A police officer's first 45 words are a portent of what's to come | Hacker News Reader

A police officer's first 45 words are a portent of what's to come

npr.org

32 pointsheavyset_go33 comments

> Rho and her colleagues focused on Black drivers because this group is stopped by the police at higher rates and are more likely to be handcuffed, searched, and arrested than any other racial group.

Okay, so this doesn't seem like a particularly useful study because they didn't actually include a control group.

> Rho says in planning this study, they had initially set out to look at patterns related to traffic stop escalation for white drivers too, but realized that it happened so infrequently for white drivers that there just weren't sufficient numbers to even include them in the analysis.

Okay, I'm sorry is this for real? The author just completely threw out the control? How is this not malpractice?

So it could very well be that white drivers were issued the same set of commands at the same rate (for all we know). But we will never know because the author intentionally withheld the analysis that would have established the connection between the phrases used and race.

"We wanted to use white people as control for arrest stats but the police don't arrest white people" seems like a result you would also want to publish.

> in the one-month period covered by this study, the city's police officers did 588 stops of Black drivers and only 262 stops of white drivers.

So keep in mind they had recordings from 262 traffic stops of white drivers.

If they had the data that said "white drivers" were 80% less likely to hear the escalatory phrases and so they didn't escalate - boom! That's an open and shut case.

But them using the excuse of a lack of escalations to justify the complete absence of this data is just way too problematic.

They're being pretty clear about the limits on the data they had, the decision they made because of it, and why they made that decision.

What exactly are you alleging here? Malpractice is a pretty strong word but also... vague. PNAS is fairly prestigious and there would be substantial reputational risk of malfeasance with this data. To me that carries a lot more weight than someone on the internet throwing unclear accusations around idk.

The actual study in question is pretty limited - I don't have any problem with the data published to the PNAS report: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216162120

But the decision to limit the study exclusively based on race was a post facto decision that doesn't make a lot of sense given the context of what they were studying.

Imagine if they published a study called "Escalated police stops of Right Handers are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments" and then you found out that they left out the data on left handers, you would also be very suspicious.

Malpractice might be a bit of a strong word, but I find it distinctively annoying when researchers intentionally play around with their sample sizes.

The author just completely threw out the control?

There was no control. Reread what you quoted: there wasn't a statistically valid number of incidents involving white people to make anything of it. I don't even know why I'm paraphrasing, what you quoted was crystal clear to me.

> in the one-month period covered by this study, the city's police officers did 588 stops of Black drivers and only 262 stops of white drivers.

You left out a variable: black people make up what percentage of that population of that city? If it's, I dunno, the approximately 15% that I would guess it to be, then that's a significantly large number of stops in comparison to white folk.

It's all fun and games until Bayes comes to play. They didn't state the city, but simply said a "Medium Diversity City." Indianapolis is roughly medium at 30% black population although the country average is 13.6%. So the probability of a car containing a black person is roughly 1:3. This means that if you put a random car in front of an officer they are 6 times more likely to stop a black person in this study. Then after that there is such a huge difference in how the stops are handled.

The TableS1 in the data for the study is telling. It's no wonder they don't want to collect statistics on how policing is handled. It's downright damning.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.2216162120/suppl...

> Over 15% of Black drivers experienced an escalated outcome such as a search, handcuffing, or arrest, while less than 1% of white drivers experienced one of those outcomes.

So I think they had 2 "escalated" cases with white drivers, which I would agree is too small to do any statistics with.

Defund NPR.

NPR loves them studies.

I'm no fan of cops, but this article is low on evidence.

They say first 45 words, but they only give two examples of snippets (e.g. "Turn the car off"). If a cop walks up to a car with the engines still running, they're right to be wary.

There's very little to suggest what conversation happened before those critical few words, and if some more relevant cause is actually what led to the cop taking more aggressive measures, eventually leading to the search/cuffing/etc

If you click through to the study they are focused on a specific linguistic concept called dialog acts. Things that aren't part of dialog acts are not addressed in the study. You could take issue with that but it seems like a fairly rigorous approach that doesn't inherently dismiss other factors as being relevant.

> If a cop walks up to a car with the engines still running, they're right to be wary.

Are they? Do they handle this situation identically regardless of race? A thing you would need a study almost exactly like this one to find out.

>If a cop walks up to a car with the engines still running, they're right to be wary.

Over the past 25 years, I've been pulled over maybe a dozen times or so for various things (speeding, headlight out), etc.

