you think? >> i think that it is -- it is all about who gets stopped, much more about who gets stopped than how they are treated after the stop because the stop itself, right, regardless of courtesy, regardless of procedural fairness after the stop, has done something to the individual stop. it has communicated and song discussed that they are a subject of interest, that they are suspicious, that they are somebody who law enforcement looks at in a particular way, so it's not that it's irrelevant with what happens after that, but the fact that young black people, young black men grow up knowing that they are going to encounter law enforcement and young white people grow up knowing that they won't unless they are the victim of a crime or they are driving at an incredibly high rate of speed. that's an enormous problem in and of itself. i just want to signal i think there are a number of limitations to this kind of instance. collecting data on what law enforcement does has very

limited value unless it passes the any idiot test to any leader. everybody knows that these missouri figures are just crazy but usually it's not so obvious, and unless we know the rate of actual offense to law enforcement this doesn't prove anything because the background facts may match their operational reality. in fact, you may underenforce. in seattle when our project started, the seattle police department were impounding the cars of people driving with suspended driver's licenses. when that law went into effect, we got the seattle city council require that data be collected, not only on the race of the drivers being impounded, but on the race of people being charged with driving with a license suspended. well, shockingly it turned out that about 50% of the people whose cars were being taken were african-american, but -- so you might think that passed the any idiot test in a city where 8% of the population was black. it didn't though because 55% of the people being charged with driving with a license suspended

were black. why? because traffic stops are correlated with race and not paying your ticket is correlated with poverty which is correlated with race so the incident of driving without a driver's license is racialized. police officers were using discretion under the laws they didn't have to not take cars driven by african-americans to a marginal extent. the point is if you looked too crudely at that initial statistic you would totally misunderstand the problem. the problem wasn't the way the impoundment law was being instituted. anyway, i think the other problem -- so the benchmarking problem is an enormous one, and we have to devote more energy to creating a valid benchmark than we do to require police officers to collect data or i think the whole exercise is useless and can send people in the wrong direction. the other problem is based on race. i think that, you know, it is so easy to attend to the mentality

as song talked about of the individual officer and much much usually more important to focus on the widespread deployment forces and the incentive structure so where are precincts told to emphasize? you know, not the individual officers choosing to go patrol down the street but what are the areas of emphasis and where are people sent at roll call and what policy directives have commanders been given? i think it's very important to bear in mind that police departments are floating on the top of, you know, a river of social consciousness and consumer pressure for policing. a quick example, so it's all of us. it's not the police only. seattle, like many cities, has long done these undercover drug stings. back in 2001 for the first and only time, the department chose to do an undercover buy/bust at a rave where almost everybody in attendance was white or asian,

and they -- it was like treating fish in a barrel. they arrest 4d 3 people for delivery of ecstasy and methamphetamine and other serious drugs, and -- and right before that there had been a couple of weeks of press that the police had set up about how the ecstasy is the new crack, that it's very, very dangerous. anyway, so they made these 43 arrests. all kids, you know, most of these individuals had private counsel, no criminal record. they were from a good family, going to med school. they were all going to med school, and, of course, they still are because they got very favorable treatment in the justice system. anyway, they got first-time offender waivers and stuff. but the point is the department came to the seattle city council to brief the council on this operation, and they were met with a firestorm of a program. don't we have better things to do with our police resources? do you really have so many officers that you could send them to do this undercover sting at this rave? are you kidding me. and, of course, those are not

bad questions. they are just questions that should have been asked every other day, every other year, about every other drug enforcement operation in the city and they never, so what did the department take away from that experience? they took away that there will be no resistance to the normal course of operations in pioneer square, the international district, belltown, the areas where poor black people are on the street and rich white people are out in the condominiums, don't want it to look like that. not the pre-med students, they are not to be enforced again. it's very difficult to focus solely on law enforcement issues. >> do you agree with lisa daugaard that a hard racial command to stop racial profiling and mandatory collection of data would be a helpful way to move forward, or do you think that would be a distraction fish use of fairness and procedural justice that you emphasized? >> well, i think we all would like to see racial profiling stopped if it in fact is

