In light of the discussions about the privacy of body cameras and machine processing of their body camera footage to flag less than optimal public interactions, I found this NPR article about a study which demonstrates that the first 45 words said to a Black driver is suggestive on how the whole encounter will go. From NPR:
(more…)When a police officer stops a Black driver, the first 45 words said by that officer hold important clues about how their encounter is likely to go.
Car stops that result in a search, handcuffing, or arrest are nearly three times more likely to begin with the police officer issuing a command, such as “Keep your hands on the wheel” or “Turn the car off.”
That’s according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that examined police body-camera footage of 577 routine car stops involving Black drivers.
Eighty-one of these stops ultimately involved searches, handcuffings, or arrests. That kind of outcome was less likely when a police officer’s first words provided a reason for the stop.
“The first 45 words, which is less than 30 seconds on average, spoken by a law enforcement officer during a car stop to a Black driver can be quite telling about how the stop will end,” says Eugenia Rho, a researcher at Virginia Tech.
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“The car stop is by far the most common way people come into contact with the police,” says Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford University. “With the spread of body-worn cameras, we now have access to how these interactions unfold in real time.”
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The words or actions of the person behind the wheel of the car didn’t seem to contribute to escalation.
“The drivers are just answering the officers’ questions and explaining what’s going on,” says Eberhardt. “They’re cooperative.”