Identifying Racial Bias In Policing | Camelia Simoiu | TEDxBeaconStreet

Identifying racial bias in policing: current shortcomings and new approaches

Over 20 million traffic stops are conducted annually in the U.S., making this the primary way in which the public interacts with law enforcement. Although there is widespread concern of racial bias in these interactions, accurately identifying and measuring bias is difficult -- existing tests can often give misleading results in practice. Here’s why, and how a new test to identify bias in officers’ decisions to search drivers overcomes some of the current limitations.

Camelia is a PhD candidate at Stanford University in the Management Science and Engineering Department. Previously, she was a Fellow of the University of Chicago’s Data Science for Social Good program, and a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab in the Human Dynamics group. She received a B.S. in applied statistics (actuarial science) from the University of Toronto and a M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a consulting actuarial analyst at Mercer, focusing on quantitative risk modeling.

[dionlewis]

Racial biasness can be measured and is measured however it will never reach to that because we still do not want to face the issue and put an effective stop.

[metu]

This is 8 minutes and 16 seconds worth of excuses if I ever heard one. All the data collected has done nothing but give biased people the excuse to continue to police without having to account for what doesn’t need a lot of math. Is there a factor in any of the reporting of crimes, that includes factors like POLICE BRUTALITY?

I mean 5 years ago when this was posted something extraordinary occurred in my neck of the woods. Considering NATIVE AMERICANS who are the minority on their own reservation have repeatedly faced more felony charges thru a city police department, but we have a unique compact with the state regarding policing.

Our tribes has a tribal police department, a tribal court and a tribal jail that can hold 36 inmates, but we only prosecute misdemeanors. The county prosecutes for felonies. When the population numbers are factored it is quite disturbing. Considering TRIBAL MEMBERS CONSISTENTLY take up 2/3 of the counties 43 beds in their jail. But there are definitive factors, one is the city police Chief in relation to how quickly his arrest statistics changed, due to the fact late in 2016, he lost 5 officers on his force. One was injured, one went to nearby city and the other three enlisted in military. For the entirety of this police chiefs career, arrest numbers have increased dramatically.
2009 total arrested - 48, (18.7% of those arrests were Native American)
2010 - 40 (20% were NA)
2011 - 88 (53% were NA)
For the entirety of 2012 he was police chief, total arrests - 304, (51% were NA)
2013 - 298 (61.9% were NA)
2014 - 306 (61.9% were NA)
2015 - 395 (61.7% were NA)
2016 - 385 (60.8% were NA)
**2017 - 117 (45.2% were NA) lost five officers on his police force.
2018 - 235 (39.1% were NA)
2019 - 375 (45.4% were NA)
2020- 381 (40.8% were NA)

There is in my eyes IMPLICIT BIAS, when you factor local issues. Like where our tribes bought the dam that was built on our reservation back in the 1930, that we leased the property for. Gaming rights, water rights, complaints that losing the dam to the tribes would ruin schools when it never historically benefitted tribal members. On top of the federal dollars they got to offset the cost of our native kids not contributing to the property taxes to the county on our own reservation.

We were accused of USING UP 2/3’s of the money the county designated for courts and jail. And have been subjected to continued bias even though our own sheriff is s TRIBAL MEMBER, WHOSE arrest numbers do not reflect the same implicit bias. Tribal members and non members make up the two only races, not saying there aren’t other races present, they are just not enough to effect anything, but the bias at their own arrests, in comparison to the population.
Total Population of the COUNTY in 2010 was 28, 746, white people accounted for 69.4%, Native American 22%, all other races account for the remainder.
**Total population of the CITY IN 2010 was 4, 488, white people accounted for 74% and Native American accounted for 15.7%

Total population of the county in 2020 was 32, 033, white people accounted for 67.5 %, and Native American accounted for 24.2% of population.
**total population of the CITY in 202 was 5, 199 and white people accounted for 70% of population, and Native Americans accounted for 17.8%

The total number of TRIBAL MEMBERS LIVING ON THE RESERVATION is under 7, 000, reservation overlaps with three other counties.

Statistics can help tell a story, but if you do not factor real life challenges to minority populations you are just making excuses.