Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“Officers who exhibited high levels of occupational stress reported stress as a consequence of ethnic or racial bias. Moreover, officers reported considerable time and energy was spent helping co-workers deal with this prejudice and bias."

“Black people were more strongly associated with weapons, even if violent crime rates were higher for White people than Black people. Thus, the stereotype that Black people are violent reflects more than just an awareness of differential crime rates among Whites and Blacks."

“Simply frequenting an area where gangs are known to assemble has landed individuals in a gang database.” & “NYPD officials have acknowledged that as many as 95 percent of the people in its gang database are Black or Latinx.

“The us-versus-them orientation of this policing paradigm manifests in decidedly punitive approaches… Such aggressive policing converges on minority communities already distrustful of police."

“Protesters’ claims of structural exclusions and state violence threatens the reality and core ideas of the white frame… Instead of engaging with a non-white reality, patriarchal patriots instead focused on the threats and the harms they experienced from the protests."

Regarding causes of right wing extremism in Canada, “the majority of key informants in our study claimed that the most obvious factor was a weak law enforcement response… Law enforcement were neither well trained nor motivated to confront the movement."

Geographic information systems [GIS] focus on “microspatial ‘hotspots’ of crime” & “Contrary to official rhetoric about the objectivity and precision of GIS, there is no evidence that they have had meaningful implications for the racialized character of policing."

“Police officers in the United States killed at least 104 unarmed Black people in 2015… Moreover, unarmed Black people were killed at five times the rate of unarmed Whites in 2015."

“Police officers often use the charge of ‘resisting arrest’ to criminalize black people who try to defend themselves from brutal, punitive, and often illegal police actions. They also do so to justify the violence it takes to compel compliance—even … in taking a life."