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Officers already get training to deal with biases they may not know they have, but there's no evidence it actually works

Officers already get training to deal with biases they may not know they have, but there's no evidence it actually works

Rhea Mahbubani

The police killing of George Floyd has shined a spotlight on police practices and prompted conversations about reform.
A common tactic for addressing racism at organizations is implicit-bias training, but studies have found that the program doesn't change people's behaviors.
Today's police departments were born out of slave patrols, so fear and otherness have long played a role in law enforcement.
Experts told Insider that police training wrongly prioritizes use-of-force techniques over de-escalation tactics and that police forces should recruit more widely and emphasize community relations.

In his final moments, on May 25, a handcuffed George Floyd pleaded for breath and called out to his deceased mother while three Minneapolis policemen pinned him to the road, their knees digging into his neck and back.

This gut-wrenching visual was captured on camera and horrified millions of people, sending shockwaves around the globe that sparked an uprising for justice, a racial reckoning, and an intervention for police practices.

Part of that conversation includes implicit-bias training for police officers. The goal of the training is to get people to confront their underlying prejudices and change the way they do their jobs.

So if police officers were out on patrol and spotted someone acting suspiciously, the training would hopefully kick in and give them the "introspective capability" to reexamine their perceptions and reactions, Jacinta Gau, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida, told Insider. It's a technique that's been implemented in trainings in police departments and across corporate America.

The only problem? Evidence says it doesn't work.

Studies have found that implicit-bias training doesn't change people's behaviors

Gau said that while the effectiveness of existing implicit-bias training programs was still largely unknown, she's skeptical that a few hours of training is enough to "magically dissipate" biases that have developed over people's lifetimes.

"I would be surprised if these programs yielded strong, lasting changes in police behavior, because biases and stereotypes are so ingrained in people's minds that it is not realistic to think a single training would result in significant reductions in bias," Gau said.

"Even if there are positive impacts on officers' attitudes, that still does not automatically translate into changes in behavior," she added.

Such programs could make an impact if they were incorporated into both academy and in-service trainings. But, Gau said, "this is an open question."

Dave Bicking, the vice president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, believes implicit-bias training is a toothless strategy for reform. He's labeled it an "unscientific fraud."

"It's something that looks nice, something that makes it look like a police department is doing what it needs to do — and at the same time, it's not actually going to threaten any entrenched interests or cause any significant change in policing," Bicking told Insider.

Bicking said the training workshops served as a "propaganda function" that lets "police officers off the hook," because we all have implicit biases.

The CUAPB presented testimony to the US Commission on Civil Rights in Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2017, which was documented in a report titled "Civil Rights and Policing Practices in Minnesota."

"Currently, research indicates that implicit bias training can be extremely effective in the short-term, however the issue is that it does not have lasting effects," the report said.

This was echoed by a 2017 meta-analysis of 492 studies that found that reducing implicit bias did not alter people's behavior. "Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior," the authors of the analysis wrote.

In 2016, the Harvard Business Review explored diversity programs and anti-bias trainings and concluded that "while people are easily taught to respond correctly to a questionnaire about bias, they soon forget the right answers."

"The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two," the report said, "and a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash."

'There are 2 things that the police do really, really well in this country: They detain, and they use force'

Lorenzo Boyd, the director of the Center for Advanced Policing at the University of New Haven, said that implicit-bias training is not top of mind when officers respond to alleged threats because their reactions stem from warrior training.

"Police self-identify as warriors," he said. "The thinking is 'We've got to find the bad guy, we've got to fight evil,' as opposed to 'We're supposed to serve the community, and we're supposed to help people.'"

They've tasked themselves with prioritizing law enforcement, Boyd said, even though that's only one part of their jobs — alongside administrative tasks, providing services to the communities where they work, conducting investigations, and responding to emergency calls.

The issue lies in police training. Defensive techniques — including firearms, deadly force, pursuit, hand-to-hand combat, Tasers, high-risk stops, and arrest and control — are emphasized over de-escalation techniques, Boyd said.

And 34 states don't even require in-service de-escalation training, according to Apex Officer, a company that provides virtual-reality training technology to law enforcement, military, and first responders.

That's why police officers "revert back to what's natural for them" in the face of potential danger, said Boyd, who worked for Massachusetts' Suffolk County Sheriff's Department for 14 years.

"When police are in a stressful situation and the adrenaline is going, they rely on muscle memory, they rely on what they train on the most," he added. "If you're spending 300 hours on police tactics and eight hours on de-escalation, if there's a conflict, you're going to go back to what you learned, and many of those are aggressive tactics."

Boyd likened the situation to learning how to cook a certain dish one time and then not hearing about it until a few months later when you're suddenly asked to cook it. Chances are, he said, you won't be able to recall the recipe.

"Every quarter, police receive in-service training on physical restraint and how to use a gun," he said. "So there are two things that the police do really, really well in this country: They detain, and they use force. Those are the things that they train on the most."

Gau said that "high-liability topics," such as use of force, can seriously harm suspects and "are obviously a very big deal." It's appropriate to expect proficiency in those areas because "we certainly want our police officers to be able to hit a target," she added.

However, "the lack of attention to de-escalation, non-escalation, and verbal persuasion tactics leaves officers inadequately equipped to effectively diffuse a tense situation," she said. "They might not know or not know very well how to handle a suspect who is getting agitated and how to calm that person down and prevent a use-of-force situation from ever happening."

Police prejudice against Black people goes back hundreds of years

Boyd said that fear and otherness also play a large role in policing.

"We're training the police that citizens are potentially the enemy," Boyd said. "It's the 'us versus them' scenario. That's why police have moved away from their policing and guardian roles into their law-enforcement and warrior roles."

Bicking agreed.

"Warrior training is particularly corrosive because it teaches officers that everybody is a threat," he said. "Of course, if you look at everybody as a threat until you find out otherwise, you're more likely to use force a lot sooner. But also, if everyone is a threat and you spend far more time patrolling in communities of color, those are the people who you see as a threat."

That narrative continues to play out in Minneapolis and its suburbs.

The New York Times found last week that nearly 60% of the city's police officers' use-of-force incidents targeted Black citizens, though they make up only 20% of the population.

Training may not be enough

In Gau's view, training is essential, but "we cannot train our way out of the current problems."

She suggested that police departments recruit from their local communities and make efforts to include people of color and minority communities in that group.

"Cadet programs can get teens involved in the department and start them on the path toward eventually becoming sworn officers," Gau said. "Establishing relationships with Black clergy can be a productive way for police to improve their image as well, and possibly reach out to Black youth."

She added: "Officers should seize every opportunity to engage with community members of color in a positive way, whether that means the agency formalizes a foot-patrol program or whether it means an officer decides to take a daily coffee break in a local café owned by a businessperson of color."

Building relationships and trust and having meaningful conversations can help both the police and the public, she said.

Gau proposed that police agencies change their beat assignments to ensure that experienced officers are taking the most difficult assignments instead of handing them to rookies.

"It is common for new officers to be assigned to the most challenging neighborhoods (frequently on night shifts), which means the least-experienced officers are handling extremely delicate situations," she wrote in an email. "Agencies that use this assignment method should switch to a more methodical strategy that would result in experienced officers with demonstrated interpersonal skills working these areas."

Ultimately, Gau said, the way police are trained sends "a subtle message about priorities."

"It communicates to recruits what a police agency values and what their fellow officers are going to value," she said. "And what we want is an incentive structure that rewards officers for avoiding fights, not just for winning fights."