Police- How Do We Deal With Bias?

When people are given too much authority, they are almost always bound to abuse it. Whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, they can practically do anything. Who’s to question their judgement, and who’s to reprimand them? In a modern society, sane civilians realize all they have to do is comply with certain rules and regulations unless you’re 12 years old and stranded on an island where all you have is a conch and develop an unorthodox government based around it, to not get thrown into a cold jail cell. Just as the people enforcing these rules make jurisdiction based on certain precedents, police also have instilled in them certain prejudices regarding racial or gender bias from deep rooted mentalities of society. All black people are dangerous, they obviously are up to no good if they’re walking outside at this time of the night. It’s that woman's fault for getting sexually harassed, she was dressing provocatively. We should trust law enforcement not to fall victim to believing these stereotypes. Unfortunately, some do. Just two years ago, a young black man was chased by police on patrol in the outskirts of Roxbury, upon hearing a series of gunshots. The police assumed, that based on his behavior- refraining from looking at the cops in the eye, keeping his answers to the questions they asked short and simple, overall appearing nervous, and running after they stepped out of the car- that he was “definitely” armed. The boy, whose name is Evelyn, claimed that their stop was unconstitutional because the cops had no reasonable suspicion to arrest him. In another Supreme Justice Court case back in 2016, they said that “flight is not evidence of guilt, citing studies showing that Boston police disproportionately stop and frisk black men and suggesting that a black man who does not want to talk to the police might simply be trying to avoid racial profiling.”

Anybody, especially a black youth raised in dangerous areas like that, will naturally be afraid of the police due to what they have seen happening in their community; accounts of police brutality may be higher in other places, but who’s to say that it couldn’t happen in Boston? Just a few weeks ago, a man posted to his twitter “They said I looked suspicious so they beat my ass and sent me home,'' he wrote. “Thank You @bostonpolice. I thought I was safe here but apparently not.” In the photo he posted, his face was covered in cuts and he appeared to suffer from a bloody nose, evident of a beating. As of now, a formal police investigation has been launched; and there has been no further evidence posted to back his claim up.

The question we face now is, how do we combat bias in these situations? When finding the solution to a problem, we seek out the obvious- learning to get over ourselves and get informed. According to an anonymous source, police officers are constantly getting different types of training, CONSTANTLY. And I’m not just talking about a two hour training once every couple months, it is more like every two weeks, there are multiple training you could take. This includes firearms, animal cruelty, human trafficking, identifying impostors, handling active shooters, youth interaction, sexual assault and domestic violence in schools, etc.

Training on defensive tactics and procedural justice were mentioned several times. Defensive tactics basically deal with things without using firearms. Our source tells us that, “we always try to deescalate everything… we always try to avoid using physical force. That’s always a last resort for us.” No matter if you’ve done this certain type of training once in your career, it wouldn’t be as fresh in your mind if you aren’t reminding yourself every two to three weeks, how important it is as a police officer to not put your hands on someone. They mention that every situation is different, which is understandable; if someone were to come with you at a gun, then the safety of you and your coworkers come first. However, in many cases down south, victims of police brutality were shot unprompted and on the fake intuition instilled in police officers that all black men are involved in gang violence or armed. Based on the statistics, black people are 3 times more likely to be shot at then any other race, and 21% of these victims were unarmed compared to 14% of white victims. Black people only make up 13% of the population, yet 25% of police brutality cases involve black victims. In 2015, 99% of police officers were not convicted of these crimes. No accountability had been taken for those actions. There is an obvious abuse of power, yet the underlying issue is lack of training, because this does not happen at such high rates as it does in Georgia and Oklahoma as opposed to Boston. Biases need to be set aside and this is where procedural justice training comes in handy. Procedural justice focuses on the way that police and other law enforcement interacts with the public, and is based on four different principles; treating people with dignity and respect, giving citizens a ‘voice’ during encounters, remaining neutral (without bias) in making decisions, and making sure the citizen knows that you are trustworthy. These pillars of justice, when drilled into a police officers head in continual hours of training, will remind them in every situation to treat the alleged suspect with respect and to try and disregard any stereotypes that may come to mind. Another training that the QPD does is youth interactions, which would definitely benefit those police officers in the situations I mentioned earlier, seeing as teenagers tend to get more nervous when around authority figures, especially if they’re black, and especially if they are getting interrogated for no reason; a majority of kids do not know the extent of their constitutional rights as much as older teens or young adults do!

Thankfully, our source tells us that Massachusetts is very progressive compared to the other states down South, where you see most cases of police brutality or unconstitutional arrests in accordance to bias happen . Most police officers up north have masters degrees, emphasizing that being educated is an important incentive to the job.

Any training that the city has available gets sent out to police departments every two to three weeks, and most of them take it very seriously; our source even says “you can never have enough training.” Legal update, which is provided by the legislature, is sent to courts where they interpret how the police officers should react to them, which provides basic precedents to court cases that have already been established, so that they can handle a situation based on specific aspects.

To Protect and Serve. Our local anonymous police officer claims he was inspired to seek this risky occupation out for the sole purpose of helping people. People come in all types of personalities, race, sexuality, gender, and different mental statuses. Therefore having the right resources available, along with appropriate training, will help combat bias in the ways law enforcement operate for when they do assess these certain situations.

I’ll tell you, one of my favorite things when I see someone that I’ve dealt with… every once in a while I’ll see a kid that I’ve dealt with, 10 years ago maybe 15, and I see that the kids doing well, maybe he was in trouble before, I like that, it makes me feel good, like maybe I might’ve helped them out.