Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“These studies have demonstrated that the decision to shoot may be influenced by a target person’s ethnicity. In four studies, [non-police] participants showed a bias to shoot African American targets more rapidly and/or more frequently than White targets."

“I find significant, negative effects of police violence on the educational attainment of black and Hispanic students… Police killings may have large long-run effects on local communities."

“Having police in schools was associated with an additional arrest of 1.22 Black students, but only 0.38 White and 0.48 Hispanic students per 1,000… These findings may arise because school police… may be acting on their own implicit biases."

In a study of French police recruits, find that (1) police recruits were more prejudiced and authoritarian than non-police—a selection effect, and (2) officers with one year of training were more prejudiced than new recruits—a socialization effect.

“For all complaints to the [Chicago] PD, African-Americans are less likely to see their complaints sustained… For officers, male African-American officers are more likely to have complaints levied against them sustained."

Analyzing 7,000 protests, finds that police are more likely to intervene at anti-police protests than at similar protests with other themes.

“Racial profiling … is not new; more to the point, it is not gone… It corrodes relationships between police and communities, leaving people of color knowing that they have been treated unfairly and understandably resentful of police… It does nothing to fight crime."

“Officers… kill a substantial number of civilians who do not pose a lethal threat and these civilians are disproportionately people of color.” & “Nearly half of the time that an officer kills a civilian, the civilian is either unarmed or armed with a [less lethal] weapon."

Of black civilians killed by police, 18% were killed because the officer inaccurately assumed that the victim had a gun. Such “errors” happen much less frequently with white citizens.