168 public administration review • march april 2017 publi

168 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 77, Iss. 2, pp. 168–178. © 2016 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12702.
Beyond Profiling:
The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing
Donald Haider-Markel is professor
and chair of political science at the
University of Kansas. His research and
teaching is focused on the representation
of interests in the policy process and the
dynamics between public opinion, political
behavior, and public policy.
E-mail: [email protected]
Steven Maynard-Moody is professor
in the School of Public Affairs and

Administration and director of the Institute
for Policy and Social Research at the
University of Kansas. He is coauthor, with
Charles Epp and Donald Haider-Markel, of
Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race
and Citizenship (University of Chicago,
2014). With Michael Musheno, his current
research and writing extends the theoretical
frame first expressed in their book Cops,
Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the
Front Lines of Public Service (University of
Michigan Press, 2003).
Charles R. Epp is University
Distinguished Professor in the School
of Public Affairs and Administration at
the University of Kansas. He is author of
three books published by the University
of Chicago Press, including Making Rights
Real (2009) on police reform and Pulled
Over: How Police Stops Define Race and
Citizenship (2014), with the coauthors of
this article, on racial disparities in police

stops.
Abstract : American policing faces a crisis of legitimacy. A
key source of this crisis is a widespread police practice
commonly endorsed by police leaders to fight crime. This is the
investigatory stop, used to check out people who seem
suspicious and to seize illegal drugs and guns and make arrests.
Using data from an original scientific survey of
drivers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the authors show
that racial disparities in police stops are concentrated
in investigatory vehicle stops. In these stops, but not others,
officers disproportionately stop African Americans and
question and search them. The overwhelming majority of people
stopped in this way are innocent, and the experience
causes psychological harm and erodes trust in and cooperation
with the police. Many of the most controversial police
shootings during the past two years occurred in these stops.
Reforming this practice is an essential step toward restoring
trust in the police.
Practitioner Points
• Although evidence of their effectiveness is not clear,
investigatory police stops (commonly using minor
violations as a pretext for a more searching inquiry) are widely
used by local police departments as a crime-
fighting tactic.
• Most people stopped in investigatory stops are innocent, yet
they are subjected to intrusive questioning
(e.g., “Why are you in the neighborhood?”) and searches,
leading to feelings of fear and of being “violated.”
• Overuse of investigatory police stops erodes trust in, and
cooperation with, the police, especially among

African Americans, who are especially likely to be stopped.
• There is insufficient oversight of the practice, as many
investigatory stops yield no citation and so are not
presently recorded or reported.
• To enable oversight of this practice, law enforcement
agencies should require officers to record and report all
stops they make, including the race and ethnicity of the driver
and whether a warning or citation is issued;
these data should be analyzed to check for patterns of racial
disparity. Surveys of satisfaction with police
services should include questions regarding residents’
experiences in police stops, including stops for minor
violations.
Charles R. Epp
Steven Maynard-Moody
Donald Haider-Markel
University of Kansas
Policing in the United States is in crisis, a “perfect storm” of
popular protest and media coverage of egregious violations
(Weitzer
2015 , 475). Since the protests in Ferguson,
Missouri, over the shooting death of Michael
Brown on August 9, 2014, protests have erupted
in Baltimore, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Chicago,
Cleveland, Los Angeles, Madison, Minneapolis-St.
Paul, New York City, Oakland, St. Louis, Tulsa, and
such smaller places as Hempstead, Texas; North
Charleston, South Carolina; Pasco, Washington; and
Stonewall, Mississippi. The relationship between the
police and these communities, so essential to public
safety and the rights and dignity of members of the
public, is strained, if not broken. Nor is the problem

