A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Policing

Abstract

We estimate the degree to which individual police officers practice racial discrimination. Using a bunching estimation design and data from the Florida Highway Patrol, we show that minorities are less likely to receive a discount on their speeding tickets than White drivers. Disaggregating this difference to the individual police officer, we estimate that 42 percent of officers practice discrimination. We then apply our officer- level discrimination measures to various policy-relevant questions in the literature. In particular, reassigning officers across locations based on their lenience can effectively reduce the aggregate disparity in treatment (JEL H76, J15, K42)

A New Racial Disparity in Traffic Fatalities

“…Consistent with prior research, Black drivers appear to be less likely to be the beneficiaries of leniency from police officers (18). However, the trends for Black and white drivers remain parallel during the relevant time period.…”

How the “Black criminal” stereotype shapes Black people’s psychological experience of policing: Evidence of stereotype threat and remaining questions.

“…This raises the possibility that Black officers may be better than White officers at distinguishing whether Black people’s emotional displays are caused by stereotype threat as opposed to guilt, noncompliance, deception, or aggression. However, even if diversifying police forces might reduce the risk of stereotype threat and its effects, evidence is mixed as to whether racial and ethnic minority officers engage in less racially disparate policing than White officers do (Ba et al, 2021; Gaston et al, 2021; Goncalves & Mello, 2021; Skogan & Frydl, 2004), and diversification is not sufficient defense against the larger system that generates racial bias and discrimination. This point was made all too clear when five Black Memphis Police Department officers brutally attacked and killed Tyre Nichols following a traffic stop in early 2023 (Alfonseca et al, 2023).…”

Toward a Psychological Science of Abolition Democracy: Insights for Improving Theory and Research on Race and Public Safety

“…The result is that Black people have been and continue to be subjected to intense police attention and brutality in the supposed interest of public safety. Compared to their White counterparts, Black youth and adults are targeted for more police surveillance; more likely to be stopped, searched, handcuffed, detained, ticketed, ticketed with higher penalties, and arrested; less likely to be spoken to with respect during interactions; more likely to be threatened with, threatened earlier during encounters, and actually subjected to police force; and, like Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Jr., and George Floyd, more likely to be killed by police (e.g., Brame et al, 2014;Buehler, 2017;Camp et al, 2021;Davis et al, 2018;Dunn, 2013;Edwards et al, 2019;Fagan & Davies, 2000;Fagan et al, 2016;Goel et al, 2016;Goncalves & Mello, 2021;Kahn et al, 2017;Kramer & Remster, 2018;Seguino & Brooks, 2021;Schwartz & Jahn, 2020;Voigt et al, 2017). Although narratives arguing that racial disparities are driven by greater incidence of crime among Black people remain popular to the present day, a great wealth of social psychological and criminological evidence exists now to support claims of racial discrimination.…”

“…It remains unknown whether such systems could be used to address officers' disparate treatment of non-White people, but if so, they would require substantial resources to implement based on the number of officers engaging in that conduct. For instance, Goncalves and Mello (2021) determined that 42% of Florida highway patrol officers racially discriminated in harsh ticketing over a 10-year period; they estimated that removing officers in the top 5% of disparate ticketing would reduce statewide disparities by only 3%. Research might investigate whether early intervention systems are better used not for finding bad apples but for signaling institutional norms of intolerance for racism (Research Recommendation #1).…”