Prometheus 6

I have to read the study. Just not today.

“It demonstrates that people can be trained not to rely on racially biased cues in deciding to pull the trigger,” Ms. Lieberman said of the new study. But the findings, she added, “should compel departments with histories of shooting unarmed black men to undertake a re-examination of their firearms training.”...

The findings...[offer] little solace to the relatives of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and other minority victims of police gunfire in New York City...

Study Finds Police Training Plays Key Role in Shootings
By BENEDICT CAREY

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

The findings, while offering little solace to the relatives of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and other minority victims of police gunfire in New York City, 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. And in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating in 1991 in California, an investigation of the Los Angeles Police Department concluded that officers with antiblack attitudes were more likely to be promoted than others.

But the new study, reported yesterday in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is the first to rigorously compare the influence of race on such life-and-death decisions in officers and in non-officers.

“We don’t mean to suggest that this is conclusive evidence that there is no racial bias in police officers’ decisions to shoot,” said Joshua Correll, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. “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.”

Dr. Correll said that the findings were unexpected, given that the police were exposed to the usual racial stereotypes in popular culture, as well as in roll calls, confrontations on the beat and other cruelties of the system up close. His co-authors were Bernd Wittenbrink of the University of Chicago; Bernadette Park, Charles Judd and Melody Sadler of the University of Colorado in Boulder; and Tracie Keesee of the Denver Police Department.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has called for an investigation of the Sean Bell shooting, said the study was good news, both for police departments and for those who advocate for equal justice. Mr. Bell, a groom-to-be, was killed in November when five officers fired 50 shots at his car as he left a bachelor party in Queens.