Who Wears the Racist Pants?
What’s the Problem?
When I was fat and started losing weight, I wouldn’t get on the scales. My friends would ask, “but how do you know if you’re losing any weight?” I would simply reply, “pants don’t lie.”
As our nation is being torn apart by violence and anger, we desperately need to know what the problem is so we can fix it. There are a lot of armchair shrinks that all feel they know exactly what the problem is. “It’s clearly racism,” some say. Others, “No, it’s pride and sin.” And still others, “It’s the system.”
None of them have measured the pants.
There’s a big, unidentified problem, and no one has attempted to study it…that is, until today.
The Privacy Co-op funded such a research study that was balanced across sexual, racial, economic, and geographic lines, and where no outcome was presumed. We asked “causal” (root cause) questions; not those that lead to a desired outcome. And the results were eye-opening.
The Video
You can watch an engaging interview with NFL Great, Vernon Edwards (San Diego Chargers) where we reviewed the eye-opening findings from the following study here:
The Study
Q1: Have you ever felt wrongfully profiled by police?
Notice we didn’t predefine what any of the words mean. It was left up to the reader. But based upon the resulting anecdotal data the spirit of the meaning was universally understood. The answers allowed were Yes, No, and Yes (I would like to comment).
One might expect that this breaks down by racial lines, but it doesn’t. Surprised? White people have felt wrongfully profiled by police as well as minorities. There’s actually balanced representation within the positive data set. This suggests that while race may be a factor in some, or even most police misconduct, it is not uniform across all.
Q2: Would you feel uncomfortable going into a police station to register a civil complaint against a police officer?
While 75.9% of all police departments have websites, surprisingly not very many of those even have privacy policies. And while there are some that allow complaints by phone, the complainant is not the one writing down the information. The common path for the average person to effectively complain and that doesn’t require expensive equipment or legal representation is to just walk in a fill out a form.
Without speculation, we noticed the numbers started to form a cone. While around 30% had felt wrongfully profiled by police, 56.5% would feel uncomfortable going into a police station to register a complaint against an officer. There’s no minority in America that makes up 56.5%. Is this because it’s systemic? Or, perhaps some just don’t want to complain and think it would be a hassle?
To better understand the problem, we paused for a moment and asked questions specifically to those that felt they had been wrongfully profiled by police. How did you feel then vs. how do you feel now? Without presupposition, here is the picture worth a thousand words:
What we found out from this is that 50% of those who said Yes felt wrongfully profiled more than once with the average of 4 times over the past 7 years. For 30%, they have experienced this for 10 years or more. And a full 66% had not spoken with anyone they felt could a) actually do something about the problem and b) that took them seriously.
From that statistical platform, we dug into the emotions that the respondents felt at the time of the incident(s) vs. how they feel now. It’s more than a point of interest that the volatile emotions of anger and fear were shifted to the vitriolic emotions of sadness and bitterness.
A New Insight is Born
It is an accepted premise by some that, while fear and anger can certainly be a cause for individual bursts of lashing out, the deeper, more pressed-down emotions of sadness and bitterness can, when sparked, better fuel sustained group violence.
Building from this precept, we find from the numbers that 66% of that group felt unheard by anyone who empathized and could do something about it — a fact that relates to this emotion shift.
Where’s a Solution?
Would people across the spectrum, those who have felt wrongly profiled by police as well as those who haven’t, intuitively know the solution and would they utilize it if it were available?
Q3: If a trusted 3rd party non-profit could take your complaint, keep a dated record, and give it to the proper authorities for you at no charge, would you feel more comfortable registering a police complaint?
Wow! The statistics really start to show an inverted cone. What do we mean by that? Well, while only 30% might have experienced it, 56.5% understand the discomfort with reporting it in person at a police station, a full 75% would utilize such a complaint feature.
In other words, you would expect the numbers to start at 30% and go down from there as smaller groups contained within the 30% would agree with a more narrowed scope. But in this case, the numbers flare out.
Such a cone can represent either a suppressed first number where more people felt wrongfully profiled than would admit on a survey where they are suspicious of an engineered outcome that may challenge some world view that they may have, or it could mean that while it hasn’t happened to them personally, they can walk a mile in the other person’s shoes.
Q4: Would you tell friends and family about such a complaint feature?
Holy Wow-cow! The cone is really flaring. People share information with others motivated by many factors. Chief among them are relaying something that is deeply personal to them, or relaying something that is deeply personal to the audience. Either it’s happened to them, or it’s happened to someone they know and they feel the information will help.
Q5: How likely would you use such a feature today to report a wrongful police action from your past? (scale provided was 0–10).
The slider provided to the subject was labeled 0–10.
Percentage wise, the average subject selected 9.4 out of 10 that they would personally use such a tool today to report a wrongful police action from the past.
The cone is complete, and the pants fit.
Results for Action
People have experienced what they feel to be wrongful profiling by police — half of them multiple times and for most it’s been happening seven years or longer. Two thirds of them haven’t had a chance to tell someone who can a) actually do something about it and b) actually cares.
Over time, their emotions shift from the immediacy of fear/anger to the deeper and more vitriolic sadness/bitterness. Once sparked, these deeper emotions can fuel even long-lived group violence.
What would happen if we put in place the proposed 3rd party non-profit complaint feature?
Our Solution for Action
Based on the numbers, and the identified solution that people need to be heard by someone that a) takes them seriously and b) can do something about it, the Privacy Co-op has acted.
Our job from Day 1 has been to serve people who feel their information is being exploited by large entities. We help give them a voice in how their information can be used by businesses. We have extended this now to government agencies, including police.
It’s what we do.
We have updated our database with a list of all police precincts and departments. If you search for one that isn’t there, our automation will find it and add it within a day or two.
When you search for your police department, we will show you how their privacy policy (if they have one) scores as compared to all other industries, and how you can opt-out of their using your personal data for secondary purposes.
You will find on their Star Card a button marked, “Complain”. If you fill out a Civic complaint, we will keep a dated record, and give it to the proper authorities for you at no charge.
Are you among the 75% that feel more comfortable to use our complaint feature to finally have someone listen to you that cares and is doing something about it?
Will you be among the 86.5% that tells your family and friends about the Privacy Co-op’s complaint feature?
How likely will you be to use such a feature today to report a wrongful police action from your past? 4.7 out of 5?
Well… if the pants fit… wear ’em.
