TY - JOUR PY - 2011// TI - Caught in Their Own Speed Trap: The Intersection of Speed Enforcement Policy, Police Legitimacy, and Decision Acceptance JO - Police quarterly A1 - Ward, Jeffrey T. A1 - Nobles, Matt R. A1 - Lanza-Kaduce, Lonn A1 - Levett, Lora M. A1 - Tillyer, Rob SP - 251 EP - 276 VL - 14 IS - 3 N2 - Empirical work examining the effects of police legitimacy has primarily focused on traffic stop procedures with less attention given to traffic enforcement policies. The current study takes advantage of a natural experiment in which a rural town with a strict speed enforcement policy was labeled a "speed trap" through the introduction of a billboard advertisement funded by the American Automobile Association. Drawing on theories of police legitimacy, we hypothesize the label will result in an abrupt-permanent increase in speeding citation contestation rates, despite the fact that the billboard actually increases predictability of citation issuance. Results of an interrupted time-series analysis indicate statistically significant abrupt-permanent increases in the speeding citation contestation rates for the intervention city. Further analyses reveal that significant intervention effects are confined to drivers with higher opportunity to contest tickets (in-state drivers) and to majority subgroups (Whites and men). The implications of these findings for policy and police-citizen relationships are discussed.

LA - SN - 1098-6111 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1098611111413992 ID - ref1 ER -