 This afternoon we get to start off with Dr. Lori Freel who is from the University of South Florida at Tampa in the Department of Criminology. Dr. Freel is considered to be one of the leading experts on bias policing which is something that we have all began to talk about the idea of how we could ever have truly bias free policing. Prior to joining the University in 2005 she spent six years as the director of research for the police executive research forum or better known as PERF in Washington DC and for those of us myself who have a background in law enforcement that is considered to be absolutely the premier organization that police chiefs and sheriffs look to and trust to help them figure out what changes they need to make. Dr. Freel who speaks nationally on the topic of bias free policing and has provided consultation and training to agencies has published and written and you have all of the details in your materials and thank you very much for being with us today. Thank You Margo and I'm delighted to be here. This whole conference is about bringing research to practice. You're focusing mostly on how bringing research can help you in your work on accountability and legitimacy and what I've been asked to talk about is our example of research to practice and that's taking the science of bias the modern science of bias and bringing it to police departments in the form of training. So this is what I want to talk about with you today. One what I learned from the science what I learned from the social psychologists that study bias and prejudice. What implicit bias looks like in law enforcement. The implications of that science for police practice and then finally some of the lessons that we learned in terms of trying to produce change based on scientific research. So the modern science of bias you know the social psychologists they taught me two important things that transformed my thinking about bias generally and bias in policing in particular. One they taught me the difference between explicit and implicit bias and then they taught me that bias has changed over time. Now I have a feeling I've got a pretty educated audience here but just a brief or a little brief on explicit versus implicit. Explicit bias is generally what someone thinks about when they picture a person with prejudice and bias. They picture someone who links various groups to stereotypes. Those groups might be based on race, gender, LGBT, whatever. Those stereotypes that are linked to those groups that's based on animus and hostility towards those groups. Those stereotypes can impact on that person's perceptions and also on their behavior producing discriminatory behavior. And the person with explicit bias knows it, owns it and will even tell you about it. It's overt, it's on the table, it's deliberate. A racist would be an example. Implicit bias actually shares some characteristics with explicit bias. We still link various groups to stereotypes associated with the group but it's not necessarily based on animus and hostility. Those stereotypes impact on our perceptions and our behavior possibly producing discriminatory behavior. But some real key differences, this can happen outside of our conscious awareness and the really bad news for everybody in the room. This occurs even in people who at the conscious level reject bias stereotype and prejudice. So the first thing they taught me, the difference between explicit and implicit, the second thing and it made a lot of sense, bias in our society has changed over time. In our grandparents' time it was more likely to be explicit. In modern humans, even though everyone in this room knows we still have explicit bias, it's actually more likely to be implicit. Because up until my exposure to that science, I had come to believe two things very strongly that just didn't go together in my head. One, after thinking about this issue for a number of years and going across the country talking about it, I came to understand that bias in policing was more than just a few bad officers in a few departments, it was widespread. But I also came to believe very firmly that most of the cops in this country are well-intentioned individuals who want to serve their communities. And I couldn't put those two things together until the science bridged them. So these social psychologists spent many years talking to each other in academic journals and finally they said the rest of us need to wake up. Hardin and Banaji said personal and public policy discussions regarding prejudice and discrimination are too often based on an outdated notion of prejudice. And what they were saying is we were ignoring implicit bias and focusing only on explicit bias. And this was definitely true in our discussion of bias policing in this country between the police and the community. As I saw, many police and stakeholders have assumed that bias in policing is produced by officers with explicit bias and only produced by officers with explicit bias. And I'm going to argue that that has negatively impacted our discussion in this country and has negatively impacted our interventions. I call it the destructive equation. I think this is the equation that has defined our conversation and our thinking. Police with explicit bias is such as racist and only police with explicit bias produce bias in policing. And this has been detrimental for several reasons. One, it produces distortions that harms the relationship between the police and the diverse communities that it serves. Because if in fact it is true that there are community members who think that bias in policing is only produced by ill-intentioned police with explicit biases. And two, if there are diverse communities that think that bias policing is widespread and we know that's true. If they put A and B together they end up thinking there's a whole lot of ill-intentioned cops out there that have animus and hostility towards their groups. This is also, this characterization is also destructive because it leads police to minimize the problem and be very defensive about it. Because if police too think it's only officers with explicit bias that produce bias in policing and they look into their own hearts and they look around themselves and they don't see all these ill-intentioned people with animus and hostility what are they going to conclude? The problem really isn't that big and we're being unfairly castigated. And then finally this characterization that it's only explicit bias that produces bias in policing leads to inappropriate interventions. So what do we know from the science of bias? Like I said we categorize people we link them to the stereotypes associated with their group this happens automatically it happens it impacts our perceptions and our behaviors and it happens even in well-intentioned people. One