Escalated police stops of Black men are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments

Abstract

Across the United States, police chiefs, city officials, and community leaders alike have highlighted the need to de-escalate police encounters with the public. This concern about escalation extends from encounters involving use of force to routine car stops, where Black drivers are disproportionately pulled over. Yet, despite the calls for action, we know little about the trajectory of police stops or how escalation unfolds. In study 1, we use methods from computational linguistics to analyze police body-worn camera footage from 577 stops of Black drivers. We find that stops with escalated outcomes (those ending in arrest, handcuffing, or a search) diverge from stops without these outcomes in their earliest moments—even in the first 45 words spoken by the officer. In stops that result in escalation, officers are more likely to issue commands as their opening words to the driver and less likely to tell drivers the reason why they are being stopped. In study 2, we expose Black males to audio clips of the same stops and find differences in how escalated stops are perceived: Participants report more negative emotion, appraise officers more negatively, worry about force being used, and predict worse outcomes after hearing only the officer’s initial words in escalated versus non-escalated stops. Our findings show that car stops that end in escalated outcomes sometimes begin in an escalated fashion, with adverse effects for Black male drivers and, in turn, police–community relations.

We built this culture (so we can change it): Seven principles for intentional culture change.

“…The framework is grounded in the authors' expertise in the social psychology of culture, bias, and inequality and their work applying evidence-based insights to inform and assess organizational, institutional, and societal change efforts in real-world settings. For over a decade, they have studied these change processes systematically in collaboration with researchers and private and public sector leaders in criminal justice (e.g., Camp et al, 2021Camp et al, , 2023Hetey, 2020;Rho et al, 2023;Voigt et al, 2017), economic mobility (e.g., Cheryan & Markus, 2020;Lyons-Padilla et al, 2019;Thomas et al, 2020Thomas et al, , 2023, education (e.g., Darling-Hammond et al, 2023; This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…For example, in an intervention to address racial disparities in police officer-driver interactions during routine traffic stops, one effective strategy is to disrupt this default by helping officers understand that their individual actions have broad impact beyond each discrete encounter (Camp et al, 2023). If an officer is intentional about communicating respectfully during a stop, a potentially tense interaction with a Black driver can proceed more constructively, with beneficial effects that ripple out to the community (Camp et al, 2021(Camp et al, , 2023Rho et al, 2023;Voigt et al, 2017). Helping officers change their frame-by highlighting their role as representatives of their agency and contextualizing the systemic impact of their actions-was an effective way to increase respect during those interactions.…”

Police‐perpetrated racism and health in African American and Black communities

“…(1) perceptions of AAB civilians; (2) interpretations of encounters with AAB civilians; (3) engagement with AAB civilians, even within the first 45 s of the encounter; (4) misidentification of non-weapons as weapons; and (5) decisions to shoot as well as shooting reaction times (see the Shooter bias section below; Correll et al, 2002;Correll et al, 2006;Correll et al, 2007;Eberhardt et al, 2004;Rho et al, 2023). However, it is important to note that not all racial bias is explicit, as implicit racial bias and implicit stereotypes also play an integral role in police-perpetrated racism.…”

“…(2) the disproportionate stopping of Black drivers was higher in counties with higher levels of racial prejudice by white residents (Stelter et al, 2022). While some may speculate that AAB civilians may be more resistant due to distrust for the police, Rho et al (2023) provide evidence that officers engage with AAB civilians differently than white civilians from the onset of contact. Stops with escalated outcomes-those ending in a search, handcuffing, or arrest-differed from stops without these outcomes even in the first 45 words spoken by the officer.…”

Institutional interactions and racial inequality in policing: How everyday encounters bridge individuals, organizations, and institutions

“…A focus on institutional interactions can not only keep both of these perspectives in focus, but also identify how they might interact over time and in tandem. Officers may be more inclined to use force in response to perceived threats to their legitimacy in interactions (Trinkner et al, 2019), for example, or an officer's choices early in an encoun ter may change the trajectory of the subsequent interaction (Dobson et al, under review;Rho et al, 2023). In this way, centering analysis on interactions can serve to integrate extant research on race and policing, while opening new avenues of inquiry.…”