Escalated police stops of Black men are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments.

ABSTRACT: Across the United States, police chiefs, city officials, and community leaders alike have highlighted the need to de-escalate police encounters with the public. This concern about escalation extends from encounters involving use of force to routine car stops, where Black drivers are disproportionately pulled over. Yet, despite the calls for action, we know little about the trajectory of police stops or how escalation unfolds. In study 1, we use methods from computational linguistics to analyze police body-worn camera footage from 577 stops of Black drivers. We find that stops with escalated outcomes (those ending in arrest, handcuffing, or a search) diverge from stops without these outcomes in their earliest moments-even in the first 45 words spoken by the officer. In stops that result in

SUBMITTER: Rho EH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10266001 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature