What Factors Influence an Officer’s Decision to Shoot? The Promise and Limitations of Using Public Data

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-76
Author(s):  
Andrew P. Wheeler ◽  
Scott W. Phillips ◽  
John L. Worrall ◽  
Stephen A. Bishopp
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Public Data

We analyze a set of 207 Dallas Police Department officer-involved shooting incidents in reference to 1,702 instances in which officers from the same agency drew their firearms but did not shoot at the suspect. We find that situational factors of whether the suspect was armed and whether an officer was injured were the best predictors of the decision to shoot. We also find that African Americans are less likely than Whites to be shot. It is important to collect data on encounters in which weapons are and are not discharged. Analyses examining only shootings is fundamentally limited in assessing racial bias.

Racial Justice and Criminal Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black Neighborhoods

The criminal justice system in the United States both reflects racial inequality in the broader society and contributes to it. The overrepresentation of African Americans among those in prison is a result of both the conditions in poor black neighborhoods and racial bias in the criminal justice system. The American system of criminal justice today is excessively punitive, when compared to previous periods and to other countries, and its harsh treatment disproportionately harms African Americans. In addition, those released from prison face a number of obstacles to housing, employment, and other prerequisites of decent life, and the concentration of prisoners and ex-prisoners in black communities does much to perpetuate racial inequality.

A Virtual Reality Embodiment Technique to Enhance Helping Behavior of Police Towards a Victim of Police Racial Aggression

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-51
Author(s):  
Sameer Kishore ◽  
Bernhard Spanlang ◽  
Guillermo Iruretagoyena ◽  
Dalila Szostak ◽  
Mel Slater
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Helping Behavior ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Intractable Problem

There is an alarming level of violence by police in the US towards African Americans. Although this may be rooted in explicit racial bias, the more intractable problem is overcoming implicit bias, bias that is non-conscious but demonstrated in actual behavior. If bias is implicit it is difficult to change through explicit methods that attempt to change attitudes. We carried out a study using virtual reality (VR) with 38 officers in a US police department, who took part in an interrogation of an African American suspect alongside an officer who was racially abusive towards the suspect. Seventeen of the participants witnessed the interview again from a third person perspective (Observer) and 21 from the embodied perspective of the suspect, now a victim of the interrogation (Victim condition), having been assigned randomly to these two groups. Some weeks later all witnessed aggression by an officer towards an African American man in a virtual cafe scenario. The results show that the actions of those who had been in the Victim condition were coded as being more helpful towards the victim than those in the Observer condition. We argue that such VR exposures operate at the experiential and implicit level rather than the explicit, and hence are more likely to be effective in combating aggression rooted in implicit bias.

Cue the Counterprotesters— Stage Left

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Police Department ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
National Movements

This chapter discusses the Charlottesville Police Department that prepared for the July 8 rally led by Christopher Barker by gathering intelligence on the groups expected to protest against the Klan. It describes the police department's intelligence gathering, which included harvesting what was openly available on the internet, and interviews by Charlottesville police officers of groups and individuals that are likely to stage counterprotests. It also details how the police tactic backfired after democratic groups accused the police of engaging in an intimidation tactic intended to curtail leftist speech and expressive conduct. The chapter looks into the Antifa and Black Lives Matter national movements as the counterprotest groups planning to oppose the Klan rally. It explains that Antifa is a conglomeration of groups opposed to fascism, while the Black Lives Matter movement arose in reaction to incidents of unjust killings and beatings of African Americans by police.

An Exploratory Multilevel Analysis of Pedestrian Frisks in Philadelphia

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-113
Author(s):  
Lance Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Ethnic Disparities ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Stop And Frisk ◽  
Violent Crime Rate ◽  
Public Data ◽  
The Individual

The City of Philadelphia has faced significant litigation related to racial and ethnic disparities in stop-and-frisk practices. The Philadelphia Police Department has made much of its stop-and-frisk data publicly available in the name of transparency and to facilitate independent investigation (the data describe over 350,000 pedestrian stops with over 45,000 pedestrian frisks for 2014–2015). The current analysis made use of this public data set to explore whether the individual-level relationship between Black racial classification and being subjected to a frisk can be explained by associated neighborhood-level factors such as the violent crime rate. Additionally, the present analysis examined whether variation in the violent crime rate is similarly related to the likelihood of being frisked in predominantly Black versus non-Black areas and whether area racial composition affects the likelihood that an officer’s decision to frisk will be supported with uncovered contraband. The results were consistent with theories of neighborhood racial stigma. In particular, the violent crime rate was a significantly weaker predictor of being frisked in Black areas, and, net of a variety of factors at the individual and neighborhood levels, Black citizens and Black places experienced a disproportionate amount of frisks where no contraband was found or arrest made.

