Police Misconduct, Media Coverage, and Public Perceptions of Racial Profiling: An Experiment

Citation

Deryol, R. (2011), "Police Misconduct, Media Coverage, and Public Perceptions of Racial Profiling: An Experiment", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 34 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/pijpsm.2011.18134aaa.004

Police Misconduct, Media Coverage, and Public Perceptions of Racial Profiling: An Experiment

Police Misconduct, Media Coverage, and Public Perceptions of Racial Profiling: An Experiment

Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 34, Issue 2

Lisa Graziano, Amie Schuck and Christine Martin,Justice Quarterly,Vol. 27 Number 1,2010,pp. 52-76,

The issue of racial profiling and related police brutality or misconduct occasionally appears in most of daily news media. Media coverage of these news influences the perceptions of the citizens about racial profiling in that minorities might have less confidence in and support for police. In order to respond to public concerns about racial profiling, most police agencies enacted rules and collected data on traffic stops to measure potential bias of their officers. In this way, they aimed to restore resident’s attitudes about police misconduct.

This study examines a high profile minority citizen-police encounter incident, media construction of the incident, and its impact on individuals’ attitudes from a random sample of Chicago residents. Data are collected by web-based community survey and consists of four waves (Time1-pre incident-, Time2-concurrent with incident-, Time3-post incident-, and Time4-post incident-). The study was conducted between January 2005 and November 2005 in 51 Police beats in Chicago. Total 1,976 residents completed the web-based interviews who are 18 years or older, have internet access, and regularly attended Chicago Police Department meetings.

News framing by the media is shown to have significant effects of an individual’s perception. Media effect perceptions by placing different weights on pieces of information. On the other hand, media relies on police sources to build their news frames. Thus, following an incident, which includes potential racial bias allegations, explanations by the police organizations have a crucial role in that they shape the perceptions of the public who learn the event from the media. The current study examines this media coverage police response cycle to evaluate peoples’ perceptions at four different time waves as indicated above.

Two experiments are conducted during the study. First one is a natural experiment, which measured racial profiling. The experiment evaluated a police-high profile citizen – an African-American State Senator – encounter during a traffic stop. Summary of the case: Black senator exited the car and identified himself to the police officer who stopped him. The officer admonished him to stay in his car and pulled the gun. Black officials and community leaders expressed outrage over the incident and police chief launched an investigation. The incident is covered by several media establishments, including public TV and radio. Police chief visited Senator’s church and addressed the members and ensured that he is handling the issue by investigating existence of unfair or disrespectful police behavior in the incident.

The first experiment measured the frequency of racial profiling with a five-point racial profiling scale ranging from never (coded as zero) to always (coded as 5). They asked five questions to 306 respondents (71 percent White, 23 percent Black, and 6 percent others) about “how often they thought that Chicago Police Officers considered race when deciding which cars to stop, who to search, who to arrest and take to jail, and how quickly to respond to calls for help” and created the racial profiling scale by summing all five items since they are correlated with each other.

The results indicate that there was a significant decrease in residents’ perceptions about profiling from Time 1 to Time 2 and from Time 1 to Time 4. The residents’ attitudes toward profiling at Time 1 and Time 3 are very similar. Mean scores for racial profiling scale is shown in Figure 1.

There were influential events or behaviors at each time stage. Time 2 data collection period coincides with police construction of explanation about the incident that focused on Senator’s faulty behavior during the stop. Media also reflected this idea and racial profiling idea is marginalized for this case. At this stage, racial profiling idea received less support from the respondents. During Time 3 period, city council’s hearings on racial profiling in which some blacks spoke about their personal experiences revitalized the perception of racial profiling among the respondents. By Time 4, police department fined Senator’s driver for other traffic violation and finalized the investigation of Senator case by reprimanding the servant for using profanity during the stop. This consistent police behavior led to decrease in perception of racial profiling of the police.

Figure 1

Second experiment included 437 participants: 67 percent White, 24 percent Black, and 9 percent other, mostly females and have bachelor’s degree. Participants are divided as experiment and control groups. Experiment group watched a short video of discussion about the Senator’s case. The video started by supporting the police behavior during traffic stops and then this idea is refuted by arguing the prevalence of racial profiling. Six dependent variables are measured during this experiment: racial profiling occurs; a – police officers are prejudiced, b – police strategy requires, c – police focus on minority communities, d – minorities commits more crime, e – it is a broader social issue, and f – it is a problem with particular officers.

Findings of the second experiment suggested no significant pre-post differences between the control and experimental groups. Regarding the post-test questions only, experimental group has significantly more belief in dangerousness of traffic stops for police officers. In terms of accepting racial profiling as wrong but unavoidable, there was a consensus between two groups. Another significant difference was in terms of respondents’ race/ethnicity in that Blacks and others were much more likely to believe in police prejudice than Whites do. Whites believed that it is a policing strategy.

The study suggests that it is important to examine the manner in which media coverage of police misconduct influence public attitudes. The authors believe that media construction of high profile incidents of police misconduct is very important about understanding of how attitudes are influenced by external factors. Additionally, it is necessary to examine how the incident is constructed by the primary claim makers, by the chief of police in this article. Police investigated the case expeditiously and enlightened the community about the result of the investigation partially relieved the anger of minorities about racially biased police conduct. On the other hand, beliefs about the causes of racial profiling do not seem influenced in this experimental study.

Study has several limitations such as having significantly more White, more affluent and, more educated respondents which might affect the generalizability of the study. Last, the authors call for more research about racial profiling or police (mis)conduct which incorporate media coverage, short-term and long-term effects of the media coverage and its effects on public support for police.

Rustu DeryolUniversity of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA