Tag: Racial Bias

Do digital technologies reduce racially biased reporting? Evidence from NYPD administrative data | PNAS

Recent work has emphasized the disproportionate bias faced by minorities when interacting with law enforcement. However, research on the topic has been hampered by biased sampling in administrative data, namely that records of police interactions with citizens only reflect information on the civilians that police elect to investigate, and not civilians that police observe but do not investigate. In this work, we address a related bias in administrative police data which has received less empirical attention, namely reporting biases around investigations that have taken place. Further, we investigate whether digital monitoring tools help mitigate this reporting bias. To do so, we examine changes in reports of interactions between law enforcement and citizens in the wake of the New York City Police Department’s replacement of analog memo books with mobile smartphones. Results from a staggered difference in differences estimation indicate a significant increase in reports of citizen stops once the new smartphones are deployed.
— Read on www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2402375121

A Study of Bias in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s Threat Assessment Process – National Policing Institute

A Study of Bias in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s Threat Assessment Process – National Policing Institute

There is a link for a .pdf to the report at the webpage.
— Read on www.policinginstitute.org/publication/a-study-of-bias-in-the-washington-d-c-metropolitan-police-departments-threat-assessment-process/

Investigative Report on the Role of Online Platforms in the Tragic Mass Shooting in Buffalo on May 14, 2022

The mass shooting in and around the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York on May 14, 2022 that claimed

the lives of ten individuals and injured three others was all the more horrific because of the white supremacist ideological motivation that fueled it and the shooter’s meticulous planning. The disturbing reality is that

this attack is part of an epidemic of mass shootings often perpetrated by young men radicalized online by

an ideology of hate. This report details what my office has learned about how the Buffalo shooter was first indoctrinated and radicalized through online platforms, and how he used these and other platforms to plan, implement, and promote these acts of terror.1 The report assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the response of various online platforms in the wake of the Buffalo shooting. Readers should be cautioned that this report contains graphic textual descriptions of bigotry and violence, including quotes from the shooter’s own writing that, in our opinion, are necessary to contextualize and explain this story.

ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/buffaloshooting-onlineplatformsreport.pdf

Detroit Area Police Department Used Images of Black Men for Shooting Target Practice

If the police still use those targets there should have been an explanation about the targets and its purpose or how there are used. Those targets have been in use for as long as I can remember. This could mean for 30 years. I would like to know the origin on how they were designed and why many police departments used them. They may have been free through the federal or state government. There was a dog, female hostage, and a white male with a chain or a knife

My PD adapted the targets by covering the weapon with other objects like a phone, wallet, other weapon, or non-weapon object. This way when the target would present you never new if it was a threat. The officer would have to scan to see if the target had a weapon. This made officers constantly disregard any stereotypes and focus on hands and if the target was armed with a weapon. This improved training. This should have been explained to the boy scout group.

Boy Scouts discovered the targets, some of them pierced with bullet holes, while touring a police department headquarters just outside Detroit.
— Read on www.vice.com/en/article/4axdp9/detroit-police-black-men-shooting-range-targets