Bryan de Boer
The Seattle Times posted an article
on September 3rd, 2013 titled “Survey finds racial disparities in
views toward Seattle police.” The article provides analysis of a report
conducted and produced by the Anzalone Liszt Grove Research Group. The news
article selects information from the research group’s survey of 900 adult
respondents. The numbers displayed in the article are selected to help support
the author’s claim that there are racial disparities in the views of the
general public towards the Seattle Police Department. The data is presented
within the article, but does not seem to follow a logical path in the
presentation of evidence. There are no histograms or visuals for the data, so
an observer must contrast between the published article, and the published
survey to verify claims.
The first two paragraphs seem to be
in direct contradiction with one another. The article starts off stating that
“50% of Seattle Residents believe police routinely discriminate against people
of color” while the second paragraph follows up by stating “60% of the
residents believe the Seattle Police Department (SPD) is doing a ‘good or
excellent job’ overall.” This would mean that 450 respondents think police
discriminate, but 540 believe they are doing a good or excellent job. This
leads me to believe that 10% (90) of those surveyed believe that part of doing
a good or excellent job overall means to routinely discriminate against people
of color.
The disparity leads me to believe
that the survey format may have been misleading and that further definition of
a good or excellent job is required. Why would some people say that the SPD is
doing a good job, when they feel they are discriminating? I feel that in future
research surveys there must be a qualitative question to try to understand why
there is disparity in the results. The perceptions may be skewed by the number
of arrests, as well as how people receive their information regarding their
perceptions of the SPD.
When reading the actual survey
itself, it does denote that word of mouth leads to the perception of police
officers and that over half, 54%, of African Americans gather their information
about police treatment through word of mouth. The survey points out that 17% of
African Americans know someone who has had excessive force used on them as
compared to 5% who had actually had excessive force used on them. Later in the
survey, it states that African Americans are stopped nearly three times as
frequently as the Caucasian population (38% compared to 13%) for traffic
violations and nearly two and half times the frequency of the Caucasian
population (19% compared to 7%) for non-traffic violations.
Two conclusions could be made from
these observations, it could mean that the SPD is intentionally pulling over
minorities at a higher frequency and actively discriminating, which this story
leads us to believe, or that the minority population are actually committing
more of the crimes to warrant the increase in police interactions. Without
solid evidence to support either claim, we are left to assume two
circumstances; the first is that the number of interactions with police
officers directly correlates to a negative perception of the SPD, or the claim
by the author that police are discriminating.
With so many variables from the
survey results, further research must be conducted. I would suggest an
independent survey that distinguishes the perceptions of those who have had a
police interaction as compared to those who have not had an interaction, and
those who know someone who has been involved in an interaction. It can be safe
to think that the more interactions that are had, the more negative your
perception may be, regardless of race, and there should be evidence through
research to support that.
In conclusion, both the article
written in the Seattle Times, and the survey analysis referenced both agree
that further research must be conducted. With 900 respondents, at a 95%
confidence rating, the results would be accurate within a 6.56% range for the
entire population. The research and survey should become more granular with
more detailed questions to help be able to distinguish between the results and
how they correlate to the real-life treatment provided by the SPD. One thing is certain, the author of the Seattle Times article scanned through the actual survey to select the statistics that best supported his theory, whether or not those selected statistics represent the big picture will be determined with future research.
Article:
Survey finds racial disparities in views toward
Seattle police
In a telephone survey, 60 percent of
Seattle residents said the Police Department is doing a good or excellent job,
but the poll revealed starkly different views among blacks and Latinos.
Seattle Times staff reporters
Monitor Merrick Bobb commissioned
the survey.
Nearly 50 percent of Seattle
residents believe police routinely discriminate against people of color and
almost half think officers use excessive force “very or somewhat often,”
according to a survey commissioned by the federal monitor overseeing police
reforms.
Only 35 percent believe police treat
people of all races and ethnicities equally.
At the same time, 60 percent of
residents believe the Seattle Police Department (SPD) is doing a “good or
excellent job” overall, while three-quarters of residents think police do a
good job at keeping people safe, according to the phone survey of 900 adult residents by the Washington, D.C., firm Anzalone Liszt Grove.
