Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot?

[FreakinDJ]

Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot?


In 2002, Correll and others published a paper titled, “The Police Officer’s Dilemma.”1 The paper was, in part, a reaction to the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by New York police, who thought he had a weapon. In the media and in the public at large, this tragic incident raised questions about whether race influences police use of force, particularly whether police are more likely to shoot a black suspect than a white suspect. These questions have long been of interest to criminologists and sociologists.2

First Denver Study

In the initial phase of this research (Denver study 1), three distinct groups of participants were studied: 124 police officers from the DPD, 127 members of the Denver community, and finally a group of 113 officers drawn from 14 states across the United States. This last group was labeled as the “national officers” to reflect the diversity of its origins.

Each participant performed a simple computer task involving the decision to shoot. The game presented a series of 100 male targets, which appeared on the screen one by one. Some of these targets were black, and some were white. In addition, some targets were armed and appeared on screen holding a pistol in a conspicuous position. Other targets were unarmed, instead holding an innocuous object, like a cellular telephone or a wallet. Across the entire game, participants saw 25 armed black targets, 25 armed white targets, 25 unarmed black targets, and 25 unarmed white targets. As in the initial Chicago experiment, participants were asked to press a button labeled “Shoot” if the target was armed; if they believed the target was unarmed, participants were instructed to press a button labeled “Don’t shoot.” They were given 850 milliseconds to make this decision. Incorrect responses (such as shooting an unarmed target) or responses that were too slow prompted negative feedback, including an aversive auditory tone and a loss of points. Correct responses prompted positive feedback and a gain of points.





Figure 1. The amount of time participants in each sample took to
respond to the four target types is depicted. All three samples
showed significant bias, shooting armed black targets more
quickly than armed whites and choosing not to shoot unarmed
whites more quickly than unarmed blacks





Figure 2. The criterion to shoot white and black targets is depicted. Community
members showed significant bias: a lower, more lenient criterion
for black targets than for white targets. Police did not show significant bias:
they used statistically equivalent criteria for both whites and blacks.


http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1798&issue_id=52009

[Igel]

1. And the results...

"In summary, both the Chicago study and the Denver studies demonstrated that community members showed consistent evidence of bias. Although Denver police officers, like the community members, showed evidence of bias in terms of their reaction times, the similarities between their performance and that of community members ended there. Unlike the community (and unlike thousands of undergraduate students who have participated in this research since 2000), Denver officers showed no bias in their ultimate decisions. In other words, the presence of a counterstereotypic target (such as a black man with a cell phone) may have delayed a Denver officer’s response, but it did not cause the officer to make a mistake. Ultimately, officers’ decisions about whether or not to shoot were unaffected by the target’s race."


Which actually surprises me. The police would know the stats; I'm surprised they're not more affected by them.

It might be worthwhile having larger subject cohorts with a view to looking at more criteria--not just police/non-police and two locations, but also throw in officer's race, demographics of the officer's precinct, and include some rural or small town officers.

I will add that the choice of cities and the tone of the results shows the researchers are really rather surprised by this, but weigh the possibility of a screwed up study to be higher than the idea that they actually falsified their hypothesis.

[DonP]

2. Did they allow for the race of the police?

We have a high percentage of African-American officers in Chicago.

I'm wondering if it's a white vs. black thing or a cop thing?