An analysis of police force body camera footage has found that officers consistently employ less reverential spoken language in interactions with bleak citizens than when they are babble out to white masses .
young inquiry , put out in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ) , used a novel contrived intelligence technique to analyze language from 981 dealings stops the Oakland Police Department ( OPD ) in California made in one calendar month .
The study program look at how frequently the officers used respectful vocalization , such as apologies or gratitude like " give thanks you " , as well as less respectful phrases , such as using cozy statute title like " dude " and " bro " . In parliamentary law to rate how respectful an utterance was , the team at Stanford University had college students scan and rate about 400 terms for how much regard they showed , without cognition of the race of the number one wood require in the traffic stop .
psychoanalysis of the transcripts from the interaction between law and citizens found that black members of the community were 61 pct more likely to hear an officer say the least respectful set phrase , such as the instruction " hand on the wheel " . Meanwhile , clean citizen were 57 percent more potential to hear the most venerating phrases from an military officer .
The subject area looked at half a million words spoken by the officer , check for factors that could have affected the officers ' words , such as their own race or background , the stiffness of the violation , and the outcome of the stoppage .
“ Our findings highlight that , on the whole , law interactions with black community member are more fraught than their interaction with lily-white community member , ” Jennifer Eberhardt , conscientious objector - source of the study and prof of psychology at Stanfordexplained , though she append that this might not equal to racial bias .
Though they found non - respectful language being used towards black citizen in routine law - citizen interactions , the researchers stressed that the policeman were well behaved .
“ To be clear : There was no curse word , ” Dan Jurafsky , co - source of the study and prof of philology and of computer skill at Stanfordsaid . “ These were well - comport officers . But the many little differences in how they spoke with community members added up to permeant racial disparities . ”
The team at Stanford say that this study could help with training of officers , and chair to proficient relationships between police and citizens .
“ I ’m hopeful that , with the development of computational tools like ours , more practice of law enforcement agencies will come on their trunk camera footage as data point for sympathy , rather than as grounds for blaming or exonerating , ” Eberhardt said .
“ Together , investigator and police departments can use these dick to improve law - residential area dealings . ”
The researchers are presently extending their study , to analyze the nomenclature used by residential area member during the stops , as well as flavor of interpreter used by officers and citizens .