isolated locally. A recent national survey found
that 84 percent of African Americans believe that
blacks are treated less fairly by the police than whites
(Stepler 2016 ).
Official mechanisms of police accountability have
been mobilized. Eighteen individual officers were
criminally indicted for police killings in 2015, the
last year for which data are available, roughly triple
the number in past years (Babwin 2015 ; Wing 2015 ).
The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted formal
investigations in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago,
on top of several others begun before the events in
Ferguson. Several prominent police chiefs, including
Baltimore police commissioner Anthony Batts,
Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy, and
San Francisco police chief Gregory P. Suhr, as well
as a series of chiefs in Oakland, have been fired. The
Barack Obama administration convened a high-level
Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial
Disparities in Policing 169
task force to suggest reforms of the problems of police violence
and police-community conflict (President ’ s Task Force on 21st
Century Policing 2015 ). In all, police departments, and the
local
governments they represent, are under mounting pressure to do
something.
But what is the problem, and what should be done about it?
Answers to these questions cluster into two broad types. One is
that

these tensions reflect the persistence of racist attitudes (whether
intentional or implicit) among too many individual police
officers.
These individual-level biases, it is said, lead some officers to
unfairly
stop African American drivers or unnecessarily escalate the use
of
force when dealing with African American suspects. Locating
the
problem in individual beliefs or attitudes leads to reforms aimed
at
training officers away from acting on these beliefs or attitudes.
This
perspective is supported by a large body of psychological
research and
expressed in the efforts of major U.S. police professional
associations
and the Obama administration ’ s Task Force on 21st Century
Policing
to favor better training and control of individual frontline
officers
(President ’ s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015 ).
Although part of the problem surely is errant individual
officers, this
diagnosis and remedy misses how some of policing ’ s
institutional
structures and practices contribute to racial discrimination. Put
simply, the problem is not errant individual
officers alone but official policy and practice
more broadly. In this article, we focus on
these policies and practices and how they
contribute to racial disparities in who is
stopped, searched, and arrested. In doing so,
we join a growing body of scholarship on the
institutional sources of racial disparities (Ward

and Rivera 2014 ). Thus, there is growing
research on how institutionalized practices
in education contribute to racial disparities
in educational outcomes (see, e.g., Lucas 1999 , 2001 ).
Health care
research reveals that racial disparities in health outcomes grow
not
only from economic and geographic variations in access to
health
care but also from institutionalized practices related to
diagnosis
and treatment (see, e.g., Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2002 ).
We will
argue that the current crisis in American policing is caused as
much
by standard police enforcement practices at the institutional
level as
by individual-level deviations from accepted standards.
Specifically, we argue that the investigatory police stop is a
key source
of racial disparities in police enforcement and a key source of
African Americans’ distrust of the police. An investigatory stop
is
a stop of a driver (or pedestrian) that is made not to enforce
traffic
laws, vehicle codes, or the laws governing pedestrian activity
but to
check out people (or vehicles) who look suspicious. Is this
driver
carrying a gun or illegal drugs? What is he up to? Why is he in
this neighborhood? Is there a warrant for his arrest? Stops for
these
purposes are made “proactively,” meaning they are made not on
the
basis of an observed violation but on a more inchoate suspicion:

officers are to stop people to find out whether they are doing
something wrong.
We will show that investigatory stops are a deep source of
frustration and indignation among those who are stopped. We
will
also argue that the practice of investigatory stops has become so
frequently employed and so widespread that it is now a
significant
source of distrust in the police, especially among African
Americans.
We will further argue that recognizing these facts offers
promise of
a more effective reform program than the psychological
explanation
alone. The psychological approach to police reform views the
problem as the “manner” by which officers carry out
investigatory
stops, meaning how politely they carry them out, not that they
carry
them out so frequently (Stuntz 2002 , 2174, reflecting the
research
of Tyler 2001 ; see esp. Tyler and Wakslak 2004 ). The
psychological
approach thus favors reforms aimed at training officers to
improve
their manners: to be more respectful in carrying out these stops.
Although people who are stopped by the police appreciate being
treated respectfully, our data reveal that people who are stopped
for investigatory purposes resent the experience even if the
officer is
impeccably polite.
The problem, in other words, is the investigatory stop itself,
not (only) officers who are carrying it out improperly; it is an

