Researchers at WSU Spokane have analyzed well over 100 police deadly force encounters captured on dash cam video or observed in a simulator. That academic research has now turned in a “counter bias” training program.
The course grew out of a series of attention-getting papers on the dynamics of deadly police encounters including racial factors published by Professor Lois James and colleagues, including Bryan Vila, recently retired professor of criminal justice and criminology.
“We have two kinds of major findings from our research in the lab,” James said. “One is that officers when you hook them up neurophysiologically — and also when you test them using implicit bias tests — we find they tend to quite strongly associate African American suspects with increased levels of threat.”
The other finding runs almost the opposite.