But there's a better way, argues Jack Glaser.

Helping police to be more discriminating about who they stop will help them be less discriminatory in who they stop.

Reducing discretion and replacing it with prescriptive guidance would have a two-fold effect on racial disparities in police stops: 1) It will reduce those disparities because the stereotypes, even implicit ones, will be less influential; and 2) It will reduce the impact of those disparities by decreasing the absolute number of minorities who are incarcerated.

but many fewer innocent travelers were troubled. Racial disparities in search rates were also reduced.

quadrupling

six behavioral indicators of suspiciousness

Commissioner Raymond Kelly

The very low productivity rates of police stops

, approximately six percent were arrested, and most of the arrests were for outstanding warrants. Among those who were stopped, arrest rates (and contraband finds) were higher for whites than for blacks and Hispanics, compelling evidence that race was a factor in decisions about who got stopped: A relatively greater number of blacks and Hispanics who were stopped were actually innocent

700,000 in 2009

reasonable” suspicion

very permissive Supreme Court stance on police stops,

High discretion invites decisions made under high uncertainty.

have remarkably high discretion in who they can choose to stop and search.

discretion

Limiting the discretion that police officers have in who they stop in the first place.

we should consider some lower hanging fruit.

Until we design a method for inoculating people from subsequent exposure to the misleading information in their environment (setting aside for the moment the potential for unintended consequences of such an achievement), we won’t achieve lasting reductions of implicit biases.

research has yet to uncover a straightforward method that can lastingly mitigate implicit biases.

interventions

efforts are underway to identify tools to reduce implicit bias, including interventions that involve raising awareness of implicit bias and discrimination, as well as providing strategies for overcoming bias

So what can social psychologists contribute to the effort to improve policing in order to promote a fairer, more equal, healthier society, given what we know about how implicit bias causes discrimination?

disproportionately on young, black men. We know the names of Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and other unarmed black men and boys who have died as a result of unnecessary use of force

They lose income and wealth, future employment opportunities, voting rights, and even health quality.

racial disparities in seemingly mundane pedestrian and vehicle stops

officers wrongfully shoot unarmed or innocent suspects,

unintentional

bias reflects implicit stereotypes and behaviors that are almost certainly unintentional

oshua Correll (now at the University of Colorado) and his colleagues, in their “shooter task” computer simulation studies, have shown that people are faster to shoot armed blacks than armed Whites, and that this tendency is more common among people who are aware of the stereotype that blacks are dangerous (but don’t necessarily have a general negative attitude toward blacks).

police officers alike to see weapons more quickly

like guns, causes officers’ eyes to involuntarily shift toward Black, as opposed to White, faces.

contribute to racial disparities in law enforcement outcomes, influencing everything from who is stopped by police (black more than whites), and what happens to them during those stops, to the severity of their sentences if convicted.

“implicit”

science is clear

is the fifth in a series exploring the effects that unconscious racial biases have on the criminal justice system

science of implicit bias.

In 2009, while chasing a man he caught breaking into his car, off-duty New York City police officer Omar Edwards was shot and killed by a fellow officer, Andrew Dunton, who saw Edwards with his gun drawn and mistook him for a criminal.

police departments to go beyond the issue of overt bias to deal with the unconscious biases that influence all people, including police officers,

Five years later, of course, we have not seen tremendous growth in programs to reduce unconscious racial bias.

teachers were inclined to punish black students more severely than white students even when their classroom misbehavior was exactly the same.

subtle racial biases can sway decisions in the courtroom as well as on the street

black men convicted of capital crimes are more than twice as likely to be sentenced to death if they have facial features deemed to be more stereotypically “black-looking,”

unconscious biases are actually quite malleable

a study by Florida State University researchers has found that officers who reported having positive contact with black people were less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects in a computer simulation.

positive contact

mitigate

pernicious

suggest that with the right experiences and training, we can mitigate the pernicious effects of unconscious racial biases

leading experts—psychologists, law enforcement officials, and others—to answer this question

will surface some provocative and practical ideas to help move this conversation forward.

cience of unconscious bias as well as in policing

xceptionally knowledgeable and experienced contributors to this series

panacea

there are no easy solutions to this issue, no panacea.

ut it will also require something that is fundamental to our mission: learning lessons from social science research, and applying them thoughtfully to promote the greater good.

