Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Study tracks race, police shootings

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 2, 2007

In making snap decisions about whether to shoot a potentially armed suspect, police officers are far less influenced by racial bias than students or community members forced to make the same decision, a large study has found.

The study, based on video simulations of armed and unarmed confrontations, found that racial stereotypes influenced the reaction times of officers and civilians, but swayed the ultimate decision to fire only in civilian participants.

The findings suggest that the impact of race on police behavior is subtler than previously understood and is strongly shaped by professional training.

In previous research, investigators have found evidence that the police use greater force to restrain minority suspects than white ones. But the new study, reported Friday in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, compares the influence of race on life-and-death decisions in officers and nonofficers.

"We don't mean to suggest that this is conclusive evidence that there is no racial bias in police officers' decisions to shoot, " said Dr. Joshua Correll, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. "But we've run these tests with thousands of people now, and we've never seen this ability to restrain behavior in any group other than police officers."

The research was conducted in 2004 and included 157 officers from Denver, 113 officers from departments around the country and a diverse group of 245 adults from the Denver area.

[Last modified June 2, 2007, 02:29:07]