When trust building looks like surveillance: Public polarization toward Chicago policing

Public debate about policing highlights competing views about whether community initiatives build trust or reinforce surveillance. We argue that perceptions depend on prior state orientations, which can polarize opinions across groups. Using a preregistered survey experiment in Chicago, we examined responses to the police department's "Sentiment Dashboard," a project designed to enhance legitimacy by collecting community feedback. Results show that the dashboard increased trust in police among non-Black respondents but reduced trust among Black respondents, especially when framed as monitoring. Among non-Black respondents, dashboard exposure also reduced support for the Black Lives Matter movement and racial equity policies unrelated to policing, such as diverse hiring and climate justice. Mechanism testing with qualitative evidence suggests that treated non-Black participants were more likely to regard police reforms as substitutes for racial equity policies, rendering further measures unnecessary. These findings reveal how state legitimacy initiatives may instead widen racial divides and weaken coalitions for structural reform.