Interacting with the police while black

Much of the conversation of police misconduct revolves around high profile killings, but murder is only the most extreme form of misconduct. Lesser abuses are far more common and almost certainly play a larger role in creating an atmosphere of fear and hostility.

A study:

The American racial divide in fear of the police

Quote:

Abstract: The mission of policing is “to protect and serve,” but recent events suggest that many Americans, and especially Black Americans, do not feel protected from the police. Understanding police-related fear is important because it may impact civilians’ health, daily lives, and policy attitudes. To examine the prevalence, sources, and consequences of both personal and altruistic fear of the police, we surveyed a nationwide sample (N = 1,150), which included comparable numbers of Black (N = 517) and White (N = 492) respondents. Most White respondents felt safe, but most Black respondents lived in fear of the police killing them and hurting their family members. Approximately half of Black respondents preferred to be robbed or burglarized than to have unprovoked contact with officers. The racial divide in fear was mediated by past experiences with police mistreatment. In turn, fear mediated the effects of race and past mistreatment on support for defunding the police and intentions to have “the talk” with family youths about the need to distrust and avoid officers. The deep American racial divide in police-related fear represents a racially disparate health crisis and a primary obstacle to law enforcement's capacity to serve all communities equitably.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...745-9125.12298



The author summarizes the work in this twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/JustinTPickett/s...48911334477826

Quote:

Both personal and altruistic fear are ubiquitous among Black Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status or sex. However, both types of fear are ubiquitously absent among White Americans. In every subgroup, most Black respondents are afraid, but most Whites are not. Black Americans report more past experience with police mistreatment, and this partly accounts for why they are so much more afraid than White Americans of the police. By contrast, we find no evidence that news exposure is significantly related to either type of fear.

Quote:

A Rawlsian cost–benefit experiment reveals that 45% of Black respondents prefer to be robbed or burglarized than to be questioned by the police “without good reason,” and 52% prefer it over being searched. Confrontational police stops, then, may be as traumatizing as crime.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3zO9ZPw