“When the Cruiser Lights Come On”: Using the Science of Bias & Culture to Combat Racial Disparities in Policing

And so, instead of suing the four officers, Burris and Chanin filed a claim against the City of Oakland that named dozens of members of the Oakland Police Depart- ment (OPD), including the chief of police, and alleged that cover-ups and poor supervision allowed such egregious misconduct to happen with impunity.4 In the words of former Oakland police captain Ronald Davis, the emergence of the Rider. [...] Everything was tied to it from the leadership, to the messaging, to the strategies, to the tactics, to the lack of accountability.”5 Burris and Chanin’s claim was their first step toward trying to bring about meaningful change to the department as a whole. [...] From the police chief to the rank and file, from the mayor to the city coun- cil, from the federal judge to the federal monitor appointed to provide oversight, from the plaintiffs’ attorneys to the residents of Oakland, many different perspec- tives are activated when the cruiser lights come on. [...] In an initial study, we analyzed nearly one thousand vehicle stops in Oakland and found that officers consistently spoke less respectfully to Black drivers than to white drivers.68 These racial disparities in police language remained even after controlling for the loca- tion of the stop, the outcome of the stop, the severity of the offense, and the race of the officer. [...] It emphasizes fair treatment and transparent prac- tices on the part of the officer when interacting with community members, re- gardless of the outcome of the encounter.76 As part of the federal monitorship and in response to our stop-data report recommendations, the OPD was already plan- ning to deploy a custom procedural-justice training as a follow-up to the standard training.