While whites and Asian Americans
gave the highest ratings, the monitoring team found the overall approval
numbers of the SPD concealed “sharply lower views among African Americans and
Latinos.”
“These two groups are more likely
than whites or Asian Americans to report negative interactions with the police
including excessive force, racial discrimination, and verbal abuse,” the
survey’s authors concluded. “They are also less likely to report being treated
respectfully by the police and have their questions answered. And they are far
more likely to report being stopped by SPD.”
The survey, which was presented by
the monitor, Merrick Bobb, to the Seattle City Council’s public-safety
committee on Wednesday, found experiences in those two minority communities
“back up the public’s perception that SPD treats them worse than others.”
Just 44 percent of African Americans
and Latinos surveyed who had interactions with police approved of the way it
was handled, compared with 77 percent of whites, according to the survey.
“Fully 27 percent [of Latinos and
blacks] say the officer used physical force other than handcuffing, compared to
5 percent of whites,” the survey found.
Interim Seattle Police Chief Jim
Pugel, speaking after the presentation, said that the results are consistent
with research that has shown similar dissatisfaction or suspicion nationwide
among some racial groups over issues such as housing and other services, both
public and private.
“I am not denying what it is,” Pugel
said.
Noting that Asian Americans gave his
department the highest approval rate — 67 percent — Pugel said he plans to have
his staff study that result to determine what can be learned from it.
Bobb told the committee that he had
commissioned the survey to get a read on public perceptions of the SPD in the
wake of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation that found officers routinely use excessive force, most
often against minorities, the mentally ill and the chemically impaired.
Bobb is overseeing the
implementation of a settlement agreement,
reached last year, between the city and the DOJ to overhaul the department.
The DOJ’s investigation also found
inconclusive but disturbing evidence of biased policing, and insisted — over
the city’s objection — that the issue be addressed in the settlement agreement.
The survey covered cellphone and
landline users 18 years and older, apportioned geographically by police
precinct as well as race, age and demographics to match the city’s population.
It found that the “stops and
mistreatment” of people of color has a corrosive effect on public opinion, and
its authors concluded that “it will be hard for SPD to improve community
relations” in the African American and Latino communities. The SPD has engaged
in community-outreach programs, and a memo written by the survey group
encouraged them.
However, the group concluded that
“it is hard to see those improving opinions of the police themselves: the
amount of people who have had these type of experiences or know someone who has
will have to go down before views of the police improve.”
A key piece of that reform effort is
the adoption of a proposed new use-of-force policy, negotiated between the SPD, the DOJ and the monitor. It is
a sweeping policy that calls on the SPD to accomplish its mission “with minimal
reliance upon the use of physical force.”
The proposed policy encompasses the
forceful use of every tool on an officer’s utility belt, from flashlight to
Taser to firearms. If adopted, it will for the first time categorize the
pointing of a firearm as a reportable use of force.
The policy was originally to be
implemented on Aug. 31. But the Community Police Commission (CPC), created as a result of the settlement agreement,
asked the federal judge overseeing the reform effort to postpone implementing
the policy because the community and the department’s rank-and-file had not had
time to review it.
U.S. District Judge James Robart
extended the deadline for the CPC to provide comments until Oct. 30.
But the CPC and the city of Seattle
determined the deadline was insufficient, and the DOJ moved to extend the
deadline until Nov. 15. Robart granted the motion on Monday.
The depth of the CPC’s desire to be
heard was so intense that members of the commission, which currently has 13
members and is working to fill two vacancies, signaled they were willing to
resign en masse if they didn’t get adequate time, sources familiar with the
matter revealed Wednesday.
The committee’s co-chairs, Diane
Narasaki and Lisa Daugaard, declined to comment.
But Narasaki said, “We felt very
strongly the extended time was necessary,” and Daugaard noted that the
commission strongly believed that unless it played a role in the formulation of
the policy it would not be useful to have a community-based commission.
Actual
Survey
Link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/797626-alg-summary-seattle-police-survey.html
Actual survey attached as a .pdf with submission.
Actual survey attached as a .pdf with submission.
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