Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“New study finds ‘places with Black Lives Matter protests experience a 15% to 20% decrease in police homicides over the ensuing five years.’ Further, the effect ‘is most prominent when protests are large or frequent.'"

“Despite whether police officers’ racial attitudes, either explicit or implicit, are the primary cause, there is clear evidence of disparate policing outcomes for racial minorities. Just because the empirical literature may not prove whether these outcomes are primarily driven by officer level racial bias."

“Because there are inevitably unobserved factors that jointly influence the decisions to stop and use force, analyzing only stops introduces selection bias. Therefore, for the conclusions in Fryer (2019) to hold, there must be no racial bias in the decision to detain civilians — in other words, to deem these estimates credible, analysts must assume away racial bias in a study of racial bias."

“Based on information from more than two million 911 calls in two US cities, [Mark Hoekstra] concluded that white officers dispatched to Black neighbourhoods fired their guns five times as often as Black officers dispatched for similar calls to the same neighbourhoods."

“A majority of blacks and Hispanics—but just one-third of whites—believes that police provide ‘worse’ services to black and Hispanic neighborhoods… The majority of whites believe that police treat neighborhoods similarly."

“The committee stresses that the origins of policing in the United States are intimately interwoven with the nation’s history of racial prejudice. Although in recent decades police have often made a strong effort to address racially biased behaviors, wide disparities remain in the extent to which non-White people and White people are stopped or arrested by police. “

“Certainly it would be better if police were better trained, better supervised, and better equipped to serve the areas they patrol. But from our perspective, the focus on misbehavior is scapegoating. It insulates mainstream institutions—the police department, public officials, and the public—from blame for what we ask systems of policing to do on our behalf."

“As Blacks gain political momentum, they are better represented in police line ranks. Neither formal nor informal affirmative action policies had any effect.” & “As the representation of African Americans in manager and line positions approaches parity, there is a concomitant reduction in the disparity between Black and White drug arrest rates."

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