Racial Aspects of Police Shootings

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12189
• Author: Lorie A. Fridell

POLICY ESSAY

THE REVERSE RACISM EFFECT

Racial Aspects of Police Shootings

Reducing Both Bias and Counter Bias

Lorie A. Fridell

University of South Florida

The long-standing question of whether police are racially biased in their use of

force was reignited by the events in Ferguson, MO, in August 2014, and the na-

tional “discussion”(sometimes manifesting in protests, including violent protests)

continues. Lois James, Stephen M. James, and Bryan J. Vila (2016, this issue) have added

valuable information to the accumulating literature on implicit bias, which enhances our

understanding of how bias might manifest in police decisions to use force. This research in-

dicates that officers may be undervigilant with racial/ethnic minorities, and these findings—

linked by the authors to “counter bias”—are contrary to the laboratory research that has

shown individuals, including law enforcement subjects, are overvigilant with racial/ethnic

minorities, especially African Americans, in “shoot, don’t shoot” scenarios. In this policy

essay, I will review the key implicit bias concepts that can help us untangle these disparate

findings and then link those concepts to interventions for police to reduce both bias and

counter bias.

Implicit Bias: The Basics

Researchers have been studying bias and prejudice since the 1950s (Allport, 1979 [1954]),

and they “discovered” implicit bias in the late 1980s (Devine, 1989).1These researchers

determined that, similar to the manifestation of explicit biases, individuals with implicit

biases link groups to stereotypes (groups as defined by,for instance, gender, race, sexual ori-

entation, religion, and body shape) and these stereotypes impact the individual’sperceptions

Direct correspondence to Lorie A. Fridell, Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, 4202 East

Fowler Avenue (Mail code SOC 107), Tampa, FL 33620 (e-mail: lfridell@usf.edu).

1. Comprehensive reviews of research on implicit bias are contained in three publications of the Kirwan

Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. They are as follows:

State of the Science: Implicit Bias

Review 2013

and

State of the Science: Implicit Bias 2014,

both written by Cheryl Staats; and Staats,

Capatosto, Wright, and Contractor (2015)

State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review 2015.

These can be

found at the Kirwan Institute website at kirwaninstitute.osu.edu.

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12189 C2016 American Society of Criminology 481

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 2