“Does daylight matter”? An examination of racial bias in traffic stops by police

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-688
Author(s):  
Anthony G. Vito ◽  
Vanessa Woodward Griffin ◽  
Gennaro F. Vito ◽  
George E. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Traffic Stops ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to draw a better understanding of the potential impact of daylight in officer decision making. In order to this, the authors test the veil of darkness hypothesis, which theorizes that racial bias in traffic stops can be tested by controlling for the impact of daylight, while operating under the assumption that driver patterns remain constant across race.Design/methodology/approachPublicly available traffic-stop records from the Louisville Metro Police Department for January 2010–2019. The analysis includes both propensity score matching to examine the impact of daylight in similarly situated stops and coefficients testing to analyze how VOD may vary in citation-specific models.FindingsThe results show that using PSM following the VOD hypothesis does show evidence of racial bias, with Black drivers more likely to be stopped. Moreover, the effects of daylight significantly varied across citation-specific models.Research limitations/implicationsThe data are self-reported from the officer and do not contain information on the vehicle make or model.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that utilizing PSM and coefficients testing provides for a better analysis following the VOD hypothesis and does a better job of understanding the impact of daylight and the officer decision-making on traffic stops.Social implicationsBased on the quality of the data, the findings show that the use of VOD allows for the performance of more rigorous analyses of traffic stop data – giving police departments a better way to examine if racial profiling is evident.Originality/valueThis is the first study (to the researchers' knowledge) that applies the statistical analyses of PSM to the confines of the veil of darkness hypothesis.

Junkies and Jim Crow: The Boggs Act of 1951 and the Racial Transformation of New Orleans’ Heroin Market

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-246
Author(s):  
Amund R. Tallaksen
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Police Department ◽  
State Level ◽  
Drug Laws ◽  
Black Neighborhoods ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Drug Law ◽  
Similar Drug

This article details the origin and passage of the Boggs Act of 1951, as well as a similar drug law passed at the state level in Louisiana. Both laws featured strict mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, which led to a demographic transformation of New Orleans’ heroin markets in the early 1950s: As New Orleans’ Italian-American Mafiosi retreated from the lower echelons of the heroin economy, entrepreneurial African Americans took their place. In turn, many black leaders came to support both stricter drug laws and increased police focus on crime in black neighborhoods. This demand was rooted in African Americans’ frustration with the New Orleans Police Department and its Jim Crow practice of ignoring intra-racial black crime. It also became important for black leaders to distance themselves from the “criminal element”—an otherwise potent political symbol for white segregationists.

Race, African Americans, and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1021-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dionne R. Powell
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Analytic Work ◽  
Collective Silence ◽  
American Society ◽  
Blind Spots

Both historically and currently, assaults on the black body and mind have been ubiquitous in American society, posing a counterargument to America as a postracial, color-blind society. Yet the collective silence of psychoanalysts on this societal reality limits our ability to explore, teach, and treat the effects, both interpersonal and intrapsychic, of race, racism, racialized trauma, and implicit bias and privilege. This silence, which challenges our relevance as a profession, must be explored in the context of America’s racialized identity as an outgrowth of slavery and institutional racism. Racial identifications that maintain whiteness as a construct privileged over otherness are an obstacle to conducting analytic work. Examples of work with racial tensions and biases illustrate its therapeutic potential. The challenge for us as clinicians is to acknowledge and explore our racial bias, ignorance, blind spots, and privilege, along with identifications with the oppressed and the oppressor, as contributors to our silence.

“Many People ‘Colored’ Have Come to the Homicide Office”

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-57
Author(s):  
Brandon T. Jett
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Simple Matter ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
Information Collecting

This chapter uses black-on-black homicide reports from the Memphis Police Department in the Jim Crow era to reveal the complex interactions between the police and black Memphians. The police investigated these crimes extensively, especially in light of the white public’s outcries about crime rates. Yet, this was not a simple matter of white social control. African Americans aided the police in these efforts, providing information, collecting evidence, and acting as witnesses, not because they trusted the police to protect their neighborhoods, but because they did not. Their involvement allowed them to grasp some leverage in a system under which they otherwise had very little power.

The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on Judgments of Culpability in a Domestic Violence Scenario

2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Ferguson ◽  
Charles Negy
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
European American ◽  
Domestic Assault ◽  
European Americans ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Using an experimental analog design, in this study we examined 503 European American, African American, and Latino undergraduate students’ responses to a domestic violence scenario in which the ethnicity and gender of the perpetrator were manipulated. Results indicated that participants perceived perpetration of domestic assault significantly more criminal when committed by a man than when committed by a woman. That finding was robust across European Americans, African Americans, and Latinos and was expressed by both genders. Also, European American participants expressed significantly more criticism toward African American perpetrators of assault than they did toward European American and Latino perpetrators of the exact offense, suggestive of racial bias consistent with stereotypes about African Americans being excessively aggressive. Finally, Latino participants expressed significantly more sympathy toward women who assault their husbands than toward assaulting husbands. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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