motivated by racism or prejudice as people have mentioned. one of the difficulties in the actual operationalization of these policies is that it gets very complicated in practice because of, you know, there's a connection between race and propensity to commit crime in many communities and many neighborhoods so the police-it's not as simple as just keeping statistics on the race of the people the police deal with. the police have very reasonable arguments and many cases that they stop particular kinds of people because of who is committing the crimes in the community. i don't think, therefore, we shouldn't try to do this. i think we need to recognize that there have been many efforts to do this over the years and that they have been difficult to enact because they get complicated really quickly. but i still would say we should do them, and i think that what i would argue is that we should do them but also we should

recognize that to the people who are dealing with the police i respective of whether the police have a valid reason for stopping them or not, the first thing is to make sure that they do. those people are going to react to how the police treat them. they are going to react to what happens when they deal with that overs, and it's true that being stopped can be stigmatizing, but we know from the research that the main way in which you're stigmatized is the way that you're treated by that officer, so i think there needs to be training also for the police where they recognize that one of the goals that they should want to achieve is to build support in the minority community, something that the chief mentioned, and that they should always be thinking when they are dealing with members of any community, but especially the minority community, about how their behavior affects the way they are perceived in that community. we certainly know that when you have a civilian review board, the primary reason that people complain is rudeness or disrespect.

i think that's typical of what we find when we interview people, so to the degree that we can emphasize to officers the importance of building legitimacy and the importance of treating people well towards that objective, then i think when it's necessary for the police to intrude into people's lives any arm is minimized, and there's the potential for some gain. >> professor richardson, can training address the problems of stereotype threats and unconscious racism that you are discussing earlier, and what would that training look like? >> so, it -- it can. so there is some hope that simply because we are all affected by these non-conscious biases doesn't mean that we can't take proactive steps to address them. so -- but before talking about specific training, i do think that in terms of data collection i just have to say something very quickly about that because, i mean, we're in new york. we know that the nypd has been collecting this data for quite a while now, and i think data

collection is important. however, the actual behaviors of officers on the street have not changed, so data collection, fabulous, but we need to figure out what to do with that data once we have it. in terms of training, what's interesting is that i think that we all, school ears, activists, citizens, we need to engage more with police departments because i know that i'm guilty of my own stereotypes about the police that i've had to untangle, and david clansky hadn't mentioned it but he's written a fabulous article called "seeing blue" where he talks about had you our stereotypes of the police can actually blind us to the ways in which we can engage in collaborations with police departments to encourage reform. so one specific training that i will mention is that it's my understanding that officers are often trained to approach citizens a certain way, right, to approach them to gain control

over the situation, so act with one might say aggression. and -- and problemmatically, i understand why that exists because you do want to take control, but on the flip side when we're dealing with situations where we have communities who already don't trust the police and who are already concerned about being evaluated as criminal, the reaction of the officer itself can escalate the situation. i want to share one thing to backpedal a little bit about this trading and the talk about the stereotype threat because stereotype threat affects officers to. and it's counterintuitive to those officers concerned about being judged in terms of their negative stereotype, that they are going to be viewed as racist when they are not, that causes them to interact with citizens in a way, and there's a psychological study that demonstrates this, causes them to interact with citizens in a

manner that actually escalates the violence of the interaction, and so there is a study done by a social psychologist named phil goff who has demonstrate that had stereotype threat of officers, that affects those officers who are actually trying to do the right thing, ends up in situations where the officer shoots the suspect more often. so i think that engaging with the social psychology of bias and the ways in which all of us are affected by them and collaborating with police departments to do that is the way forward versus acting on our -- our own stereotypes about what the police are and how they act and giving them solutions without understanding the rank and file and management and on-the-street concerns that they have. >> so, we have about 15 minutes left, and all of you have been sitting attentively, and one bit

of psychological research that i am aware of as a law professor is that it's easier to listen if you can sometimes ask questions and interact, so if there are questions from the audience, we can take them now. yes, ma'am. >> there's going to be a microphone. >> thank you. i'm a former deputy police commissioner and executive director of the civilian complaint review board here in new york, and this question is for anyone. do you have an opinion that might explain why minority police officers often exhibit the same unconscious biases based on racial stereotypes when interpreting ambiguous behaviors? >> so, i'll -- i'll respond first. yes, i'm so happy that you mentioned that because so often there's an assumption, right, that it's only white officers who act in this way, but these

non-conscious stereotypes, we all have them, right? it doesn't matter what our genuine and conscious beliefs are, but we are taught in our society, through tv shows, right, watching the news and the way crime stories are portrayed, we have this automatic association between non-whites and crime, and it simply doesn't matter what your race is. now, there are these studies on implicit bias that demonstrate that whites have higher levels of implicit bias than non-whites have, but we all have them, and so what's important is how you categorize yourself in a particular situation, so a black officer in his community might not be as affected by these implicit biases as a black officer in his role as officer, right? so it's how you view yourself in a particular situation that then affects your actions based on the non-conscious associations that we have. >> i just wanted to add, because i think it's a fabulous

question. we're thinking about, for example, what happened in new orleans, the danz engineer bridge shooting. several officers that were convicted were minority. in los angeles, with the rampart scandal. several minority officers. i believe here in new york city the shooting of sean bell. several of those officers, minority officers, so what we should be thinking about is in addition to the implicit bias that's going on is that these are officers -- these officers, they are still in institutions that can benefit from institutional change, so just kind of going back to my point earlier. if we can fix some of these -- some of these broader institutional problems, these same officers hopefully can be affected as well. >> professor tyler, do you agree with that? >> oh, absolutely. i think that we tend not to put enough weight on organizational culture of police departments, and there's this saying that officers are not black or white.

they are blue, and i think what that means is that as they go through the academy and then they come out on the street and they have mentors, they learn a set of cultural values and beliefs, and those are what guide their actions. that's what people are saying. >> yeah. i -- if i can step out of my role as moderator for a moment, i -- i agree with all of this, but i do think that sometimes people hear stuff like this and think it doesn't matter whether they are minority officers in the department and that i think isn't true, and it's an important point to make because we've made a lot of progress in integrating departments along lines of ethnicity and race and gender, but there's still a long ways to go. there's an even longer ways to go with regard to integrating departments with regard to sexual orientation, and there's a fair amount of research that suggests that although people of all races are subject to the same kinds of unconscious bias

that professor richardson discussed, it does change the culture of the department when you integrate it. it matters to white officers if there are black officers that they are patrolling with, and there's -- there's been a sea change in the internal culture of police departments over the last 20, 30 years. police departments are much less monolithic places. there's much more room for disagreement and debate and engagement with people outside of the department, and my own view is that that owes a significant amount to the integration of police departments, much of which is carried out under court order and that it would be a mistake to lose sight of that and to allow back sliding tore continue making progress in the places in the country where police departments still fail to look in lots of way like the communities that they police.

>> other questions. >> yes, sir. >> some of what's been said -- oh, i'm sorry. i'm a retired professor here. some of what's been said particularly by professor richardson suggests that a law against racial profiling is -- >> professor, you're being censored once again. >> maybe i should stand up and move. >> it seems as though -- >> we can hear you. >> it seems as though a law against racial profiling -- they aren't actually racial profiling anyone, they are stopping somebody who they suspect

according to them, all people in society of all colors. it seems that the problem would be to decrease the number of stops and stop talking about that, stop more white people instead of stopping so many black people. >> to respond quickly to that, i agree. i don't think that we shouldn't have this law. i think it's important to -- to make that statement. data collection, i think, is important once we figure out the types of data that we want to collect, and i think it's important to collect data from ers because some officers can overcome the effects of these non-conscious biases, but as a very general manner when you look at it, it's generally, even across races, officers are just not that good

as a group, right? these hit rates, and by that i mean your rate of success when you stop someone, right, how often are you correct when you assume that they are engaged in criminal activity, the hit rates are higher for whites. you're often more successful than with blacks, but even the hit rates for whites are remarkably low as a group. contrast that to individual officers. there are individual officers who are extremely good at making these intuitive, skilled intuitive judgments of criminalality, and then there are officers who are remarkably bad, and the problem is most police departments don't collect the data to know who are the good officers, who are the bad officers and then in terms of structural reform the promotion process of most police departments are not tied to are you a good and skilled officer in judging criminality, or are

you not? so i agree with people on this panel that focusing on police department structures and reform is really the way to go. >> if i could just add. i think when you think about th >> in new york city where the police almost never find anything on the people illegal. i think you might argue that it is more just stops. we need to communicate to the police that they have something more to lose in a strategy like this. they have more to lose in a way and i think the point is to emphasize the damage to the relationship between the police and the community.

