Discussion and Conclusion

When Black police officers take off their uniform, do they become the target of racial profiling? Select evidence presented here indicates that it does happen and we docu- mented this reality with particular incidences of profiling and detailed how some minority officers have experienced racial profiling when out of uniform. While this work was exploratory in nature, we nonetheless illuminated the following themes: for officers who have experienced profiling, there is considerable disbelief by other officers that a Black individual is actually an officer when out of uniform; that Black officers are subject to the same historical racial stereotypes of criminality as other members of the Black community; and that officers (when out of uniform) are subject to being seen as Binterlopers^ in predominately Bwhite spaces^ and are apt to be aggressively confronted by citizens and police alike for violating these real and symbolic spaces. Further, we examined these themes and experiences for officers’ suggestions for ending the continued harms enabled by the practice of profiling. So, what do Black police officers recommend to decrease and prevent racial profiling?

First, in the review of police officers who have been victims of racial profiling by their fellow officers, they often note that they work(ed) in an environment that actively promotes racial profiling and quota based stop and search practices—thus, they call for an end to quota-based policing that either intentionally or uninten- tionally targets racial minorities. In many police agencies, officer performance standards are often based on quotas, or the number of cases, tickets, and arrests an officer produces during a specified period of time. The use of such police quotas, as Ossei-Owusu (2016) argues, reads like racial profiling and can be the Bprelude to minorities’ ensnarement in the legal system, or the beginning of a fatal police interaction^ (paragraph 4). Further, in terms of promotion measures, scholars suggest replacing quotas with citizen-satisfaction surveys and other qualitative measurements to measure police performance (see again, Ossei-Owusu 2016). Second, following the above, Black officers also felt that fellow officers used notions of Bpretext^ to pull them over for unwarranted reasons (Campbell 2017). As a result, we recommend that officers lessen the use of pretext stops and interactions over minor offenses because, as officers noted, many police-citizen confrontations seemingly start with stops over the smallest of infractions. In response, we propose the idea of radical non-intervention (Scur 1973), and/or a dramatic drawdown in the policing of comparatively petty matters. For example, instead of having police pull over cars for a broken taillight, the police could simply photograph the license plate, then mail a warning or a ticket to the registered owner (Friedersdorf 2016).

Third, when the police do pull a citizen over, evidence suggests that more positive, less violent results could be obtained when officers receive more instruction in the use of de-escalation techniques (Robbins 2016), increase their communication skills (Kaste 2017), and learn how to psychologically and emotionally control the trap of the aggression spiral (Cooper 2016). Unfortunately, according to former police officer and current academician Seth Stoughton, Bwe know that the single largest block of training relates to use of force - an average of just over 120 hours. You can compare that to an average of eight hours of de-escalation and conflict avoidance training in police academies^ (Martin 2016: paragraph 4).

Fourth, Black police personnel intimated that White officers use media stereotypes of racial characteristics to determine who is a Bgood guy or bad guy^ and what Bracial-types^ belong in certain vehicles and in certain neighborhoods. For example, Entman (1992) found that racial profiling can be attributed to the criminal typification of Black individuals because they are often depicted as criminals instead of positive role models on television. Hence, we suggest that police training officers and supervisors: (a) openly discuss the role media plays in perpetuating biased perspectives, (b) implement critical media awareness training, and (c) embed actual statistical and sociological/criminological data about criminal offenders (Braga 2013). Further, we recommend that training in implicit bias reduction be mandated as a condition of employment. Law-enforcement recruits should be challenged to identify key police decisions and scenarios that are at greatest risk of manifesting bias—such as traffic stops, consent searches, reason- able suspicion to frisk, and other procedures—and then reflect on the potential impact of implicit bias on their perceptions and behaviors in those scenarios. Research suggests that by making one aware of unconscious racial and ethnic biases, these malleable biases may be reduced (Devine et al. 2013).

Fifth, we argue that law-enforcement agencies need to eschew colorblindness (which simply allows those in power to ignore the social disadvantages facing non-white populations). Indeed, departments should recognize historic and con- temporary racial inequities and acknowledge the benefits of hiring and promoting more officers of color. Unless Black police officers are given influential roles within the police institution at a higher rate than is currently the case, the issues of racial profiling and biased policing will continue and policing in general will suffer.

How does policing in general suffer as a result of colorblindness and profiling? Anonymous (2017), Black police officer who was a victim of profiling prior to becoming a cop, relates:

On many occasions, I was a victim of the Metropolitan police’s racial profiling. I was repeatedly stopped and searched for reasons I’d struggle to justify now as a police officer and I can’t relay to you how humiliating and sometimes intimidat- ing that was... After all that, you’d wonder why a few years later I’d have any interest in joining an institution that many felt represented a real threat to our community. I joined because I knew that my voice and actions could only have so much impact from the outside...I still enjoy the occasions where I meet young- sters who confess their wish to see more officers on the frontline that behave like me during a stop and search (paragraph 3, 6, 9).

Furthering this perspective is Fifield (2016) who reports:

Diversity at the top also can prevent a culture of racial bias. Managers set expectations and policies... communities see diverse police departments as more legitimate and are more likely to take ownership in policing when a department is diverse... Having a good racial mix debunks stereotypes among officers (para- graph 34-36).

In closing, we reiterate the fact that law enforcement policymakers, leaders, and administrators need to be open to accepting the accounts of active and retired Black police officers who have been subjected to racial profiling. This is due to the fact that they not only understand the intricacies, complexities, and dangers of law enforcement but also because they understand the personal and communal harms of racial profiling. We thank these officers for their service and hope that the sharing of their experiences will stimulate reform and the procedural changes necessary to lessen the practice of racial profiling.