of the implicit biases or associations that is very relevant to this whole discussion is the linkage that we have between African Americans and crime and violence. This has been well researched and so we have this implicit association it impacts our perceptions it impacts our behaviors it happens automatically even in well-intentioned people. What else do we know? Well it's not just stereotypes about particular demographic groups there's also what they call the we-they bias or for the more advanced in the room out-group bias. All of us have our we for me in many contexts or a professional context it's going to be white middle-aged educated female and everybody else is my they and you won't be surprised to know that we feel much more comfortable with our we than we do with our they and the science shows we actually see more positive characteristics in people who are in our we than in our they. Now the ultimate out-group or they bias is dehumanization. Susan Fisk did a study she's from Princeton she brought her subjects into a laboratory setting and hooked them up to an MRI and then showed them pictures and you know the MRI is going to be looking for some brain activity certain parts of the brain are going to light up so she shows them pictures and mostly she shows them pictures head shots of people that look like you and me and when those head shots come up there's a certain part of the brain that lights up we'll call it the oh that's a human just like me part of the brain. She didn't discover it others did it lights up when we look in the mirror and it lights up when we see a human like me but what Susan Fisk did is interspersed into those pictures of people that look like you and me pictures of people who looked homeless dirty disheveled unshaven ratty clothing and when those pictures came up this part of the brain did not light up the part of the brain that says oh that's a human just like me now having just said that we have a we they bias we also know that we can have biases against our own groups poor people can have biases against poor people women can have biases against women blacks can have biases against blacks my own example i was getting some painting done in my house and i had people coming over to give me estimates and a husband wife team came she's holding the clipboard she's asking me questions about the work i want done she's answering my questions and ladies you know exactly what was happening right i found myself looking right past her and talking to her husband men are the boss men are the painters all right so we also know some other things from the science of bias we know that there are certain factors that exacerbate the possibility of bias ambiguity and time pressures and i can't think of a profession more than police that faces ambiguity and time pressures what else do we know well here's the good news actually we know that implicit biases are malleable they're not fixed we can actually do things as individuals we can reduce our biases and then we can manage our biases so two concepts related to reducing our biases contact theory and exposure to counter stereotypes and these are both both going to be intuitive to you contact theory says positive contact with people who are different from us can reduce our biases right the more we have positive contact with muslims with transgender with different races with the undocumented it can reduce our biases another one is also going to be makes sense to you we can reduce our biases by exposure to counter stereotypes so this is a group and this is the stereotype you have about them if you start to come up against people in this group that are the opposite of the stereotype they're a counter stereotype you can understand that that'll weaken your stereotype that exposure to the counter stereotypes now we're never going to reduce our biases to zero so it's a good thing we can manage them we can manage them through three bullets if we recognize our implicit biases and we're motivated we can choose to implement bias-free behavior we can choose to implement bias-free behavior so now what does bias look like in law enforcement well i'm preaching to the choir here i know but what does it look like it might manifest in traffic stops bicycle stops removal from cars and searches it might look like stop and frisk in fact some of you know that the new york judge shinlan wrote about unconscious bias in floyd versus city of new york unconscious bias could help explain the otherwise puzzling fact that nypd officers check furtive movements ambiguity furtive movements in 48 percent of the stops of the blacks 45 percent of the stops of the hispanics but only 40 percent of the stops of the whites there's no evidence that black people's movements are objectively more furtive than the movements of white people what does bias look like in law enforcement race out of place stops income out of place stops right stopping the black in the white neighborhood stopping the white in the black neighborhood the beat-up car in the nice neighborhood and then of course huge national discussion what does bias look like it can look like over vigilance in the use of force falkner and carter did an in-depth study in philadelphia of their deadly force and they looked at many things including threat perception failure and threat perception failure is a mistake of fact the officers thought that the person they were dealing with was armed turns out they were not mistake of fact and what did they find threat perception failure was much more likely if it was a black subject and again we're talking here about the possibility of implicit bias just seeing more threat seeing more threat in those furtive movements seeing more threat went up against ambiguous behavior and then this next study was just out it was in the news in the last week or so these researchers next set all looked at the washington post data set on deadly force and found that black individuals were shot and killed by police the black individuals who were shot and killed by police were less likely to be armed than their white counterparts what does bias look like in law enforcement it looks like friendly fire there was a new york state task force on police on police shootings what did they find off-duty plain clothed officers who are killed by friendly fire are disproportionately individuals of color and those report writers referenced implicit bias as a possible cause what does bias look like in law enforcement abusive policing through dehumanization goff at all goffs now at john j dehumanization is viewed as a central component to intergroup violence because it is frequently the most important precursor to moral exclusion the process by which stigmatized groups are placed outside the boundary in which moral values rules and