The Architecture of Police Impunity

In response to rising demands for transparency and accountability following high-profile episodes of police violence, jurisdictions across the United States have adopted new investigatory mechanisms, including civilian oversight bodies, state-level special prosecutors, and in some cases, federal involvement. While a robust body of scholarship has theorized the limitations of these reforms, little empirical work has examined how they function on the ground or whether they meaningfully disrupt longstanding patterns of police impunity. Drawing on original qualitative fieldwork in five American cities – including the first published interviews with police-suspect investigators who are typically shielded from public view – this Article provides the first sustained empirical examination of how investigations into police use of deadly force or serious injurious force unfold and how officers’ legal protections shape investigatory outcomes. Accordingly, this Article offers a rare, insider perspective on contemporary police-suspect investigations. The fieldwork presented here empirically substantiates and clarifies hypotheses advanced in the literature. I develop a layered framework demonstrating that investigative reforms are routinely constructed atop existing systems rather than replacing them outright. Despite their express purpose of mitigating conflicts of interest inherent in internal police investigations, these layers frequently leave control of the investigative process in the hands of police officers and their departments. This layered structure, when combined with police-suspects’ collective bargaining agreements, produces three recurring challenges: relational dependencies, temporal delays, and informational constraints that systematically insulate officers from criminal liability.