Police officers speak less respectfully to black residents than to white residents: study
June 5, 2017
The first systematic analysis of police body camera footage shows that officers consistently use less respectful language with black community members than with white community members, according to new Stanford research.
The study is not the first time Eberhardt has collaborated with the OPD to study possible racial disparities in policing. In 2014, the City of Oakland contracted with Eberhardt and her team to assist the Oakland Police Department in (QUOTE UNDERLINE) complying with a federal order (QUOTE UNDERLINE) to collect and analyze data from traffic and pedestrian stops by race.
To analyze the body camera footage, a multidisciplinary team from Stanford's psychology, linguistics and computer science departments first developed a new artificial intelligence technique for measuring levels of respect in officers' language. They then applied this technique to the transcripts from 981 traffic stops the Oakland Police Department (OPD) made in a single month.
The researchers' novel technique demonstrated that white residents were 57 percent more likely than black residents to hear a police officer say the most respectful utterances, such as apologies and expressions of gratitude like "thank you." Meanwhile, black community members were 61 percent more likely than white residents to hear an officer say the least respectful utterances, such as informal titles like "dude" and "bro" and commands like "hands on the wheel."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-police-officers-respectfully-black-residents.html#jCp
