The Police View of Bias-Based Policing

• Date: 01 September 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/1098611106296479
• Published date: 01 September 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

270

Police Quarterly

Volume 10 Number 3

September 2007 270-287

© 2007 Sage Publications

10.1177/1098611106296479

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The Police View of Bias-Based

Policing

Ralph Ioimo

Rachel S. Tears

Leslie A. Meadows

Auburn University Montgomery

J. Bret Becton

Winthrop University

Michael T. Charles

Auburn University Montgomery

Bias-based policing is an issue that police departments all across the country are address-

ing. Considering that bias-based policing undermines relationships between the police

and the public, a considerable amount of research has been conducted to uncover and pre-

vent the occurrence of bias-based policing. Past research has primarily focused on traffic

stops to assess the level of bias-based policing. However, traffic stops are only one of the

many ways police interact with the public. As a result, this research project sought to

broaden the approach to assessing bias-based policing beyond traffic stop data by sur-

veying police officers to determine if they are aware of bias-based policing practices

occurring in police departments, either theirs or others. This research found that 21% of

survey respondents believed that bias-based policing is presently practiced by officers in

their department, and 25.9% believed that bias-based policing is practiced by officers in

other Virginia police departments.

Keywords: racial profiling; bias policing; officers’ perspective

The Commonwealth of Virginia sought to determine whether bias-based policing

was occurring within the commonwealth and, if so, to what extent. The Depart-

ment of Criminal Justice Services obtained a federal grant to study police bias in the

commonwealth in the interest of being proactive, identifying potential problems,

and implementing plans, programs, recommendations, and training that would

address any problems or potential issues discovered during this research project. The

Commonwealth of Virginia selected Auburn University Montgomery’s Department

of Justice and Public Safety and Center for Government to design the research study

and to execute the designed approach.

The issue of bias-based policing is confusing to most officers and, to some extent,

most citizens. Most people cannot define what constitutes bias-based policing (Malti-

Douglas, 2002; Smith & Alpert, 2002). Bias takes many forms, and it is not always

Ioimo et al. / Bias-Based Policing 271

racial bias that is an issue. Currently, no single accepted definition of bias-based polic-

ing exists. The most commonly identified form of bias-based policing, racial profiling,

is also without a single accepted definition. Therefore, the operational definition for

bias-based policing selected to use within this study is “practices by individual offi-

cers, supervisors, managerial practices, and departmental programs, both intentional

and nonintentional, that incorporate prejudicial judgments based on sex, race, ethnic-

ity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, religious beliefs, or age that are inap-

propriately applied.”

Bias-based policing and racial profiling have captured the attention of practitioners

and researchers alike because of a number of highly publicized events in which bias-

based policing and racial profiling were the focus of attention. Until recently, research

focused on the review of secondary data or perceptions provided by citizens. Most of

the research in this area analyzed traffic stops exclusively as the source of data and

from this examination drew conclusions as to the extent of bias-based policing. A

newspaper columnist summarizes it quite well when she speaks to the issue of racial

profiling. Vivian Martin (1999) stated “it’s about a lot more than traffic stops; it’s about

a way of life” (p. A11). We believed that attempting solely to measure traffic stops to

determine the extent of bias-based policing or racial profiling is a mistake and ignores

all other potential for bias-based policing.

Unable to find any substantial research that examined bias-based policing from the

police officers’ perspective, we decided to take a completely different approach to the

study of bias-based policing. We conducted a broad study of the Commonwealth of

Virginia to determine the extent, if any, to which bias-based policing was an issue. For

this purpose, we focused on both citizens and police officers. Moreover,we conducted

focus group meetings with citizens and separate focus groups with police officers in

six Virginia cities. From these meetings, we developed two separate questionnaires that

were administered to both citizens and officers throughout the Commonwealth of

Virginia.

Although the Virginia study is extensive, this article focuses on what was learned

when the police officers were asked to provide their views of bias-based policing and

racial profiling and to report whether they believed it was an issue for the

Commonwealth of Virginia.

Literature Review

Police traffic stops are attractive to researchers for many reasons: First, secondary

data are available for evaluation. Second, traffic stops often lead to negative encoun-

ters with minority citizens. The third, and perhaps the most compelling, reason

relates to Black and Latino complaints that police stop these groups more frequently

even when they have done nothing wrong. Blacks have referred to this for many

years as “driving while Black” (Harris, 1999; Rice, Reitzel, & Piquero, 2004).