Welcome to Kim's Blog
Hello, I’m Kim. I recently earned my PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, where I studied upstream determinants and downstream consequences of racialized policing, a term that describes the ways that racial bias becomes embedded in policing practices and policies, creating harmful outcomes for communities of color. For example, in one study I found that a police department’s attempts to reduce lethal violence contributed to justifications of lower-levels of force in response to any form of non-compliance. Past research has shown that perceptions of non-compliance are rife with racialized and gendered stereotypes, thereby perpetuating the use of routine force against marginalized groups in the name of de-escalation. In another study, I examined the role of racialized policing in interracial relationships, showing how couples strategized around racial police violence and what that means for understanding everyday constructions of racial boundaries more broadly.
In the fall of 2025, I will begin my second year as a Gun Violence Research Center (GVRC) postdoctoral research fellow.
My time at the GVRC has both built on my research on racialized policing and carried it into exciting new directions. During my first year, I began a project with my fellow postdoc, Dr. Jen Paruk, exploring the experiences of Black gun owners in New Jersey and Florida (BFOEProject.org). Preliminary findings suggest that strategizing around police stops, navigating perceived racial inequities in the enforcement of gun laws, and racialized perceptions of self-defense laws are central to the Black firearm experience. This study raises questions about what presumably positive attempts to increase safety through additional gun legislation may mean for Black communities who are subjected to disproportionate contacts with the criminal legal system.
Additionally, I’m examining associations between Black adults’ fear of police violence and their risk for suicidal thoughts. Findings suggest that anticipatory fear of police violence, independent of actual violence exposure, is associated with increased suicide risk among Black adults. Our findings illuminate how state violence operates through the social psychology of chronic threat to reproduce racial health disparities systematically.
As I begin my second year at the GVRC, I have multiple projects planned in this vein of work. First, to explore associations between direct and vicarious (e.g., witnessing, hearing about) police interactions and firearm behaviors, particularly around secure storage and carrying frequency. I will also build on studies of policing and suicide risk to examine how local concentrations of police practices (traffic/pedestrian stops, use of force) relate to suicidal thoughts and suicide rates, with particular attention to firearm versus non-firearm suicide methods, given that firearms are the most lethal means of suicide.
The GVRC has embraced my interdisciplinary approach to thinking about gun violence, and my concerns with how structural racism is embedded in policing institutions create population-level health consequences that extend far beyond direct police encounters. As a feminist scholar and sociologist training in a school of public health, I am excited to contribute to research that centers the wellbeing of the most marginalized sections of society and to contribute to evidence that points toward a need for affirmative solutions, like investing in community care, economic justice, and healing, rather than relying on more policing, more arrests, or more individual capacity for self-defense.