Policing Queer and Racialized Identities: An Intersectional Approach to Study Police Bias

Abstract

Queer people in the United States have been historically over-policed, in a long-standing history of criminalization and oppression by law enforcement. Despite scholars having extensively used administrative records of police stops to uncover racial disparities and bias in law enforcement practices, virtually no studies exist doing the same to examine the discriminatory policing of queerness—by itself, and in the intersection with race. In this article, I fill this gap by analyzing administrative records of ∼3,100,000 stops in the United States between 2018 and 2025, looking at whether civilians perceived as LGBTQ+ are disproportionately targeted by the police in post-stop decisions. Through multiple tests, I find consistent evidence that being queer is associated with a higher probability of being searched, arrested, and be victims of police use of force. Then, using an intersectional approach, I test whether the interaction of race with queerness worsens police discrimination. Results show that bias gets worse for racial minorities who are also LGBTQ+, indicating that a dynamic of intersectional, double disadvantage can be found in police discrimination. This research underscores the importance of applying an intersectional framework to police studies, and the ongoing role of policing in reproducing the marginalization of historically oppressed communities.