Suspect is a person whom police suspect of having committed a crime. The term is also used for any person whom the media reports as a suspected criminal.
My research has uncovered more than 230 cases across the US where someone went to the police to report sexual assault and ended up handcuffed. Often the victim-turned-suspect is young and vulnerable. These cases represent only the tip of an iceberg. Police routinely unleash a slew of interrogation techniques meant for criminal suspects on unsuspecting victims. I’ve found that these techniques are disproportionately applied to black and brown people.
I’ve analyzed these cases and discovered a handful of common factors that can lead victims-turned-suspects to be targeted. One key factor is police insistence on a detailed eyewitness description. This is important because police need a strong, accurate description in order to apprehend a criminal suspect.
The other major factor is a law enforcement practice called reasonable suspicion. This legal standard enables officers to stop and search suspects when they observe certain markers of suspicious behavior, such as unusual presence, clothing, actions that suggest casing a location, or proximity to the scene of a crime (Terry v. Ohio, 1968).
I’m currently working on a new study that uses novel data to explore the predictors of officer perceptions of suspect demeanor during a stop and frisk. The study is based on the NYPD’s release of officer narrative responses to questions about suspect demeanor on the UF-250 form, which is given after each SQF. This new data allows me to investigate whether officer perceptions are shaped by race and whether suspect race influences use of force during a SQF.