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| NEWS > 22 November 2008 |
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Restructuring of police force
The Police Cadet Academy will study police structures in foreign countries following a move by the government to reform the Royal Thai Police Office (RTPO), the academy's director said yesterday.
Pongsaphat Pongchareon said national police chief Kowit Wattana has ordered the academy to prepare information about police structures in other countries and study the possibility of applying international models in Thailand.
The RTPO is planning to hold a seminar to gauge opinion on the planned restructuring from officers at policy-making and operational levels bef... Read more
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San Jose Mercury News - CA, US
22 November 2008
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EthicsinPolicing
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New programs being tested to f
As two Santa Clara County cities grapple with accusations of racial profiling, a Stanford study is challenging traditional assumptions about bias in a project using new science that pushes police to acknowledge that everyone, in every line of work, harbors hidden, inherent bias.
Training police to be aware of their "implicit bias," experts said, is a critical first step in improving police relations with minority communities.
The Denver Police Department is applying the science in training its officers, and some call it an important new tool in police work, where protecting the public and preserving a suspect's civil rights are in play every time an officer hits the streets.
In San Jose, police came under fire recently for the large number of Latinos arrested for public drunkenness. In Palo Alto, Police Chief Lynne Johnson announced she's stepping down next month after a public uproar over her comments that she instructed officers to question African-American men as part of an investigation of a string of street robberies. She quickly disavowed those remarks, but the department is now working to mend relations by holding a series of community meetings with residents in Palo Alto, and its neighbor, East Palo Alto.
"This issue extends beyond Chief Johnson," said East Palo Alto Police Chief Ronald Davis, a nationally known expert on racial profiling.
"Both sides must come to a compromise. The police must acknowledge that officers are influenced by their biases and those biases can result in racial profiling," Davis said. "But on the other hand, communities must realize that not every stop that involves a minority is racial profiling."
Davis, is one of the early supporters of a project to develop a model academy that incorporates the science of implicit bias in the training of new police officers. Chief Johnson said she is familiar with the idea and the work among academics and law enforcement experts to find applications of it in police work. A new tool, she said, "would be a great asset to law enforcement."
The academy will be piloted next year. Instead of diversity training, police recruits will learn about the science of implicit bias. The project, led by Lorie Fridell, also a leading expert on racial profiling, is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing.
"Human beings have racial biases and some of these biases are not conscious but in fact work below the conscious level,'' Fridell said, "even in people who are consciously tolerant and non-prejudiced. Our message to the trainees is: This might include you.''
The academy training methods are still in development, said Fridell, who is associate professor of criminology at the University of South Florida. The project is based on research conducted by Stanford University scientist Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology and a consultant in Fridell's project. She has conducted studies that show whites associate blacks with crime.
"Looking at racial bias in police work is critical because lives are at stake," Eberhardt said. "We don't have all the answers. It's a complicated, thorny issue. But the first step is informing people about how bias doesn't have to be intentional. How does law enforcement deal with that?"
The Denver Police Department, rocked by accusations of racial profiling in 2003 after the shooting death of an African-American man, responded by bringing in scientists and psychologists. Unprecedented access allowed the scientists to delve into how police officers were making decisions when stopping to question blacks. The lessons from the research has helped "translate what we're learning in the lab — the police department — to policing concepts," said Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Goff, who is consulting on the Fridell project, leads the newly-formed Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity, a group that will coordinate the expansion of the Denver project to 10 new police departments next year. He said he'll be publishing his findings from Denver in a scientific journal.
When researchers learned that there was a high drop out rate of female police recruits, the department put in place a mentor program. Another study showed that race affected police decision to shoot. That led the department to change firearms training. Firing range practices now also include a more interactive approach that teaches police to use more voice commands.
"This is a real world laboratory," Goff said But the consortium's goals, he said, go beyond investigating implicit bias.
"We look at problem outcomes," he wrote in an e-mail, " and try to figure out what causes them — and how to stop them."
The department is looking at other changes, said Tracie L. Keesee, division chief of research and training for Denver PD.
"In recruiting, should we pre-screen for people's biases? Do we do this?" Keesee said. "We're asking that tough question."
East Palo Chief Davis said the work to incorporate implicit bias in policing is an important step to "deal with the root causes" of racial profiling.
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