Black youth are disproportionately affected by the negative consequences of witnessing or experiencing biased policing. Through socialization processes starting early in human development, children develop sophisticated and nuanced beliefs about the social world and groups around them, learning about race, racism, and policing. Across the two experiments included in this dissertation, I examined what children’ racialized beliefs about themselves and peers and the role parents play in shaping children’s behaviors when encountering a white, male police officer. In Study 1, I recruited 239 children from the east coast of the United States who identify as Black, white, or mixed Black and were between the ages of 5 to 12 years. Children completed two tasks as part of a larger study. In the Ambiguous Situation Task, children saw and ambiguous image of a white, male police officer and a peer who was wither Black, white, or mixed Black. Children evaluated whether the encounter was positive or negative for their peer. In the Police Interaction Task, children learned about hypothetical scenarios that might warrant police assistance and predicted whether they and their peers would ask for help in those situations. Results revealed that children, regardless of the participant’s own race, believed that a white peer would be more likely to receive and ask for help from a police officer as well as be treated more fairly than a Black peer. In Study 2, I explored whether these behavioral patterns in children can be explained by parental ethnic-racial socialization and legal socialization. We recruited parents of the children from Study 1 and 89 parents completed an online survey where they shared their ethnic-racial socialization practices: including color evasive, preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust, and cultural socialization; as well as legal socialization orientations: such as police contact, beliefs about police fairness, and police legitimacy beliefs. We found that parents' ethnic-racial socialization and beliefs about police legitimacy do not directly impact children's willingness to seek help from the police. However, these factors may have an indirect effect, as parents' beliefs about police legitimacy influence their children's beliefs about police legitimacy, consistent with existing literature. This dissertation research has implication for public safety policies concerning young children.