institutional problem, not merely an individual problem. In
recent
decades, investigatory stops have become one of professional
policing ’ s leading crime-fighting tactics, widely and
frequently
deployed in communities across the country. Yet, as we will
show,
this tactic harms the people who are stopped even when the
officers
who do it follow the best training protocols.
This harm and the distrust it produces falls
disproportionately on racial minorities, as
most of the people stopped in this way are
African Americans and Latinos.
Presently, many police departments encourage
their officers to make investigatory stops
to fight crime yet carry out little oversight
of whether these stops have the harmful
effects we document here. As the Justice
Department ’ s report on the Baltimore Police Department
observed,
the likelihood of constitutional violations and harm to good
police–
community relations is greater where, as in Baltimore, a police
department “does not collect reliable data on stops and
searches,
has no mechanism for identifying patterns or trends in its
officers’
stops, searches, and arrests, and conducts little substantive
review of
officers’ reasons for taking particular enforcement actions”
(2016,
26–27).

Thus, a final implication of our analysis is that evaluating
police
performance only in relation to crime rates and crime-clearance
rates is shortsighted in that public trust in the police is affected
as
much by people ’ s experiences in police stops. These stops are
often
people ’ s most direct (and often viscerally powerful)
experience of
the police. Police departments should gather data on them, and
city governments should exercise oversight of the practice.
When
city governments survey their constituents about their
perceptions
of police services (see Alfred Tat-Kai Ho and Wonhyuk Cho in
this issue) without asking about experiences in police stops,
they
are likely to miss the single most substantial influence on these
attitudes.
We proceed as follows: We first summarize the social scientific
literature on investigatory stops. We then summarize our
research
Although part of the problem
surely is errant individual offi c-
ers, this diagnosis and remedy
misses how some of policing’s
institutional structures and
practices contribute to racial
discrimination.

on how, in the 1980s and 1990s, police leaders developed and
refined the practice of investigatory stops and how this practice
has been widely adopted by police departments as a key crime-
fighting tactic. Then we summarize our data, reported elsewhere
(Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ), showing
that
investigatory stops are the key source of racial disparities in
who is
stopped by the police, who is subjected to intrusive questioning
and
searches during stops, and in people ’ s trust in the police.
This article builds on our analysis of these issues in Pulled
Over:
How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship
(2014). Here, we go beyond our analysis
in that book by arguing that widespread
investigatory stops of African Americans and
Latinos contribute directly to the present crisis
in American policing. Until the police accept
this basic truth and rein in this practice, the
current crisis is unlikely to be fully resolved.
Past Studies of Investigatory Police Stops
Past studies of investigatory stops typically have focused on
one or
the other of two types of these stops: stops of pedestrians
(“stop-
and-frisks”) and stops of vehicles. Pedestrian stop-and-frisks
were
authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio (392
U.S. 1
[1968]) and are inherently investigatory, meaning that their

essential
purpose is to see whether the person who is stopped is engaged
in criminality. As John A. Eterno, Christine S. Barrow, and Eli
B.
Silverman (in this issue) observe, these stops provoke
widespread
frustration among the people subjected to them. Although
Floyd
v. New York (959 F. Supp. 2d 540 [2013]) struck down that
city ’ s
widespread use of stop-and-frisk as racially discriminatory,
Terry ’s
central holding remains valid law—and stop-and-frisks are still
widely used throughout the country.
If stop-and-frisks are inherently investigatory, vehicle stops, by
contrast, include both standard stops to enforce traffic safety,
which
are generally not aimed at criminal investigation, and
investigatory
stops, which, like stop-and-frisks, are to check out the driver
for
criminal activity. Both types of vehicle stops are based on sta te
statutes governing driving and the condition of vehicles. The
U.S.
Supreme Court in Whren v. U.S. (517 U.S. 806 [1996]) ruled
that
stops justified by minor traffic violations may be used as a
pretext
for a criminal investigation.
Although major U.S. police departments require officers to
report
stop-and-frisks as a distinct activity, they typically do not do so
regarding investigatory vehicle stops, treating them instead as
simply

a vehicle stop like any other. Thus, while there are
administrative
data on pedestrian stop-and-frisks, only rarely are
investigatory
vehicle stops specifically identified in administrative data.
This
difference in reporting requirements may reflect the legal
differences
between pedestrian and vehicle stops.
These dissimilarities in law and administrative data have led to
differences in how scholars have studied these two types of
stops (of
pedestrians versus of vehicles). With widely available
administrative
data on stop-and-frisks, there are excellent studies of racial bias
in
these stops (see, e.g., Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007 ). By
contrast,
the vast majority of studies of racial bias in vehicle stops have
not
conceptualized investigatory stops as a distinct type of vehicle
stop
(see, e.g., Lundman and Kaufman 2003 ; Petrocelli, Piquero,
and
Smith 2002 ; Smith and Petrocelli 2001 ; Tillyer and Engel
2013 ).
As a consequence, most studies of vehicle stops implicitly view
racial disparities in these stops not as a product of a pol ice
policy to
encourage investigatory stops but as the result of individual
officers’
discretionary choices about whom to stop. For example, Tillyer
and
Engel ( 2013 ) advance a “social conditioning” (i.e.,

psychological)
model of the sources of racial disparities in vehicle stops.
These differences between the studies of
pedestrian versus vehicle stops also have led
to somewhat diverse estimates of the depth
of racial disparities in the two types of stops.
Substantial racial disparities are found in
administrative data on pedestrian stop-and-
frisks. Thus, Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss ( 2007 ,
819–20), studying pedestrian stops in New
York City and controlling for precinct-level
variations in racial demographics and crime rates, found that
African
Americans and Hispanics were stopped 2.5 times and 1.9 times,
respectively, more than whites when the officer was
investigating a
violent crime and 1.8 and 1.6 times, respectively, more than
whites
when the officer was investigating a weapons violation.
By contrast, past studies of vehicle stops have reported racial
disparities that, while significant, are in our view muddied by
the
difficulty of using administrative data to distinguish
investigatory
vehicle stops from other types of vehicle stops. For example,
Tillyer
and Engel ( 2013 ), studying all vehicle stops made by a large
Ohio
police agency, found that young black men were 1.3 times more
likely than all other drivers to be issued a warning but
somewhat
less likely to be issued a citation. This difference is consistent
with

the hypothesis that stops of young black men are more likely to
be
made to investigate the driver for serious criminality (and then
to
release them with a warning for a minor violation) than to
sanction
him for a more serious traffic violation. Still, the degree of
racial
disparity is markedly less than found in studies of pedestrian
stops
in which the investigatory stop-and-frisk is sharply delineated
in
the administrative data. As we will show, clearly distinguishing
investigatory and traffic safety stops yields estimates of the
racial
disparity in investigatory stops that are remarkably similar to
those
found in studies of pedestrian stop-and-frisks.
Our Contribution: Investigatory Stops as an
Institutionalized Practice
Our research goes beyond earlier studies by conceptualizing
investigatory stops as a distinct type of vehicle stop, by
developing
a measure of its prevalence, and then by studying the effects of
this type of stop on the attitudes of the people who are stopped
in this way. Central to these advances is our conceptualization
of
investigatory vehicle stops as a distinct institutionalized
practice. By
this we mean that the investigatory stop has become a
commonly
structured police practice that, while not required by any
specific
official policy, is supported and legitimated by rules, training,
and

law and has spread widely to become a commonly accepted
activity.
We developed the concept of an institutionalized practice to
help
make sense of why police departments widely deploy
investigatory
Widespread investigatory stops
of African Americans and
Latinos contribute directly to
the present crisis in American
policing.
Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial
Disparities in Policing 171
vehicle stops even though there is no common federal mandate
to do
so and police departments are governed locally. The structure of
U.S.
policing is generally thought to ensure variation from
department to
department rather than commonality: the police are divided
among
tens of thousands of local agencies and dozens of state agencies.
These myriad agencies operate under no common legal regime
other
than the constitutional law of criminal procedure. In spite of
this
common overarching legal regime, local political control is said
to

