighborhoods gentrify. Importantly, we also find evidence that residents’ calls for service contribute to racial disproportionality in policing. In additional analyses, we find substantial racial disparities in police stops that are initiated by calls for service, at a magnitude roughly equivalent to disparities in officer-initiated stops.

Our results suggest that residents’ calls for service represent an important—though frequently overlooked—aspect of American policing. Through calls for service, residents proactively alert officers to the presence of people they perceive as being out of place, often by virtue of their race or class. In this way, calls for service are likely to perpetuate racialized policing even as policy reforms aimed at greater equity in police behavior take hold.

This project was made possible with funding from the University of California, Berkeley.