Not once have I turned off the engine. Not once have I been instructed—or even asked—to turn off the engine.

I'm white, but you probably guessed that already.

> Not once have I turned off the engine. Not once have I been instructed—or even asked—to turn off the engine.

That could be where you live. It's pretty standard practice in this area.

I've also been asked to step out of my car several times, and my dad once had guns pulled on him as part of a misunderstanding.

It happens to white people too and it's bizarre to think that it would not?

>It happens to white people too and it's bizarre to think that it would not?

I do not doubt that it also happens to white people. The point is that it happens to white people at a disproportionately lower rate than it does to non-white people.

The article mirrors my experience with LEO (as a white person).

"The reason for the stop is..." -> citation, in-and-out in minutes.

"What the hell was that?" -> citation + wait around while they call their superior officer to figure out what to charge me with.

"Turn the car off and get out the vehicle" -> This is going to hurt.

I bet if we were to look at police training, their flow chart for handling situations is: simple crimes -> write the ticket, move on; minor, but straight forward crimes -> get them to admit to something; you're planning on booking them -> go in blazing.

FWIW, the time I was told to get out of the car and hand cuffed, I had a warrant out due to clerical error with a speeding ticket that I paid, but it didn't get marked as paid. I still got handcuffed and thrown into the police cruiser and only avoided an arrest because the LEO for some reason let me get the receipt from my glove compartment.

I wonder if there has been any research into what motivates an officer to approach a traffic stop in a specific way. I don’t want to jump straight to racism because not every encounter with a Black motorist included the more aggressive posturing.

When I’ve been pulled over, the officer spends some time in their car, I assume running my plates and the such. Perhaps past convictions or warrants influence the tone of subsequent interactions? Even so, it seems a good standard would be to always immediately mention the reason for the stop.

When we're talking about 1% of white motorists experiencing an escalation vs 15% of black motorists it's hard to not see a racial element. Whether or not it's intentional is frankly besides the point.

I agree a good standard would be to require mentioning the reason for the stop, but more importantly ending things like qualified immunity. There's zero accountability. Who polices the police?

I would want to see the data by income or other socioeconomic factors, in addition to race.

And it can still be racism in that racism explains economic disparity to a degree. My intent isn’t to absolve racism from being primarily responsible.

Black motorists are also much likely to be pulled over, even in situations where police do not see the race of the person they are pulling over. Or when the officer is black.

I don't think anyone is denying the racial element, but it's easier for me to see it as a symptom of intergenerational poverty and disenfranchisement rather than systemic malpractice from individual officers.

In this case, I wouldn't want to downplay the progress we have made on policing the police. The only reason this study exists at all is because of the proliferation and availability of police body camera footage. That's a big win for everybody.

> I don’t want to jump straight to racism because not every encounter

That's a pretty high bar. Instead of "every encounter" being the bar, shouldn't the bar be "more often than the general population" or "more often than members not of this race"?

What if members of a particular race are more likely, on average, to drive in a way that would merit a more aggressive response from police? Disparity does not necessarily imply discrimination.

They probably get shot more on average for doing so.

Yeah what if a little racism is good actually!

Do you hear yourself.

What if members of a particular race are more likely...

I would advise caution with that phrase. Having grown up in a, shall we say, less enlightened area of the U. S., that phrase was the prefix to many a racist statement that I heard in my younger years. I'll assume, of course, that your intent is to just have a pleasant online conversation on the topic at hand.

I grew up in possibly the single most "enlightened" area of the US. I won't deny that there were many advantages, but there was strong cognitive dissonance too. People say they are accepting and tolerant, and they genuinely believe it, and act on it. But they also spend a lot of money to live, and send their kids to school, far away from, shall we say, certain populations. Out of sight, out of mind…

I can think of plenty of reasons, like driving behavior vs expired plates or headlight out vs stolen car or bolo or plates matching person with warrant.

Why change the headline?

Original is three chars too long.

The goal of this study is not to establish that there is systemic racism in policing in general or in traffic stops in particular. That's been well documented, for decades, and it's surprising to see people denying it or expecting this study to reconfirm something so well established.

This study is trying to connect the dots from early warning signs in a traffic stop to disproportionately-bad outcomes that are faced by minorities. They used the data they had to try to connect the dots, drew some inferences, but much more is left to be studied here.

>That's been well documented, for decades

I've been hearing bad faith arguments asserting that claim my entire life. I've never heard any compelling evidence that it is the case and been called a racist for asking for it.

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