pull police departments in widely varying directions.
Nonetheless, police departments increasingly have adopted
common
organizational policies and practices (Epp 2009 ; Walker
1993 ), and
we believe the investigatory stop is one such common practice.
Our
own research in the Kansas City metropolitan area documented
the
widespread deployment of investigatory stops among police
agencies
throughout that metropolitan area (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and
Haider-Markel 2014 ). The police training manuals that we
relied
on in our book to illustrate this practice drew advice and
guidance
from police departments of virtually every size in all regions of
the
country (2014, 22–23). Recent ethnographic studies that follow
up
on our research observe investigatory stops in many
jurisdictions
in North Carolina (Coleman and Stuesse 2015 ) and in
Nashville,
Tennessee (Armenta 2016a , 2016b ). The recent official
report on
problems in the Chicago police department observes high
numbers
of investigatory stops, especially of African Americans, in that
city
(Police Accountability Task Force 2016 ). Our analysis of
official
publications of the International Association of Chiefs of Police
documents widespread support among police agencies for using
investigatory vehicle stops as a crime-fighting tactic (Epp,

Maynard-
Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 , 36). In sum, there is
considerable
evidence of convergence among police agencies in training and
directing their officers to carry out investigatory stops. We do
not
claim that every police department in the United States directs
its officers to carry out investigatory stops. Rather, we claim
that
investigatory stops are widely deployed by many police
departments
of all sizes in all regions of the country and indeed are viewed
as
a “best practice,” by which we mean that police leaders view
this
practice as professionally vetted and effective.
Our concept of institutionalized practices draws on
neoinstitutional
theory to explain such a convergence among diverse police
agencies.
Neoinstitutional theory helps explain how separate
organizations
operating in a shared institutional field like policing often come
to adopt common practices (DiMaggio and
Powell 1983 ; Dobbin and Sutton 1998 ;
Edelman 1992 ; March and Olsen 1984 ). The
general lesson of these studies is that common
institutionalized practices emerge from the
sharing of ideas through professional networks
rather than from official mandates. Over time,
these practices take on “value beyond the
technical requirements of the task at hand” (Selznick 1957 ,
17). Put
another way, institutionalized practices come to be viewed not
only

as effective but as professionally right, proper, and lawful.
Through
these processes of institutionalization, many diverse
organizations
in different legal jurisdictions come to have similar
organizational
structures and foster similar practices (DiMaggio and Powell
1983 ; Epp 2009 ; Garrow and Grusky 2012 ; Maynard-
Moody and
Musheno 2015 ).
Evidence of the widespread use of investigatory stops dates to
the
landmark studies of policing conducted in the wake of the 1960s
urban riots. The Kerner Commission, appointed by President
Lyndon B. Johnson, reported that the riots grew out of urban
poverty and residents’ intense resentment of police stops and
searches (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
1968 ). The commission reported that investigatory police
stops
and searches were widely used in the cities that experienced
riots and that resentment over these stops triggered many of the
riots. Thus, the San Diego police had conducted from 20,000 to
40,000 stop-and-frisks per month, particularly in African
American
neighborhoods (Lohman and Misner 1966 , 127–34). A survey
of
citizens in 15 cities that had experienced riots found that while
6
percent of whites reported that police had frisked or searched
them
without a good reason, 22 percent of African Americans
reported
this experience (Campbell and Schuman 1969 , table IV).
The riots of the 1960s were, in part, uprisings against the

practice
of aggressive police stops. Many police departments certainly
viewed
them in this way and responded by backing away from their
official
commitment to aggressive stops. In the wake of that shift,
studies
of policing in urban neighborhoods in the 1970s described
random
police patrols—but without the widespread aggressive stops of
the
1960s (Anderson 1978 ; Williams 1992 ).
Investigatory stops were reinvented after 1978 in a remarkable
burst of activity. It began with James Q. Wilson and Barbara
Boland ’ s call for police departments to revive what they
termed
“aggressive patrol”: “maximize[ing] the number of interventions
in and observations of the community,” or, in other words,
stopping and searching as many drivers as possible, “especially
suspicious ones” (1978, 370–73). The federal government ’ s
“war
on drugs” brought this recommendation to fruition. Operation
Pipeline, a key initiative of the Drug Enforcement Agency in
the
1980s, trained state and local police nationwide to use
pretextual
traffic stops as a means to question and search large numbers
of drivers for illegal drugs (Harris 2002 ; Webb 1999 ).
Training
films identified Hispanics and African Americans as more likely
to be carrying drugs (Webb 1999 ). By the late 1990s, the
DEA
reportedly had trained some 27,000 state and local police
officers
in the practice of pretextual stops, and many of these officers