difficult to control. And in the heat of the moment, they can have tragic consequences.

our attitudes and behavior toward other people—particularly, but not only, people of color—are often guided by deeply ingrained judgments that operate below the conscious level

the first in a series exploring the effects that unconscious racial biases have on the criminal justice system

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, questions of racial bias have hovered over the criminal justice system in the United States.

report, which provides data on 11,000 stops from July 22 to Aug. 18,

As of July 2018, the District’s population was 46.4 percent African American and 45.6 percent white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

While African Americans made up 70 percent of the people in all police stops, they were 86 percent of those involved in what the report called “non-ticket stops,” defined as “stops that involved an arrest, search” or police action other than traffic enforcement. The report said 15 percent of people in all stops, and 7 percent of those involved in non-ticket stops, were white.

11,000 police stops over about four weeks in the District found that while black people make up 46 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 70 percent of police stops, and 86 percent of stops that didn’t involve traffic enforcement.

black men were about 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, and that black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of dying at the hands of police. Black women were 1.4 more times likely to be killed than white women. Latino men were 1.3 to 1.4 times more likely to be killed than white men. Latino women were between 12 percent and 23 percent less likely to be killed than white women.

The study also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after a stop, though whites were more likely to be found with illicit drugs.

systemic racism,” often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them.

Yet, there’s a deep skepticism on the right of any assertion that the criminal justice system is racially biased

Black drivers were also searched at twice the rate of white drivers, though — as in other jurisdictions — searches of white drivers were more likely to turn up contraband.

black drivers in Nashville’s Davidson County were pulled over at a rate of 1,122 stops per 1,000 drivers

the Los Angeles Police Department received more than 1,350 citizen complaints of racial profiling. The department didn’t uphold a single complaint.

a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.

stop-and-frisk incidents in Boston between 2007 and 2010 that did not result in a citation or arrest found that 63 percent of such stops were of black people. Blacks made up 24 percent of the city’s population. Incredibly, 97.5 percent of these encounters resulted in no arrest or seizure of contraband.

San Diego between 2014 and 2015 found that police more likely to search black and Latino drivers than white drivers, even though they were more likely to find contraband on white drivers.

Vermont found that black drivers are up to four times more likely than white drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though white drivers are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be found with contraband.

stops that did not result in a citation — by police in Kansas City found that blacks were 2.7 times more likely to be pulled over in an investigatory stop, and five times more likely to be searched.

Blacks were also twice as likely to be searched after a stop, even though white motorists were more likely to be found with contraband.

Ferguson, Mo., accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations and 93 percent of arrests, despite comprising 67 percent of the population. Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched after traffic stops, even though they proved to be 26 percent less likely to be in possession of illegal drugs or weapons.

North Carolina found that blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched than whites (5.4 percent, 4.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively), even though searches of white motorists were more likely than the others to turn up contraband

found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched once they have been pulled over. About 2 percent of white motorists were searched, vs. 6 percent of black drivers and 7 percent of Latinos.

they comprise 29 percent of deaths in police custody since 2005, and 27 percent of civilians shot by police officers. Hispanics were underrepresented in both categories.

participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms

they also found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched for contraband — even though white drivers are consistently more likely to be found with contraband. They also found that legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has caused fewer drivers to be searched during a stop, but that it did not alter the increased frequency with which black and Latino drivers are searched.

blacks are more likely to be searched following a stop,” and “just by getting in a car, a black driver has about twice the odds of being pulled over, and about four times the odds of being searched

Blacks are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as whites — even though whites drive more on average

found that black drivers were slightly more likely than white drivers to be pulled over, but six times more likely to be searched

Some of this disparity is attributable to the fact that African-Americans are stopped for investigative purposes than would be predicted given their overall proportion of stops.

542,000 traffic stops in Connecticut in 2017 found that the racial disparity in stops had narrowed from previous years. But it also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after stops for registration, license, seatbelt and cellphone violations. The study found that about 19 percent of searches of black motorists turned up contraband, vs. 29 percent of the searches of white motorists.

n the Intercept found that blacks in South Bend, Ind., were 4.3 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.

