Posts tagged threats
CU Boulder study finds racial ‘hierarchy of bias’ drives decision to shoot armed, unarmed suspects
Oct 24th
Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found.
In the first study of its kind, Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park and Charles M. Judd of CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Melody Sadler of San Diego State University examined how police and a group of undergraduate subjects decide whether to shoot or not to shoot “suspects” in a multi-ethnic environment.
“Most studies on the subject of stereotyping and prejudice look at two (ethnic) groups, usually in isolation. It’s always one group against another group,” said Correll, a CU graduate who joined the faculty in August after a stint at the University of Chicago.
“But as the country becomes more ethnically diverse, it’s more and more important to start thinking about how we process racial and ethnic cues in a multicultural environment,” he said.
As with previous studies into the question, data were gathered from subjects playing a “first person shooter” video game, in which figures of varying ethnicity — Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic and African-American — pop up, either “armed” with a weapon or another benign object, such as a cell phone.
Participants — 69 CU-Boulder undergraduates and 254 police officers — had to make quick decisions as to which figures posed a “threat” and shoot them. The police officers were recruited from two-day training seminars in Florida, New Mexico and Washington and represented numerous jurisdictions from 11 states.
The research demonstrates how persistent cultural stereotypes are, Correll said. Even students who displayed little bias when interviewed demonstrated otherwise when faced with a split-second decision.
“I may not believe it personally, but I am exposed to stereotypes constantly through media or social networks … (such as) the idea that young black men are dangerous,” he said. “Those associations can have an influence on my behavior even if I don’t believe them.”
The study found that police were considerably more accurate than students at correctly identifying a genuinely threatening suspect, as opposed to those brandishing a cell phone or wallet, perhaps a reflection of training. But officers were still influenced by the target’s race — an influence that may derive from the officers’ “contacts, attitudes and stereotypes,” Correll said.
For example, police who endorsed more violent stereotypes about Hispanics and those who overestimated the prevalence of violent crime in their districts demonstrated more bias to shoot Hispanic targets. That raises the question of whether police are responding to real-world threats — and whether that means some ethnic groups really are more likely to be armed and dangerous than others.
“That is a very sensitive question, whether or not (police officers’) reactions are based on some kind of truth. Is this police officers responding to reality on the ground? The short answer is, we don’t know,” Correll said. “But this research almost demands that we ask that question.”
The researchers’ recent findings were published in the Journal of Social Issues. The work was funded by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.
In 2007, Correll (then at the University of Chicago), Sadler (then at CU-Boulder), Park and Judd collaborated with the Denver Police Department on a widely cited study that found police officers were less influenced than the general public by racial bias and less likely than the general population to make a decision to shoot at African-American suspects wielding a benign object.
-C
CU expert: Preventing school violence is everybody’s job
Feb 29th
University of Colorado expert says
The tragic school shooting that occurred Feb. 27 at a suburban Cleveland high school is another reminder that communities can and must take action to prevent school violence, according to Delbert Elliott, a nationally renowned authority on school safety and juvenile violence at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“A key prevention strategy is good surveillance and good intelligence,” said Elliott, founding director of the CU-Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. “We need to enlist our students, our teachers and our adults in the community to help us and ask them to notify the police or the sheriff if they see something unusual or have heard that something is about to happen.”
In 80 percent of the school shootings examined by the U.S. Secret Service, someone knew the event was going to take place, Elliott said. “Nationally, we know right now of a dozen or more events for which we got a tip and were able to intervene early so the planned event actually never took place, which is, I think, our very, very best security.” Some of these plans were on the same level of violence as the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, he said.
In Colorado, there’s a toll-free Safe2Tell reporting system for students and others to call in anonymous tips about safety concerns, the result of collaboration between the CU-Boulder center and the Colorado Attorney General’s office. All tips are treated seriously, and when combined with other sources of information, often result in some kind of intervention. Since 2004, Safe2Tell has received almost 10,000 calls.
From 2004 through 2010, follow-up data indicate that 83 percent of all Safe2Tell incidents resulted in a positive intervention or action. These tips resulted in 415 formal investigations, 359 counseling referrals, 298 prevention/intervention plans, 324 potential suicide interventions, 312 school disciplinary actions, 74 arrests and 28 prevented school attacks.
“An equally critical key to security is to create a welcoming environment in which all students feel that they’re respected, that the rules are applied uniformly to all students, and students feel safe,” Elliott said. “When students feel that some children can get away with bad behavior and others can’t, and there’s bullying going on, that’s when kids feel like they have to take a weapon to school to protect themselves.”
After Columbine raised awareness of the need to prepare for school crises, school safety has improved nationally, Elliott said. In Colorado, the Legislature changed the law to allow schools, law enforcement and social services agencies to legally share information and every school in the state is now required to have a bullying prevention plan.
Any parent in the state can now go into their child’s school and ask to see what the bullying prevention plan is for that school and make sure that the school is following through with it, he said.
Every school, even those in rural areas, needs an “all-hazards” approach to crises that works for a variety of threats: fires, natural hazards, terrorist attacks, chemical spills, a shooter in the building or a hostage takeover, Elliott said. But most schools haven’t practiced these plans with a full response by police, SWAT, fire, victims’ services, mental health services and ambulances — all coordinated by a single command post.
As the responses to both Columbine and Sept. 11 showed, such drills are important because they reveal communications and other crucial response issues between agencies, he said. Such practices could be held on weekends without students being present, he noted.
Elliott also is concerned when school officials tell him that school safety is a lower priority for them than academic performance, that there is no space in their curriculum for an anti-bullying program.
“These two things should not be in competition with each other,” he said. “If you’ve got a problem with students feeling unsafe at school, you’re not going to improve academic performance because school safety is a necessary precondition for students to be able to concentrate and even to be willing to come to school.
“We argue that being safe at school and improving academic performance go hand in hand.”
Six percent of schoolchildren reported that they had not come to school on occasion because they were afraid of being threatened or assaulted according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control survey, Elliott said.
“Nevertheless, students are more likely to be a victim of violence away from school than at school by a huge margin,” said Elliott, who was the senior scientific editor of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Youth Violence issued in 2001.
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is part of the CU-Boulder Institute of Behavioral Science. For more information about the center visithttp://www.colorado.edu/cspv/.
Capt Underpants don’t want no Pledges of Allegiance to no America he doesn’t believe it
Feb 18th
There is an assorted list of fascist policy decisions, laws and ordinances in recent years coming from of our Boulder City Council, that question resonated with me, What’s next?
How about a seminar about violence in the workplace where our City Attorney declares not all the public speakers who go beyond the 2 minute rule are threats?
Now, councilman Karakehian comes up with a novel idea, let’s pledge allegiance to the flag before every council meeting.
Councilwoman KC Becker responds that if people do not want to “pledge” before meetings, “I’d be interested in hearing why.”
Therein lies the problem.
Pledging, “Under God,” or under anything at all, even refusing to stand! like me, those who have been taught to questioning authority? The act is repugnant.
Have you ever been ostracized and harassed?
I refused to pledge allegiance in middle school and high school in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
My parents taught me well.
Ironically, my homeroom teachers both taught history and I took a ruler on the knuckles or a slap on the head from time to time, just for not standing up while other recited “The Pledge.”
The purpose of the pledge seems to divides us all into the patriotic vs. the non-patriotic, the believers vs. the non-believers.
How to escape? While many in the Council Chambers stand to recite cobweb loyalties and factitious duties.
Some of us feel that pledging allegiance to the wall is unpatriotic, especially, when those leading the pledge have forgotten to uphold the “with liberty and justice for all” part.
The small “violations” of that pledge itself, camping tickets, curfews… are examples of a reoccurring problem of our Boulder City Council.
We’ve got a long way to go, baby.
Some of us feel we are going backwards.
Must we must support anything, however bad, because we were born or live in a particular place?
Why?
What is a pledge or promise of allegiance?
Curiously, such lessons in supposed good citizenship in the form of reciting a pledge of allegiance are rarely, iever, accompanied by deeper introspection.
So, it should be no surprise that reciting “The Pledge” has been proposed by members of the Boulder City Council.
What’s next?”
Seth Brigham
3383 Madison Avenue
W225
Boulder, Colorado
80303
720-298-6711
Seth Brigham is a sometime contributor to Boulder Channel 1 News
God bless Seth and God bless the United States of America