considerations of fairness apply now even though a lot of these examples even a lot of the research i cited has been looking at race and ethnicity folks in this group know we're not just talking about racial and ethnic minorities we're talking about bias that's against lbtq individuals low-income juveniles muslims undocumented and so forth so it's widespread so what are the implications of the science for practice this is a whole conference about research to practice what are those implications first a couple things we should not do so says the science we should not rely solely on methods for explicit bias and certainly not when we're dealing with people who have implicit bias for many years we've trained police as if they all have explicit bias and it's going to look something like this stop being prejudice these are really nice people and any one of you sitting at the other end of that finger would be wholly offended to be sitting and hearing that we cannot treat them as if they all have explicit biases we also it turns out cannot try to suppress biases don't even try to tell me that you're colorblind because i ain't going for it all right don't try to suppress your biases because in fact there are unintended consequences so what are some of the implications for practice that contact theory right now we know that positive contact between police and community members has oh so many payoffs but the science add one more when the police are out there having positive contact with transgendered and undocumented and homeless and racial ethnic groups that are not their own that can have an impact to reduce their own biases and then the really good news about the contact theory is that it's bi-directional because when the police are out there having positive contact with all those groups presumably those folks are also having positive contact with the police to reduce the biases and stereotypes about police what are the implications for practice use of force training i'm returning here to that concept of counter stereotypes and again i got a knowledgeable group i'm talking primarily about the video training that cops go through this is their judgment training right and you know they're interacting with a um action that's playing out on the video and they're gonna face a person or persons and those people are either going to turn out to be a threat or not turn out to be a threat and the officer has to make that judgment and if they're a threat do i need force and how much how do we take demographics how do we take biases out of that training the person who turns out to be a threat is just as likely to be a female as a male just as likely to be Caucasian as a racial ethnic minority just as likely to be middle-aged as a young person and if we put the officers through this and condition them and there's actually some research laboratory research albeit that supports that can make the officers focus on other than demographics focus on other clues for threat and that's what we want other type of training other type of training so that's important for the use of force split second decisions other training what the scientists tell us is the first step is understanding our implicit biases and then once we understand our implicit biases and if we're motivated we can reduce and manage them and so that's what we're doing with the fair and impartial police and curricula and we have five different versions and they were the development of it and the dissemination of it has been funded by the U.S. DOJ cops office a version for recruits and in-service officers first line supervisors mid managers command or the best is when i have command and community stakeholders in the room and then finally an instructor's course i've got an f.a.p trained officer in the room where is she yay glad to have you here so what is the content of the curriculum well this is the curriculum for either the recruit or the patrol officer we want them to understand that even good people have biases and that includes him and her we want them to understand that biases and stereotypes can impact on our perceptions and unless we thwart it impact on our behavior our mantra is this policing based on biases and stereotypes ineffective unsafe unjust and then finally we want them to have tools to help them manage and reduce their biases particularly in the context of their police work what do we need to do for first line supervisors explain how bias can manifest in even well intentioned people how to identify bias that might be manifesting in their supervisees what should they do when they find it we also talk to them about how bias might manifest in their own decisions and then finally how to talk about bias with individuals with groups now for command staff after they hear about the science of bias we're talking about the higher level functions in the agency and what are the implications of the science for for instance recruitment and hiring policy training leadership supervision and accountability operations measurement and outreach to diverse communities what are some of the other implications of the science for practice recognize and reduce the great risks of bias in high discretionary police practices linked to crime control let me parse out that mouthful all right and this is going to be so intuitive to the group I have in this room when do biases manifest in high discretionary activities right when do we have most problem of maybe linking people to crime biases when those high discretionary activities are linked to crime control we tell the officer go out there and do stop and frisk because you're going to reduce guns on the street so where do we have these great risks of bias requests for consent to search stop and frisk the chief that says to his folks go out there and use your traffic stop powers to find the crooks find the guns field and carrications and so forth high discretionary activities that are linked in the officer's mind to crime control are ripe for biases so now what are some of the lessons that we have learned from our bringing science of bias to police departments that might be relevant to your important work use solid science use solid science the most common positive response we get on the evaluations from officers is it was science-based they very much appreciate it because think about this i've got about 12 trainers most of them swarm they're walking into a room picture them walking into a room of 30 sergeants that have 10 or 15 years on what do you think that reception looks like our groups are generally somewhere between defensive and outright hostile but then we start talking to them about science and we're giving them studies and methods and results and we're not talking about the science of police bias we're talking about the science of human bias and