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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue

Time: 2:59 am

Results for police use of deadly force

2 results found

Author: James, Lois

Title: The Influence of Suspect Race and Ethnicity on Decisions to Shoot in a Deadly Force Judgment and Decision-Making Simulator

Summary: During the past several decades substantial research has addressed the broad public concern that suspect race and ethnicity influences police use of deadly force. Previous research based on incident reports of police shootings and experimental research using still images as stimuli prompts have supported two, contrasting hypotheses: (1) that police in the United States disproportionally shoot Black suspects because of racial bias, or (2) that police disproportionally shoot Black suspects because they were more likely than Whites to constitute a threat. The goal of this dissertation was to shed empirical light on these competing hypotheses by advancing the methodological techniques used to examine the influence of suspect race and ethnicity on police use of deadly force. After developing and testing a novel set of sixty realistic, high definition video deadly force scenarios based on thirty years of official data on officer-involved shootings in the United States, three experiments were conducted testing participant responses to the scenarios in computerized simulators. In each experiment, participants were presented with White, Black and Hispanic suspects in potentially deadly situations. In the first experiment (n = 24), we found that participants took longer to shoot Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to fail to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White or Hispanic suspects. In the second experiment (n = 48), we found that participants experienced higher levels of neurophysiological arousal in response to Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, but still took longest to shoot Black suspects. In the third experiment (n = 30), we found that across both fatigued and rested conditions participants took longer to shoot Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects. In sum, this research demonstrated that neither of the two dominant hypotheses is sufficient to explain racial and ethnic bias in police use of deadly force. Despite evidence of implicit racial bias, participants displayed significant bias favoring Black suspects in their decisions to shoot. The results of these three experiments using a more externally valid research design have challenged the results of less robust experimental designs and have shed additional light on the broad issue of the role that status characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, play in the criminal justice system. Future research should assess whether this finding holds among other populations of research subjects, determine whether bias favoring Black suspects is a consequence of administrative measures (e.g., education, training, policies and laws), and identify the cognitive processes that underlie this phenomenon.

Details: Pullman, WA: Washington State University, Department of Criminal Justice, 2011. 138p.

Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 16, 2013 at: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2376/3010/James_wsu_0251E_10245.pdf?sequence=1

Year: 2011

Country: United States

URL: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2376/3010/James_wsu_0251E_10245.pdf?sequence=1

Shelf Number: 128384

Keywords:
Police Decision-Making
Police Use of Deadly Force
Police Use of Force (U.S.)
Racial Discrimination

Author: Wetchler, Everett

Title: Fact Sheet: Officer-Involved Shootings and Custodial Deaths in Texas

Summary: Since 2005, there have been 8,730 deaths of civilians in the custody of Texas law enforcement. In the past decade, officer-involved shootings in Texas have been on the rise. Data obtained from the Texas Office of the Attorney General shows that since Sept. 1, 2015, there have been 466 civilians shot by Texas law enforcement, and 78 officers have been shot. Officers involved in shootings skew younger and male than the general population of Texas law enforcement officers. Overall, most deaths that occur in Texas law enforcement custody are due to natural causes, but that nearly half of all deaths of inmates housed alone in a jail cell are suicides.

Details: Austin, Texas: Texas Justice Initiative, 2018. 9p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 17, 2019 at: http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/publications/

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d2UBGXA_5YSv6TdcTZLrGe2X3zUBU3QR/view

Shelf Number: 154986

Keywords:
Deaths in Custody
Jail
Officer Involved Fatalities
Officer Involved Shootings
Police Accountability
Police Brutality
Police Shootings
Police Use of Deadly Force
Police Use of Force
Police-Citizen Encounters
Suicide