1.8 million police stops by the eight largest law enforcement agencies in California found that blacks were stopped at a rate 2.5 times higher than the per capita rate of whites. The report also found that black people were far more likely to be stopped for “reasonable suspicion” (as opposed to actually breaking a law) and were three times more likely than any other group to be searched, even though searches of white people were more likely to turn up contraband.

raffic tickets in Indianapolis and its suburbs found that in the city, black drivers received 1.5 tickets for every white driver. In the suburban town of Fishers, the disparity grew to 4.5 tickets, and in the wealthy suburb of Carmel, black motorists received 18 tickets for every ticket issued to a white motorist.

in Portland, Ore., found that black motorists and pedestrians were much more likely to be stopped, receive tickets and be arrested for drug possession than white pedestrians and motorists.

The study also found that black motorists were pulled over at a higher rate than would be predicted based on their involvement in traffic accidents.

of the Columbus, Ohio, police department found that while black people make up 28 percent of the city’s population, about half of the use-of-force incidents by city police were against black residents.

So 97 percent-plus of these people are getting punished solely because they belong to a group that statistically commits some crimes at a higher rate.

A New York Times examination after the death of George Floyd found that while black people make up 19 percent of the Minneapolis population and 9 percent of its police, they were on the receiving end of 58 percent of the city’s police use-of-force incidents.

An August 2019 study published by the National Academy of Sciences based on police-shooting databases found that between 2013 and 2018, black men were about 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, and that black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of dying at the hands of police. Black women were 1.4 more times likely to be killed than white women. Latino men were 1.3 to 1.4 times more likely to be killed than white men. Latino women were between 12 percent and 23 percent less likely to be killed than white women.

A 2019 study of 11,000 police stops over about four weeks in the District found that while black people make up 46 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 70 percent of police stops, and 86 percent of stops that didn’t involve traffic enforcement.

An October 2019 report in the Los Angeles Times found that during traffic stops, “24% of black drivers and passengers were searched, compared with 16% of Latinos and 5% of whites.” The same study also found that police were slightly more likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband among whites.

Another study found that in surrounding Travis County, Tex., blacks comprised about 30 percent of police arrests for possession of less than a gram of an illicit drug from 2017 to 2018, despite making up only 9 percent of the county’s population, and that surveys consistently show that blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate.

we found that black drivers were, on average, stopped more often than white drivers.

In particular, among state patrol stops, the annual per-capita stop rate for black drivers was 0.10 compared to 0.07 for white drivers; and among municipal police stops, the annual per-capita stop rate for black drivers was 0.20 compared to 0.14 for white drivers. For Hispanic drivers, however, we found that stop rates were lower than for white drivers: 0.05 for stops conducted by state patrol (compared to 0.07 for white drivers) and 0.09 for those conducted by municipal police departments (compared to 0.14 for white drivers).

Develop a Harm Reduction-Based Municipal Strategyto Address Substance Use.Many cities and counties around the countryhave reduced reliance on punitive policing and criminalization of illicit drug use infavor of harmreduction-based strategies.T

Reduce the Use of Motor Vehicle Stops as the Primary Means of Drug Enforcement

In 2018, the APD data demonstrates that high discretion15searches are more likely to occur with Black/African Americans, followed by Hispanics/Latinos,then Caucasians, and finally Asians. Black/African Americans were slightly more likely toreceive a high-discretion search compared to a low-discretion search in 2018.

But here’s hoping that legislators take well-considered steps that protect black men’s lives while lowering the burdens imposed by that protection.

accountability

The Democratic bill’s reliance on sweeping command-and-control efforts from the Justice Department, and even from unelected federal judges, would destroy public accountability and jeopardize hard-won public-safety gains.

recruiting more minority cops probably matters. Training programs might make a difference here, too.

researchers have found that police officers are 18 percent more likely to use force against black than white suspects (and 12 percent more likely to use force against Hispanic suspects)

Multiple studies have shown that, when other variables are controlled for, officers are not more likely to shoot black rather than white suspects.

Beyond cutting down on false identifications, hiring more minority officers would probably also cut down on the disproportionate application of force against black men.

it will lead to more murder, rape, robbery, and assault, without any public-accountability mechanism to right the course.

