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A new research study in SCIENCE, out today, studies how Chicago police officers' racial & gender identities might influence how they engage with Black & Latinx citizens. It's going to generate a lot of attention. I have some thoughts on it. 1/13
A new research study in SCIENCE, out today, studies how Chicago police officers' racial & gender identities might influence how they engage with Black & Latinx citizens. It's going to generate a lot of attention. I have some thoughts on it. 1/13
The study clearly shows that Black officers especially, & Latinx & female officers to a lesser extent, are much less likely to stop, arrest, & use force against Black citizens for minor offenses than are white male cops. (Little variance when responding to reported violence.)2/13
The implication: diversifying the police will make them less harmful to the people police generally harm the most in a city like Chicago. 3/13
The fact that officers of color (the study is limited to Black, Latinx, and white police) and women are less likely to harmfully engage citizens of color overall is undeniably a net positive. Anything that reduces the amount of contact folks have w/ police is a good thing! 4/13
However, this is, at the end of the day, still examining what policing looks like from an individualized rather than a structural perspective. It's a "bad apples" analysis on steroids, channeled through particular racial and gendered lenses. 5/13
The researchers' data does suggest that greater officer diversity would reduce the amount of unwanted contact people of color have with police. But their own data also shows that racist policing is absolutely, stubbornly structural! They just don't comment on that. 6/13
The uncomfortable truth that's buried in the study: while Black, Latinx, & female cops stop, arrest, and use force against Black & Latinx citizens less frequently than their white counterparts... 7/13
those same cops (those who aren't white men) ARE STILL MUCH MORE LIKELY TO STOP, ARREST, AND USE FORCE AGAINST BLACK & LATINX CITIZENS THAN THEY ARE TO DO THOSE THINGS TO WHITE PEOPLE. Taking the diversification argument to its logical conclusion: 8/13
You could fire every white man who works for CPD & replace them with an officer of color or a female officer, & you're still gonna have a SYSTEM that is racist: one where folks of color encounter police less than now, but still in wild disproportion relative to white folks. 9/13
This is the fundamental limit of the study. It's asking an interesting question, but it's not asking the most important one -- even when it's right there in the data, begging to be asked.
Anyway, a couple relevant links, beginning with the research paper itself. 10/13
Anyway, a couple relevant links, beginning with the research paper itself. 10/13
I talked a bit about this with writers for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and the AP, but wasn't able to convey everything I wanted to in those forums. Here's the SCIAM one:
12/13 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/white-chicago-cops-use-force-more-often-than-black-officers/
12/13 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/white-chicago-cops-use-force-more-often-than-black-officers/
And here's the AP:
13/13 https://apnews.com/article/science-race-and-ethnicity-police-chicago-040a8188e26a355eaad3a53b4bdbd920
13/13 https://apnews.com/article/science-race-and-ethnicity-police-chicago-040a8188e26a355eaad3a53b4bdbd920
