Demeanor, Not Race, Key Factor in Adverse Police-Public Interactions

[Trausti]

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recently endorsed procedural justice as a way to restore trust between police and communities. Yet police–citizen interactions vary immensely, and research has yet to give sufficient consideration to the factors that might affect the importance officers place on exercising procedural justice during interactions. Building on research examining “moral worthiness” judgments and racial stereotyping among police officers, we conducted two randomized experiments to test whether suspect race and demeanor affect officers’ perceptions of the threat of violence and importance of exercising procedural justice while interacting with suspicious persons. We find that suspect race fails to exert a statistically significant effect on either outcome. However, demeanor does—such that officers perceive a greater threat of violence and indicate it is less important to exercise procedural justice with disrespectful suspects. These findings have implications for procedural justice training, specifically, and police–community relations more broadly.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418825.2017.1334808

This makes more sense than to presume that there's some scheme among police to target certain groups for harassment.


Fixed URL per member request - ZiprHead

 

[barbos]

Bad Mannered Lives Matter!
BMLM!

 

[Arctish]

I can't access the full article. Can you provide some of the details?

I'm interested in what metric they used to assign a value to a person's demeanor. Also, I'd like to know if they measured the demeanor of Libertarians who don't have license plates on their cars, don't carry identification, and keep demanding to know if they're under arrest so they can drive off without answering any questions. How did those folks rate?

 

[repoman]

Also sovereign citizens.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recently endorsed procedural justice as a way to restore trust between police and communities. Yet police–citizen interactions vary immensely, and research has yet to give sufficient consideration to the factors that might affect the importance officers place on exercising procedural justice during interactions. Building on research examining “moral worthiness” judgments and racial stereotyping among police officers, we conducted two randomized experiments to test whether suspect race and demeanor affect officers’ perceptions of the threat of violence and importance of exercising procedural justice while interacting with suspicious persons. We find that suspect race fails to exert a statistically significant effect on either outcome. However, demeanor does—such that officers perceive a greater threat of violence and indicate it is less important to exercise procedural justice with disrespectful suspects. These findings have implications for procedural justice training, specifically, and police–community relations more broadly.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418825.2017.1334808]Link

This makes more sense than to presume that there's some scheme among police to target certain groups for harassment.

Which then falls into my question about racial Asperger and if it exists and if it does, how does that affect the "demeanor" issue.

Then we have the other issue... Philandro Castile had positive demeanor and he is dead. A case like Tamir Rice had no demeanor involved at all and he is also dead. The case of the officer shooting the fleeing guy from a driving stop... demeanor?

 

[dismal]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418825.2017.1334808]Link

This makes more sense than to presume that there's some scheme among police to target certain groups for harassment.

Which then falls into my question about racial Asperger and if it exists and if it does, how does that affect the "demeanor" issue.

Then we have the other issue... Philandro Castile had positive demeanor and he is dead. A case like Tamir Rice had no demeanor involved at all and he is also dead. The case of the officer shooting the fleeing guy from a driving stop... demeanor?

At some point you probably took a statistics course, right? You understand what a "statistically significant effect" is?

 

[Underseer]

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recently endorsed procedural justice as a way to restore trust between police and communities. Yet police–citizen interactions vary immensely, and research has yet to give sufficient consideration to the factors that might affect the importance officers place on exercising procedural justice during interactions. Building on research examining “moral worthiness” judgments and racial stereotyping among police officers, we conducted two randomized experiments to test whether suspect race and demeanor affect officers’ perceptions of the threat of violence and importance of exercising procedural justice while interacting with suspicious persons. We find that suspect race fails to exert a statistically significant effect on either outcome. However, demeanor does—such that officers perceive a greater threat of violence and indicate it is less important to exercise procedural justice with disrespectful suspects. These findings have implications for procedural justice training, specifically, and police–community relations more broadly.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418825.2017.1334808]Link

This makes more sense than to presume that there's some scheme among police to target certain groups for harassment.

That's an obvious lie to anyone who has bothered paying attention to the news, but thanks for letting us all know you will lie to justify racist murders. No one is surprised, but it's good to see you admit it.

We have seen countless videos of African-Americans being respectful and obeying every command who still got murdered by police thugs, and we've seen white people who were clearly deranged, violent, and disrespectful who were taken alive.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

So, statistically-speaking, if officers perceive 80% of blacks as disrespectful (like kneeling during the anthem) and 30% of whites as disrespectful, and perceived disrespect is what drives officers to adversely affect suspects, then disrespect is the cause and not race.

- - - Updated - - -

I can't access the full article. Can you provide some of the details?

I'm interested in what metric they used to assign a value to a person's demeanor. Also, I'd like to know if they measured the demeanor of Libertarians who don't have license plates on their cars, don't carry identification, and keep demanding to know if they're under arrest so they can drive off without answering any questions. How did those folks rate?

Error

There appears to be a problem with the page you are looking for. Either the content has moved, or the URL is incorrect. Please check the URL, or try again.

He mangled the link. Here is the actual link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418825.2017.1334808

 

[ronburgundy]

Here is a working link, but it only shows the abstract unless you have access via your institution.

I read the article, and pretty much every comment in this thread is off the mark. First, the people (Jimmy and Underseer) dismissing the conclusions based upon contrary evidence from particular instances are engaging in fallacious reasoning that the research conclusions are assuming there are never instances where respectful blacks are killed or where disrespectful whites are killed.
There is no assumption that respect and race are the only two possible factors that lead to police shootings. If demeanor is a causal factor and race is not, there would still be such instances, it would just mean that their cause is something other than demeanor or race.

