Inquiry #9

Fertile Question: “Should we be doing more about racism in the police force?”

Thesis: “Yes we should be, and we can do this by determining whether or not police recruits have any racial biases before they become full on officers.”

Introduction

Yes we should be doing more about racial bias in the police force. Ever since the death of George floyd in 2020, racial bias has been recognized as a worldwide problem for the first time since the 1950-60s racial bias campaign led by Martin Luther King Jr and many more. This report will be covering: What does racism in the police force look like? The negatives of racism in the police force? What race is most affected by racial bias in police officers? What country is racism in police officers most common? What are we doing to decrease racism in police officers and what can we do to further combat racism in police officers? And much more.

What does racism in the police force look like?

Racism in the police force looks like discriminating against a certain skin color or a culture when they would make a different decision towards a different skin colour or culture. An example of racism in the police force is the tragic death of George Floyd.

George Floyd was a middle aged black man who was choked for 10 minutes. He had the police called on him because he supposedly used a fake $20 note in a store. When the police arrived they took him down to their car and he fell over. One of the officers then proceeded to place his knee on his neck because he was “resisting arrest”. This unfortunately resulted in George’s death later on in the day when he was in the hospital. The hospital workers confirmed that the reason he died was a lack of oxygen.

Someone fortunately filmed the whole ordeal because they had seen George on the ground with the policeman's knee on his neck. In the recording you can hear and see George saying that he can’t breathe repeatedly. This caused a huge uproar and protests under the name BLM or Black Lives Matter.

“But law enforcement officials across the U.S. have a much longer history of killing black people”, says Jennifer Cobbina, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University.“Too often people look at the contemporary issue, the issue that is going on right now but not understanding that all that is happening is seeped in 400 years of legacy of injustice,” she says, adding, “These past grievances, past harms by law enforcement, need to be addressed before even attempting to move forward.”

How often does racism in policemen occur?

We have found the percentages of racism in police officers and their countries. Firstly, what are those countries and what are their percentages of racism in their police force? Here is a list in order of highest percentages of racism in countries' police forces.

Qatar
Serbia
Saudi Arabia
Sri Lanka
Israel

Now the reason that Qatar is the highest on the board is because their percentage of racism in their police

force is over 90%. Their percentage is so high because of their strict rulers and their not treating low-mid class immigrants the same as the average Qatarian. An example of this is an event that was quite surprising. It took place after Qatar was announced host for the 2022 FIFA world cup in 2010. In 2018 it was revealed that a number of 6,500 immigrant workers had collapsed and died on construction sites, and the country's law enforcement didn’t do anything about it because they were all migrant workers.

What are the negatives of racism in police officers?

There are many negatives when it comes to racist police officers, not just for the police force reputation but the country the racist police are stationed. For example, take the time before the death of George Floyd and BLM, most racist cops have never been fired or taken care of because nobody stood up for the victims of police racism and the police force could have spread harsher punishments. This is only one negative and it is the one with the biggest negative because before BLM it was kept quiet by the police force. Another negative is multicultural and coloured tourists might not feel welcome by the American law enforcement or American citizens because of past events of Americans attacking people of their belief/race. Also police officers that get fired for racism often get rehired in other police forces because more often than not they don’t bother to look at their records, like why they got fired.

What race/ethnicity are most affected by racism in police officers?

In the past couple years we would say that african Americans are suffering the most from racism, protesting quite heavily in America last year after the death of George Floyd. This resulted in a lot more Black and White Americans who took part in the protests being shot by rubber bullets and severely injured and in some cases killed by police officers.

According to an article in the Guardian 7 months ago“At least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020.” This means that people have lost their lives while trying to protest. This just proves just how important it is to some people that this issue that really affects african americans is resolved and is resolved now.

What country is racism in policemen most common?

From recent events standing up against police brutality towards multirace citizens like the Atlanta spa shooting and the murder of Gerorge Floyd. These events make it seem that the United States of America is seen as one of the worst countries for helping and providing for people of another race. But in fact the United States is ranked 69th out of 78 countries with the most racial deaths, the country with the most racial deaths is Qatar which is a small Arab country north east of saudi arabia.

Like other Middle Eastern countries, Qatar's living and working conditions for migrant workers has received heavy international criticism in recent years for being abusive and even deadly. A reporter reported that this year more than 6,500 migrant workers have died building facilities for the 2022 World Cup since Qatar won the rights to stage the competition. And the police had full knowledge of what was happening and didn’t do anything about it. A report was also made about why Qatar is one of the worst racial profiling country: “Migrant workers in Qatar are facing discrimination because of their nationality, racial identity, stereotyping and the "prevalence" of profiling, an independent UN expert warned on Sunday.”

