Oakland Police Show More Respect to Whites than Blacks in Traffic Stops
The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in today’s world continues
05/09/2021
If you’re white, you know the drill. The police car pulls you over. An officer comes up to your door and asks: “Do you know why I stopped you?” Perhaps you answer the question. Perhaps you don’t. The officer will probably then ask for your driver’s license, adding, “please take the license out of the plastic cover,” or something else. Eventually, the officer tells you you’re driving 40 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone. He gives you a ticket or warning and sends you on your way.
If you’re black, your experience could be dramatically different. The encounter might end in your death.
Researchers at Stanford have studied this issue systematically. The results confirm what we have learned from television stories: Thousands of police encounters in Oakland showed significant differences in police conduct toward African Americans compared with white people in traffic and pedestrian stops. See Stanford big data study finds racial disparities in Oakland, Calif., police behavior, offers solutions (2016).
This 3-minute Stanford video summarizes the results of the study:
This 5-minute PBS video includes an interview with other researchers:
See also: Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek A. Epp, and Kelsey Shoub, Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race (Cambridge, 2018); Rob Voigta, Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, et al., “ Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect” (2017).
These studies reveal yet another of the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow in the social governance systems of US municipal police departments. Leave a comment or contact us if you would like to learn more about social governance systems in municipal police departments.
(© 2021 Michael Palmer, Legal Risk Management)
Originally published at About Right & Wrong.