Areas of Expertise

• Modern police
• Arrest practices
• Deadly force
• Terrorism
• Community policing

Key Findings

• Neither neighborhood racial composition nor socioeconomic status is significantly associated with the frequency of police shootings. MORE
• Crime is the primary driver of police shootings. MORE
• Police use of deadly force is a function of serious crime—firearm violence in particular. MORE

Biography

David Klinger, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, is an expert in the organization and actions of the modern police, arrest practices, use of force, how features of communities affect the actions of patrol officers and terrorism.

Klinger served as an assistant and associate professor of sociology at the University of Houston as well as a patrol officer for the Los Angeles and Redmond Police Departments in Washington. He received the American Society of Criminology’s inaugural Ruth Caven Young Scholar Award for outstanding early career contributions to the discipline of criminology.

He has been published in numerous scholarly journals including Criminology and Public Policy, Criminal Justice Policy Review and the Journal of Experimental Criminology. He authored Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force.

Klinger received his Ph.D. in history from Seattle Pacific University, M.S. in justice from American University and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington.