PolicingDispelling the “Bad Apple” Excuse for Racialized Policing
In the first study of its kind, University of Miami researchers find that police exhibit significantly higher levels of anti-Black biases than the general public. Culled from one of the largest, public data sets of hidden biases, those statistics seem to confirm that biases among police are widespread, a finding the researcher hope will lay the bad apple explanation to rest and prompt police departments to focus on eradicating the imbedded biases that workers everywhere bring to their jobs.
Six days after a prone and restrained George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien dismissed charges that racism is rampant among police by arguing that “a few bad apples” are giving police “a terrible name.”
But O’Brien’s widely expressed view made little sense to sociologist Jomills H. Braddock II, a University of Miami professor who studies equity and social injustice. Braddock doubted that just a few individuals could be responsible for the pervasive evidence showing that Black and Latino people are far more vulnerable to police brutality, racial profiling, shootings, and other mistreatment.
So, as protests over Floyd’s death roiled the nation, Braddock and fellow University of Miami sociologists—recent graduate Rachel Lautenschlager; Alex Piquero, chair of the Department of Sociology and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Scholar; and Nicole Leeper Piquero, professor of sociology and associate dean—set out to answer a question that, surprisingly, had never been directly addressed: How pervasive is racial bias among police? And if there is such bias, is it the same for whites, Blacks, and Hispanics?
The answer, Piquero said, should give everybody pause. According to their study published in the American Sociological Association’s Contexts magazine, almost one of five officers exhibit high levels of implicit, or unconscious, pro-white/anti-Black bias, and roughly one of eight officers exhibit high levels of explicit, or conscious, pro-white bias.
Culled from one of the largest, public data sets of hidden biases, those statistics seem to confirm Braddock’s hunch that biases among police are widespread, a finding he and Piquero hope will lay the bad apple explanation to rest and prompt police departments to focus on eradicating the imbedded biases that workers everywhere bring to their jobs.
“There are lots of other studies that show that doctors or lawyers or public schoolteachers have implicit pro-white biases that affect their performance with people of color,’’ Braddock said. “But there seems to be such a reluctance to acknowledge the possibility that bias exists beyond a handful of individuals in policing. Not recognizing this represents an obstacle to doing something about it. So, let’s stop using the excuse of a few bad apples.”