how it can make them less effective less safe and unjust so by the time we leave rave reviews this north carolina sergeant about two weeks before we came to town had been through traditional racial profiling training stopping prejudice these are really nice people all right and then he's told you've been handpicked to be an instructor for fair and impartial policing not only are you going to sit through two and a half days of training but then you're going to go train the rest of the agency here's what he wrote in his evaluation i wanted nothing to do with fair and impartial policing or its philosophy as fate would have it i was handpicked to attend the train the officer class and forced to go after presenting every excuse i could come up with i came in monday as opposed and as defensive as i could cobertly be without getting into trouble as we say in the south bless his heart for that all right it took about two hours and i was sold on the theory of the class and wondering why i had not been through it sooner and that's the science that's bringing solid science to these officers now there are consequences for bringing in bad science some of you know i have very strong feelings about how we analyze vehicle and pedestrian stop data got a very thick book that i wrote on it and so if you collect information from the agency on vehicle stops pedestrian stops stop and frisk and you benchmark it against census data and then you tell the world that that disparity means it's all police bias don't be surprised when you go to partner with the police for change that they're going to turn their backs on you because in the words of tom tyler you've lost your legitimacy you bring in bad science you've lost your legitimacy how do you produce change you tell the truth for us telling the truth is this hard fact people of color are disproportionately represented among the people who commit street crime i'm a criminologist we've studied this it's not a racial cause it's an income cause right lower income people disproportionately involved in street crime we could spend two weeks talking about it but it is the case people of color are disproportionately represented in the low income levels and that helps us understand what criminologists have shown people of color are disproportionately involved in the people who commit street crime now a couple of things a big but follows that in our training all right and the big but is even if some stereotypes quote unquote are based in part on fact that does not allow you to treat the individual as if they fit the stereotype that's where we go wrong we air when we treat the individual as if they fit the stereotype but telling the truth is important that there's a lot of tension in the class until this comes out because they're thinking this is a bunch of liberals coming in asking us why we have these stereotypes we even had an activist group looking at our curriculum getting ready to recommend it you know to a uh a judge in a particular monitored area and they said we love the curriculum but slide 34 gotta go our response no because if you're gonna have change you need to tell the truth you need to tell the truth how do you produce change you report what's in it for them what's in it for them again our mantra policing based on stereotypes and biases ineffective unsafe and unjust and i will tell you unsafe perks them up right we do back-to-back role plays with the recruits woman with a gun followed white man with a gun so it's two sets of recruits that are going to respond to woman with the gun man with the gun basically we're describing a woman on the corner brandishing an unlawful fire on they're exactly the same scenario with a woman and a man and we get huge differences in how they respond right overwhelmingly they find the gun in the small of the man's back overwhelmingly they don't find it in the small the woman because they have not detained her they have not conducted the fres well stereotypes are based in part on fact women are less likely going to have a gun they are less violent but if you treat the individual as if she fits the stereotype you're not going to find the gun and then the other story catches their attention las vegas metropolitan police department lost two officers in 2014 who were assassinated while eating pizza for lunch and we were in las vegas about six weeks after that and we got to policing based on stereotypes is unsafe and one of the officers stopped the class and told his story because he was one of the responding officers and at that point they knew that two of their colleagues had just been slain while eating lunch they did not know by home they did not know where to go but then there was a shooting of a civilian in the walmart nearby so that's where this guy was deployed our officer and he's in that store and he sees actually a white male who doesn't see him who's armed and so he's headed in that direction and then he sees this white female dressed in casual clothes off to the side and as he tells it he's ready to dismiss her because he's had this picture in his head as he's going through this scenario he had one picture in his head when we had cop killers another picture in his head when he had active shooters and it was never a white woman he finally figured out she's exactly where she wants to be they both threw their weapons he got his shot off and injured her but what was his point policing based on stereotypes can be unsafe tell him what's in it for them so lessons learned use solid science tell the truth report what's in it for them so this conference is about evidence-based policing and traditionally we thought about evidence-based policing in terms of you know how can we make crime control and traffic control better for us for my team it's how can we use science to promote bias-free policing for you how do you use science to promote accountability and legitimacy and why do we do that why do we get up every morning with the commitment we have who do we do this for we do it for Nikki in Missouri and Nikki contacted me we had done a training in the st louis area st louis Ferguson all that area and it had been on tv she heard about our training she writes me an email and i'll tell you her note was riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors made me think that it might be you know low-income poor education she described her most recent interaction with police wasn't her first probably won't be her last and what she described was very ugly and then she ended it with this so thanks for trying to help them with their biased ways cried when i got it i have it printed out it's taped on my wall you guys are doing the good work to make policing better and why are we doing that for all the nickies in Missouri so keep up the good work appreciate what all you do