Every possible combination of race and demeanor can be and likely is found in both outcomes where officers use minimal force and use excessive force. So, pointing to such instances tells us nothing. The question is the relative prevalence of these combo of factors in both such outcomes and what the underlying cause is of any differences in prevalence. It is also worth noting that the article shows that physical "demeanor" (backing away, signaling likely flight, disobeying commands about physical movement) is even more important a factor in than verbal demeanor (being rude, yelling, name calling, etc.).

However, the article does not actually test what happens in any real world situations. Rather it is 2 artificial lab experiments that don't even attempt to simulate real world interactions. The cops were given written stories to read about hypothetical situations involving a series of different suspects. The person was always described as dressed in baggy jeans and a t-shirt and acting anxious, but they were either described as engaging in disobedient and disrespectful words or actions or being compliant and polite. They were also either said to be white or black.
Here is their scenario. Inside the brackets is different versions officers were given. There were 8 possible combinations of race, being verbally respectful, and being physically respectful.

[P]"While on patrol, you receive a suspicious person call. You arrive at the scene and identify a suspect who fits the description you were given—a [white/black] male, in his 20s, wearing baggy jeans and a t-shirt. When you approach the suspect, he seems uneasy and anxious. When you first begin to question him, he [is compliant and respectful, and refers to you as sir or ma’am/refuses to tell you anything, and is disrespectful, loud, uses profanity, and calls you names/backs away and starts to walk off while you are still talking]."
[/P]

Then officers gave a 1 to 5 rating of how important they felt is was to engage in different behaviors tied to procedural justice (being courteous and respectful to suspect, explain why you stopped them, allow them to explain themselves, don't take action until all info is gathered.)

IOW, the situations has almost no similarity to real world interactions and it was made explicitly salient of officers that race was part of it. In real life, cops attend to race implicitly and the actions and words of the suspect are things they must observe and interpret for themselves rather than have some omniscient narrator tell them what info in the situation is important and how to interpret it. It is precisely in how and what info a cop processes about a situation and how the interpret it that is where any potential racial biases would come into play. Yet none of that situational processing is required in these studies.
All this study tells us is that if you sit cops in a room and ask then whether black people deserve less procedural justice simply for being black, then cops will say "No", but they will say that justice is less important if the suspect is disrespectful. Thus, cops realize they are not supposed to be overtly racist, but frighteningly do not realize it is their job to de-escalate situations and act like the more reasonable and calm person when they encounter suspects.

At very minimum, they should have had the cops view videos of the suspects where they still had to attend to and interpret the information rather than have select features of it narrated to them and interpreted for them. That still wouldn't solve the problem that the cops aren't engaging in honest reactions but merely reporting what they think others will view as acceptable reactions. Perhaps, one could record some physio measures like heart rate, muscle tension, skin conductance, etc.. that are tied to fear, anger, and threat perception.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

All this study tells us is that if you sit cops in a room and ask then whether black people deserve less procedural justice simply for being black, then cops will say "No", but they will say that justice is less important if the suspect is disrespectful. Thus, cops realize they are not supposed to be overtly racist, but frighteningly do not realize it is their job to de-escalate situations and act like the more reasonable and calm person when they encounter suspects.

I am going to agree with this and I think this is the crux of the matter. I am going to add the following minor points:
1. Voluntary surveys were given to officers. A large percent of officers chose not to take the survey. Part of the reason for someone not taking the survey could be that they did not want to be exposed as an officer who is procedurally inappropriate. One would expect such bias, but there is no empirical support for it in this particular experiment, i.e. I can't prove it, but there's a plausible bias.
2. The studies seem to have found a difference by race but are saying it is not statistically significant. Which way? How much? If N was larger, would it be statistically significant?
3. More blacks than whites may wear baggy jeans, seem uneasy and anxious around police, and call a name like "racist" which is a name, let's face it and this may sometimes be justified. These data aren't necessarily a test of "moral worthiness" or a control but data related to a real-life scenario that may be more correlated to race than imagined by the study designers. So, there could still be an unwanted outcome of racial differences due to unfairness of the officers' procedural thinking because they don't like baggy jeans or people calling them racist. I mean, think about it from the civilian's perspective...You're a black male wearing baggy jeans and a t-shirt. Some random person calls the police on you saying you look suspicious when you don't. So, the police come by and start questioning you. Are you going to have different behavior on average than a white person in the same situation? Maybe. Some % are going to say something or try to refer to their rights as a citizen of the country. I am reminded of the case of Professor Gates who was arrested at his home.

 

[Treedbear]

There's always the possibility that the suspect's demeanor was caused instigated by how the officer approached them, e.g.; in a menacing way. The whole stop-and-frisk tactic in itself is setting up for trouble. Treating anyone like they're a dog produces resentment.

 

[bilby]

The headline should read "Yet another poorly designed study shows absolutely nothing useful".

That headline doesn't sell a lot of copy, but it ought to appear for about 90% of science reporting, and well in excess of 99% of reporting about the social sciences.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The headline should read "Yet another poorly designed study shows absolutely nothing useful".

That headline doesn't sell a lot of copy, but it ought to appear for about 90% of science reporting, and well in excess of 99% of reporting about the social sciences.

Agreed. I think much of the research itself is little better, though. The social sciences are rife with measuring proxies that aren't a good representation of reality, and rife with ignoring confounding variables that are inconvenient for the biases of the researchers.

 

[Derec]

There's always the possibility that the suspect's demeanor was caused instigated by how the officer approached them, e.g.; in a menacing way. The whole stop-and-frisk tactic in itself is setting up for trouble. Treating anyone like they're a dog produces resentment.

Or it could be due to five decades or more of anti-police propaganda in the black community. At least since Black Panthers.

It is often said that blacks have to give their kids a "talk" about dealing with police. But if that "talk" incorporates hostility toward police (e.g. "police have it out for you because you are black") it is doing more harm than good. '