Racially Targeted Law Enforcement Is the Problem

Police departments can overcome their long history of problems with race if they begin to understand that using racially targeted enforcement makes their already difficult jobs even harder.

Biased policing does not come primarily from old-school, conscious bigotry, but from unconscious, implicit biases every person carries. These biases find expression in strategies and tactics that treat both individuals and whole communities as crime prone and violent. This alienates blacks and other minorities from police, with enormous consequences. Instead of supplying the police with information, help and support, communities of color may regard law enforcement – and even the law itself – as illegitimate and less deserving of their loyalty and respect.

Considerable research has tested how racial targeting impacts stop and search effectiveness. Police actually find drugs and guns less often when they use race as one factor among others, than when they do not use race. Using race actually lowered the rate at which police succeeded in their core mission, because it took officers’ attention off of predictive behavioral cues.

To move beyond racial targeting, police departments, from the chief to the newest recruit, must treat every individual and every community as a respected potential partner. Partners listen to each other, share responsibility and remain accountable to each other. They judge each other based on behavior, not on appearance. Imagine how differently things might have turned out had Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., treated each other with this kind of mutual respect.

Treating someone as a lawbreaker must follow observation of the signs of criminal behavior, not prediction based on group characteristics.

Police departments must also address racial, ethnic and gender fairness within their own ranks. When police officers see themselves or fellow officers treated unfairly because of who they are, some inevitably bring those attitudes to their work with the public

This will require substantial cultural change within policing. But with police leadership that insists on eliminating biased policing as a way to create more effective law enforcement, race need not plague police forever.

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