Current Events > Implicit bias trainings don't change police behavior

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https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ee28fc3c5b60b32f010ed48

Last week, Derrick Sanderlin was one of hundreds of protesters outside the city hall in San Jose, California. The 27-year-old community organizer and charity worker, who is Black, held a sign that read, We R Worthy of Life.

As he stood in the crowd, Sanderlin saw police shooting protesters with rubber bullets. He walked over to the line of officers and pleaded with them to stop.

In footage of the incident local news outlet ABC7 captured, Sanderlin stands roughly 20 feet away from police. He makes no sudden movements and doesnt reach for anything in his pockets. Without warning, the police start shooting, hitting Sanderlin in the groin. He had emergency surgery, but is not sure if he will be able to have children.

On its face, Sanderlins story is not unremarkable. He is one of dozens of protesters police have harmed as demonstrations against police violence and systemic racism spread across the country in the last two weeks. The twist is Sanderlins profession: He is an implicit bias trainer who has been working with the San Jose Police Department for three years.

The way they treated people out there over the weekend has been really heartbreaking, Sanderlin later told ABC7. San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia, who Sanderlin knows personally, issued a statement saying, Derrick has been a real leader in our communities efforts to reduce bias and discrimination through dialogue.

The officer who shot Sanderlin was transferred to desk duty. But still, the incident underscores an important question: If a police department can spend three years undergoing bias training and still shoot a peaceful, unarmed Black protester, what has the training really achieved?

Over the last decade, implicit bias training has become one of the primary methods for law enforcement agencies and policymakers to demonstrate that they take concerns over racist policing seriously. According to a CBS survey of 155 police departments last year, 69% said they were using implicit bias training. Half said they had initiated the programs after the controversial 2014 killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

In the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, calls have intensified to expand these programs. The mayors of Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Tampa, Florida, have signaled their intention to install or expand them. Texas and Michigan have passed bills requiring police officers to receive such training. In a Medium post, former President Barack Obama pointed readers to a toolkit urging ongoing and scenario-based anti-bias training for all police officers.

Despite its near-universal support among policymakers, however, research has failed to show that implicit bias training has any lasting effect on racial discrimination or the behavior of police officers.

We dont have any evidence that anti-bias trainings work (in general,) and we know even less about whether they work for police officers, said Joshua Correll, a University of Colorado professor who has been studying implicit bias for more than 20 years.

A 2016 study of nine different methods for reducing bias found that none had any lasting effect after a few days. Few researchers have followed up specifically with law enforcement agencies to see if the training had any effect on the practices of officers.

People have jumped on the idea that we should be providing this training without clear documentation that it makes any difference whatsoever, Correll said.
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While evidence of implicit bias in U.S. policing is well-established, the ability of training sessions to reduce it is less clear.

The first problem is the tests themselves. Artificial laboratory tests bear little resemblance to the forms of bias that play out in the real world. A police officer sitting in a room on a college campus and pressing a button labeled shoot has none of the adrenaline and sensory overload associated with real-life brutality incidents. Social psychology studies that measure the amount of time police officers look at black faces versus white faces on computer screens may not have any real-world significance.

Some researchers have suggested that the results of implicit association tests for race or other classifications such as those linking men with science and women with liberal arts may not effectively identify bias at all. Positive results may simply show that participants are aware of a stereotype they know other people believe it rather than indicating whether they believe it themselves.

The deeper problem with bias training programs are their content. A standard session for law enforcement lasts from one to two days and hosts up to 40 officers. In those sessions, instructors walk participants through role-playing scenarios and deliver advice, such as asking officers to consider whether they would pull over a suspect if he were white.

But numerous studies have found that these short, simplistic sessions have little effect on racial bias in the long term. A review of 492 studies on implicit bias trainings found that while some forms of instruction were effective in changing participants test scores, none had any effect on their behavior.

Despite the massive expansion in such bias training since Ferguson, none of these programs has been evaluated for their effect on how officers actually behave. And theres plenty of anecdotal evidence that they have not had a positive impact just consider the case in San Jose or other incidents captured on video in New York City and elsewhere in the past two weeks.

Theres even some evidence that implicit bias training makes racist attitudes worse. Highlighting bias among police officers could reinforce the message that racism is widespread. In response, participants may resent feeling theyre being lectured about their racist views and entrench them more deeply. Among officers who really do want to identify and reduce their biases, the trainings could end up reminding them of the associations theyre trying to overcome.

Its the same principle as me telling you not to think about a white bear which will immediately cause you to think about a white bear, Correll said. If I present you with Black people and I dont want you to think about race at all, then making you aware of race can actually reinforce the associations you have and make you think of race as an important variable.

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So defend the police, got it.

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This isn't new. Behavior/sensitivity training is always some bullshit formality that doesn't change anyone's minds.

Yea i read something written by an ex cop and he says they all laugh about bias training later and see it as a big joke

Also they openly let or even encourage cops taking bias training to cheat on the tests

Annihilated posted...

This isn't new. Behavior/sensitivity training is always some bullshit formality that doesn't change anyone's minds.

Blank Slatism was debunked as well and that is where they get this

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Zikten posted...

Yea i read something written by an ex cop and he says they all laugh about bias training later and see it as a big joke

Also they openly let or even encourage cops taking bias training to cheat on the tests

I'd probably laugh too even though I agree with the message. They probably show you one of those cheesy condescending videos like HR always does for violence in the workplace or sexual harassment. "Do you see the problem here? What could Marty Joe have done differently? Please pause the video and circle the correct answer on your worksheet."

Dathrowed1 posted...

Blank Slatism was debunked as well and that is where they get this

What is blank slatism?

Annihilated posted...

What is blank slatism?

Pretty much that humans are blank slates molded by their environments. Oddly enough an over emphasis on nurture

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They shot him in the balls? Jesus.

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Dathrowed1 posted...

Pretty much that humans are blank slates molded by their environments. Oddly enough an over emphasis on nurture

Are you saying that some people are born racist? Since when was that debunked? Don't tell me you're talking about those children choosing the pictures that looked like them, that was a bogus study and has nothing to do with racial bias.

Annihilated posted...

Are you saying that some people are born racist? Since when was that debunked? Don't tell me you're talking about those children choosing the pictures that looked like them, that was a bogus study and has nothing to do with racial bias.

I think racism is more nuanced than people give it credit for. I do believe people are born partial

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AloneIBreak posted...

They shot him in the balls? Jesus.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qBCDY5XhZng

But seriously, no shit. Implicit bias training is a scam and the tests I've seen for it are dumb as shit.

You can safely assume any intervention that has its origin in social psychology is bullshit/ineffective.

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Imagine being so much of a pussy ass bitch that you shoot another man in the dick/balls. An unarmed, peaceful man at that.

That officer needs to be thrown in prison for the highest assault charge. If someone playful nut tapped that cop while off duty, he'd probably kill them but he gets to literally bust that dudes nut and get transferred to desk duty?

Dathrowed1 posted...

I think racism is more nuanced than people give it credit for. I do believe people are born partial

this... doesn't really have anything to do with the topic at hand

personally I don't particularly care if people are born "partial" -- society is racist. people raised in society learn racism. at the individual level, it takes conscious effort to unlearn those ideas. if society were structured differently, fewer people would have those ideas

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Implicit bias as it has been framed in research is nebulous at the moment. It needs a lot more properly designed studies to show if it is a meaningful metric, at least in the medical field.

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