went on to train others (Allen-Bell 1997 ; Harris 2002 , 48–
51).
In the 1990s, the police stop methods honed in the war on drugs
expanded into an effort to get guns off the
street (Sherman and Rogan 1995 ; Sherman,
Shaw, and Rogan 1995 ; Wilson 1994 ). In
“hot spots” policing, another initiative of
the 1990s, police were taught to focus their
proactive stops on high-crime locations
(Clarke and Weisburd 1994 ; Sherman,
Buerger, and Gartin 1989 ; Sherman, Gartin,
and Buerger 1989 ; Weisburd and Mazerolle 2000 ). Around
the
same time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) ( 1995 ) began encouraging police departments to
use traffic stops as an all-purpose crime-control tool. NHTSA ’
s
ongoing DDACTS program—Data-Driven Approaches to Crime
and Traffic Safety—is the current instantiation of the agency ’ s
long-standing support for using investigatory stops to suppress
crime (NHTSA 2014 ).
Institutionalized practices come
to be viewed not only as eff ec-
tive but as professionally right,
proper, and lawful.
The U.S. Supreme Court has lent constitutional legitimacy to
the practice. Its landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio (1968)

upheld
stop-and-frisks of pedestrians. In 1996, in another landmark
case, Whren v. U.S., the Court unanimously upheld the
practice
of pretextual vehicle stops made for the purpose of questioning
a driver or searching a vehicle, so long as the officer has a legal
justification for stopping the vehicle. The Court ’ s only caveat
was
that officers may not use a driver ’ s perceived race as the sole
basis
for making an investigatory stop, a prohibition that is
technically
important but practically meaningless as it is virtually
impossible
to enforce. In the wake of Whren, the Court extended police
powers to stop and search vehicles in a series of key decisions
( Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 [1998]; Wyoming v.
Houghton,
526 U.S. 295 [1999]; United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266
[2002]).
The legal and policy commitments favoring investigatory stops
are translated into practice through training, and this has
become
systematic, enthusiastic, and detailed. In the authoritative and
widely used Tactics for Criminal Patrol, Charles Remsberg
teaches
officers to use traffic stops “to maximize the number of citizen
contacts in vehicle stops during each shift and, through specific
investigative techniques, to explore the full arrest potential of
each” (1995, 9). The text guides officers through a series of
sequential steps that form what Remsberg ( 1995 , 9) called
the
“Criminal Patrol Pyramid,” summarized in table 1 . As a
federal
judge observed in Ligon v. City of New York (S.D.N.Y., Index

No.
12 CIV 2274 [2013], 131), the New York police department ’ s
training in how to conduct stop-and-frisks “has taught officers
the following lesson: Stop and question first, develop
reasonable
suspicion later.”
In sum, investigatory stops are an institutionalized
practice.
Although not required by any common statute, many of the
country ’ s myriad local police departments have come to favor
this practice. …
1
Chapter 6
Newspapers and the News:
Reflections of a Democratic Society
2
When Is It News That an Entire City
Is Being Poisoned By Its Water Supply?
City of Flint, Mich., had high levels of lead in its water after
changing from lake to river water
Local journalists say they were slow to respond because
officials said water was ok
But local journalists eventually drove the story to receive
national attention
3

Hanson, Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
National journalists saw it as heartland story, followed national
stories instead
Communities depend on local journalism for news about
important local occurrences
When Is It News That an Entire City
Is Being Poisoned By Its Water Supply?
4
Early Newspapers
1618: Curanto, published in Amsterdam, is first English-
language newspaper
1622: newspapers being published in Britain, distributed
through coffeehouses
Followers of church reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther
among earliest publishers
5
5
Colonial Publishing
1690: Publick Occurrences, first paper published in American
colonies
Colonial newspapers subject to British censorship
6