when people are stopped and not doing anything wrong that this has a negative impact on the police and so that the police can understand that there is actually a cost involved here and not just see this as something that they can do in disscrimnantly and why not? >> i think we need to move away from the question of why. i think it is possible to legislate in this area. but it most focus on the question of impact. title six might have a way to get at this. but it took away a private right of action if this new legislation imports that, i think it would be useful. we litigated for ten years this question of seattle drug arrests.

we had lots of private grant funding to do this. and i think we established in that as i said the majority of people delivering serious drugs in seattle are white and almost everybody being arrests was black. but what we would have been able to demonstrate was that nobody, we would not have been able to demonstrate that anybody in the department had any intent that -- in fact they did not know, there are lots of people being arrested. we would not have been able to prove that they prioritized crack enforcement. even though 80% of drug delivery arrest ares were for crack delivery. they did not i wanted to use

that for so many instances. and we started dlab rating and i have never been able to. but they did not know that. they would sit in a way that i could not dislodge and tell you that crack is not more important than other drugs. when you show you these statistics they would say that is so interesting. after we published this, that was fascinating. it was through, they did not actually see them as potential criminals. they thought they were waiting for the bus. so, we could show using the

impact standard the instance of the behavior and show who was being arrested for it if that was a legal standard we could get some where and short of that is why i don't think it is a useful framework. >> so as a former prosecutor, what do you think of the idea of in order to deal with the problem of racism and arrest rates we should ratchet back arrests? >> well, maybe we have eluded to it here, when we think about the war on drugs, i think it starts there. so if we can kind of get away from crack cocaine and meth and some of these people that are are selling these things and focus on violent crimes, maybe we will have some head way there. so that is about as

controversial as i can get. >> i think we have time for one more question. yes, ma'am. >> um, thank you. so you mentioned that the seattle response focused on dialed it back on fellony drug cases. but in new york and in seattle too, even more people are get ago rested for low level misdemean misdemeanors has there been a focus on that? that criminalizes communities and leads to lost employment and missed days of work. it leads to the civil rights issue that we have in new york city today. in new york, there is a policing decision to categorize something that could be treated as a fellony. in seattle we have had the same thing. in 2008 for budget reasons only. the county prosecutor decided to

prosecute a bunch of charges. you have to go main stream. as a result of that, but most people do plead to it. as a result of that, we experienced discouraged officer syndro syndrome. the drug arrest rate for drug crimes, practically every drug offense is a drug crime. so -- but there has been a 63% reduction in drug arrested in 2010 this is not the result of any intensional policy. this is an officer reaction to incentives and the trivialization of these cases by other players in the system.

but what has been fascinating with this program. the structure has arisen that provides support for the system. now they look at you like that would be insane. you are right although you did it. and they -- there is now a profound value shift and amnesia like that would make no sense to do it that way. there is, if we can provide a policy level consensus that it is okay for the police to police these crimes differently, officers are more than willing to do thick that is are less harmful, but the incentive structure has to change. >> i think it is a great achievement if we can end the

panel on a note of hope. will you join me in thanking our panel? [ applause ] >> this weekend on american history tv. harvard professor on civil war and the movement to end slavery. one of the fascinating aspects is that when lincoln gives his inaugural, the self describes ablishists are are still despised. what transforms abolitionists into respective critics is fort sumptner are. >> also this weekend on key figures who ran for president and lost but changed political history and a look at eugene

debbs. this weekend on c-span3. >> next, burma pro democracy leader speaks before a joint session of british parliament. then a hearing on the drug enforcement agency. after that, a discussion on the 2012 elections. if all of us decide at the same time we are are going to tighten our belts and spend less, guess what? we end up poor because our spending falls at the same time, this is the kind of stuff that we are are supposed to know. this is stuff that we have known since the 1930s. that everybody slashes spending at the same time because they think they have too much debt. it is self defeating. >> who is going to tell them the