Are junior police officers required to take tests to determine whether or not they are racist already?

Many countries law enforcement have a look at the the recruits past jobs online posts, private messages and their overall digital footprint, so that when they become a police officer, they might use that power to treat multicultural people badly and just say “I was just doing my job”. This “Test” would take place when you're going for a job and they check your background, but on the police force side, they look to see what kind of person you are and most importantly if you have a criminal record. If you happen to have a criminal record and have made any racist or offensive comments online, your audition to join the police force will be rejected and you will not have the chance to go work for the NZ police.

What is already happening to combat the negative effects of racism in police officers?

At the moment some countries are experimenting with the use of body cams. Some areas/regions are reporting that it is working really well but others are saying that it isn’t making much of a difference. Results of more-recent studies have been mixed. When the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in Nevada implemented body cameras, it experienced significant drops in both the rate of complaints and the use of force14. But when the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia did the same, it found no benefits.

The differences might have more to do with policies that allow officers to choose when to turn on their cameras, as well as a lack of controls for situations in which one officer shows up wearing a camera while another does not, notes Sherman. The latter could dilute true differences in the rates of complaints or uses of force.

There is a concern that by telling people implicit biases are normal, it may encourage them to rely on them more heavily and not take responsibility for discriminatory behaviour, or avoid having interactions with people from the group they are biased against.

Another thing: Since the death of George Floyd racism in the police has declined and it wasn’t because of the Police, It was because of the millions of people who stood up and got the whole world involved and gave them awareness that this was a major problem. Therefore this was made last year a big step for the Black Lives Matter movement because it got big influencers like Billie Eilish, Logan Paul, Ariana Grande get involved in the protests and gave BLM a huge boost. Each one of these celebrities had shared their experiences on night and talk shows, Ariana grande said “hours and miles of peaceful protesting yesterday that got little to no coverage. All throughout Beverly Hills and west Hollywood we chanted, people beeped and cheered along." The reason that these celebrities are such a huge boost for BLM is because it gains them publicity and with the celebrities or even influencers spreading the word that more needs to be done more people are hopping onto the trend.

What more can be done to combat racism in police officers?

Personally, we think the police should have access to the recruits full history online and in the real world, this would also give them information to the recruits family tree to see if they were brought up by a racist family who potentially have given the recruit a racist childhood and maybe have left a bad influence. They should have access to the recruits' references (jobs they have previously worked and jobs they have gone for). The only problem with this method is that it might clash with the law and break the recruits privacy right. All the stuff I just mentioned is directed at recruits or people before they join the police force, but how can we combat racism in police officers further?

Well if there are suspicions on a police officer and they want to test them, we think they should set up a

scenario where the police officer has to arrest a black or coloured man and see if they takes care of the situation properly, or if he takes matters into the next level. Another more effective and safer way to determine a police officer's racial biases is to place them in a VR headset and into a game that places them into a street. Then have people of different ethnicities hold something shiny that could possibly be a handgun and force the police officer into a decision on whether or not they will open fire.

What do we think is the best solution?

When we did our PMI analysis we found that the best solution was to put police officers through a VR game to determine whether they have any racial biases or not. This VR game was designed by Joshua Correll and some of his colleagues.

The way that this works is that people that want to become police officers would be put through a simulation that places them in a situation where people of different skin tones would be raising something shiny that could possibly be a handgun. The Police recruit is tasked with deciding in milliseconds whether or not it is a handgun and either to shoot or not shoot. This helps determine whether or not they are racially biased unconsciously because people might shoot sooner at certain skin tones.

Some of the minuses to this solution are that it is expensive to get VR headsets and that it would be hard to create a program that simulates the necessary conditions and variations of simulations. But just because we think that this is the best solution doesn’t mean that this is the only one that can be effective. What we are trying to say is that just because one solution works doesn’t mean you can’t use more than one.

But in a follow-up study, Correll and his colleagues went even further. They used the VR game to compare police officers with regular people. In fact, people who were from the same neighborhoods that these police officers patrolled. Both police officers and regular citizens were racially biased in their shooting decisions: they shot Blacks more often than Whites under exactly the same circumstances.

Conclusion

So in conclusion we think that we should be doing more about racism in the police force and that the way to go about it is to use a VR simulation. We have gone over the the tragic death of George Floyd, what has already been done to try and combat racism in the police force, what can be done to try and combat racism in the police force, what we the think is the best way to try and mitigate the negative effects of racism in the police force and much more. Thank you for reading this report and we hope that you found it quite informative.

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