Approximately thirty-five residents were interviewed in each of thirty-four block groups.1 Surveys lasted approximately twenty minutes and were collected between February and August 2000. Respondents were paid fifteen dollars for their participation. These surveys provided data on measures for faith in the police and oppositional values.
Mean Standard deviation Minimum Maximum
Dependent variable
Robberies with guns
Independent variables
Neighborhood level (n = 29) 0.46 0.50 0.00 1.00
Disadvantage 0.00 1.00 −1.53 3.27
% below poverty 33.47 14.71 11.11 71.42
% public assistance 5.87 6.29 0.00 27.06
% female headed households 22.82 12.81 0.00 64.64
% African American 43.73 26.32 1.04 90.61
% young, Black males 3.26 2.11 0.12 8.91
Attitudes towards police 3.40 0.17 3.03 3.76
Police respond to victims 3.34 0.20 2.90 3.73
Police helpful 3.50 0.17 2.94 3.83
% agreeing with oppositional values
Incident level (n = 185) 40.73 7.27 25.96 54.73
Proportion of African American victims 0.27 0.45 0.00 1.00
Proportion of male victims 0.78 0.41 0.00 1.00
Proportion of African American suspects 0.89 0.32 0.00 1.00
Proportion of male suspects 0.97 0.17 0.00 1.00
Number of offenders 1.74 0.87 1.00 4.00
Data on robberies were based on robberies known to the police in each of these block groups. Electronic data files for all first and second degree robberies known to
Table 1
Description of variables in study
the police in 2001 were provided by the police department to the research team. These files included the incident number, a brief description of the incident, the place of the incident, and the victim's race and gender. These robbery incidents were geo-coded and the robberies that occurred in the study block groups were identified by incident number. The actual police reports for these incidents were then made available to the research team and coded by trained coders. These data provided the measures for suspect race and gender, the number of suspects, and whether or not a gun was used in the robbery. (Each of these variables was based on information reported by the victim.) There were a total of 185 robberies in twenty-nine neighborhoods