Hiring more black officers would definitionally ameliorate the problem with cross-racial identifications, too.

disproportionately

At the federal level, alternative bills introduced by each party emphasize the intersection of race and policing, though, as one might expect, their approaches and proposed remedies differ somewhat. The Republican bill

counterintuitive

correlate with

black men are probably going to face more police interactions as long as black men are disproportionately violent-crime victims and offenders.

When black men are disproportionately offenders, they’ll disproportionately be suspects — and thus disproportionately have interactions with police.

most crime is within-race — black-on-black, or white-on-white — whether we’re talking about murder or other violent crime.

Recent research by Harvard scholars has shown that reduced policing intensity in the wake of federal investigations of police departments scandalized by “viral” deadly-force incidents led to substantial upticks in the commission of homicides and other violent crimes.

That staggeringly high murder-rate burden borne by black American men suggests we should be extraordinarily cautious about a pullback in the proactive policing that reduces violent crime.

anti-lynching law

But if we need policing, especially to protect black men, we also must grapple with the fact that black men are especially burdened by proactive policing practices.

That policing places unique burdens on black men doesn’t mean it isn’t essential. Effective, proactive policing is a principal cause of the most remarkable public-policy success in America’s last three decades: the sizeable reduction in violent crime. Between 1993 and 2018, American violent crime fell from 747 crimes per 100,000 to 369, a drop of 51 percent. That’s more than a million fewer instances, each year, of horrible crimes such as rape, robbery, and assault. Homicides also fell by more than half from their peak (1991) to their trough (2014): from 24,808 to 12,278. That’s thousands of lives saved annually.

If you don’t believe us, ask Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of two African-American men in the U.S. Senate and the JUSTICE Act’s Republican sponsor. In 2016, Scott told his fellow senators, “In the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement. Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official.”

In the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement. Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official.”

Here’s why: African-American men are the principal beneficiaries of good, proactive policing in the U.S.; but black men in America also disproportionately bear policing’s cost. Black people broadly understand that. Last year Gallup surveyed African-American residents of “fragile communities” on the importance of policing; 52 percent said they “would like the police to spend more time in their area than they currently do” — a higher percentage than white respondents.

<iframe src="https://via.hypothes.is/if_/https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MCWKR6" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe> <img height="1" width="1" alt="" style="display:none" src="https://via.hypothes.is/im_/https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1626507807583041&ev=PageView&noscript=1"/> window.beOpAsyncInit = function() { BeOpSDK.init({ account: "5ecd140846e0fb0001a2cf91" }); BeOpSDK.watch(); }; { "@context": "http:\/\/schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@id": "https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/archive", "name": "Magazine" } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@id": "https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2020\/09\/07\/", "name": "September 7, 2020, Issue" } } ] } if ( "undefined" !== typeof googletag ) { googletag.cmd.push( function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-billb_atf"); } ); } NR PLUS Magazine September 7, 2020, Issue In Policing, Race Matters By James R. Copland About James R. Copland August 20, 2020 11:54 AM Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Flipboard Email this article Print this article Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi addresses reporters after the passage of police-reform legislation in the House, June 25. (Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images) Black men are the principal beneficiaries of policing; they also bear its highest costs We can’t talk about policing in the United States without talking about race. It’s personal to me. I’m white. But I’m married to a black woman, and we’re the proud parents of a biracial son who, as he grows up and navigates American life, will face challenges that I never had in my own youth. He’s nine years old now and only barely beginning to wrestle with questions of race and identity. Yet as he matures into adulthood, he’s more likely to have encounters with police than I have been. These encounters are more likely to include some police use of force than if he were white. And that’s assuming he can resist his tendency, inherited from his father, to be somewhat of a smart aleck when confronted by authority figures. Advertisement PLAY Top Articles San Francisco Salon Owner Says Nancy Pelosi Visited Despite Citywide Closure Video Settings Full Screen About Connatix V51132 Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More 1 min. story Skip Visit Advertiser website GO TO PAGE 1/1 SPONSORED / Coming Next Skip Ad My son’s greater likelihood of police encounters isn’t something easily fixed by legislation

Yet as he matures into adulthood, he’s more likely to have encounters with police than I have been. These encounters are more likely to include some police use of force than if he were white.

We can’t talk about policing in the United States without talking about race.

biracial

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi addresses reporters after the passage of police-reform legislation in the House, June 25. (Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images)

In Policing, Race Matters