6
Colonial Publishing
1721: New England Courant
Published by James Franklin, Ben’s older brother
First paper published without “By Authority” notice; James sent
to prison for doing so, Ben takes over publishing paper
7
7
Early American Newspapers
Audience primarily wealthy elite
Published by political parties
Focused on opinion, not news
Expensive and had small circulation
Generally bought by prepaid subscription
8
8
Penny Press Revolution
Benjamin Day’s idea: The New York Sun – “It shines for all”

Sold on the street for one or two cents
Supported primarily by advertising
9
9
Penny Press Revolution
First papers to shift focus on news
Journalistic objectivity developed as a way to appeal to larger
audiences
Rise of working class supported penny press growth
10
10
A Modern Democratic Society
Rapidly growing number of papers
Growing number of people working for wages
U.S. transforming from rural to urban society
Expanding interest in national and global events
Newspapers promoted democratic market society
People acquire the news “habit”
11

11
Newspaper Wars: Hearst vs. Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World
Creation of the front page
Often staged sensational stunts
Created headlines with news
Targeting immigrants and women
Nellie Bly and stunt journalism
12
12
Newspaper Wars: Hearst vs. Pulitzer
William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal
Rise of yellow journalism
Popularized comics, including Yellow Kid
Sensationalistic stories by both papers promoting Spanish-
American War in Cuba
13
13
Tabloids

Smaller format newspapers written in a lively, often
sensationalistic, style
Tabloid “jazz journalism” era
New York Daily News and New York Post
Racy London tabloids
14
14
Broadcast News – Radio
1920: KDKA covers Harding-Cox presidential election results
1930s: newspapers argue radio should not broadcast news
WW II: Edward R. Murrow broadcasting for CBS from Europe.
Brought the war home for listeners
www.youtube.com/watch?v=clKaP5YCB8k
15
15
Broadcast News – Television
1940: republican national convention covered by experimental
NBC television network
Murrow makes jump from radio to television
1948: CBS starts nightly 15-minute newscast
1963: CBS expands newscast to 30 minutes with Walter
Cronkite
1979: ABC starts Nightline during Iranian hostage crisis
16

16
Broadcast News – Cable
1980: CNN goes on the air, promises not to sign off until the
“end of the world”
1991: Gulf War makes CNN the place to go for current news
2000s: Fox News comes to dominate the cable news ratings with
programming that takes a strong point of view
As of 2017, approximately 50% of Americans get news from
television in some form
17
17
Newspapers Today
Few cities have competing daily newspapers
Most newspapers owned by large chains
Largest chain is Gannett, publisher of USA Today; owns
approximately 83 daily papers
Advertising revenue fell by two-thirds over last ten years
NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Chicago
Tribune all have rapidly growing digital circulation
18

18
Papers with National Reach:
Wall Street Journal
Traditional look with focus on financial news
Owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp
Combined digital/print daily circulation of approximately 2.27
million
Editorial page is one of nation’s leading conservative voices
19
19
USA Today
Brought color and design to forefront
Originally described as having “News McNuggets”
Has daily digital/print circulation of 4.14 million
USA Today considers itself a “multi-platform news and
information media company”
20
20
New York Times

Started as penny paper
Influential in defining national news
Although tied to New York, has national circulation
Massive growth in online digital circulation
21
21
Washington Post
Came to national prominence with Watergate reporting of
Woodward and Bernstein
Prominent source of government news
Much larger national presence online under leadership of new
owner Jeff Bezos
22
22
Los Angeles Times
Leading West Coast paper
Gaining national profile with online presence
Won fight with Disney when media giant tried to cut LA Times

off from movie screenings. Paper ran negative stories about
Disney’s financial relationship with city of Anaheim (where
Disneyland is located)
23
23
Objectivity and the View From Nowhere
Multiple meanings for objectivity: just-the-facts, “both sides,”
reporting what is true without contrasting point of view
Objectivity as a goal came from era of the penny press to
improve sales
Too often objectivity means “what I agree with”
“View From Nowhere” means journalists avoid taking sides so
as to appear unbiased
24
Implications of View From Nowhere
By placing journalists between extremes of left and right they
can all themselves balanced
Because journalists are balanced, they are not biased
Because they are not biased, journalists are being legitimate
reporters
Rosen suggests that reporters should focus on being
“transparent.” Let audience understand point of view of
journalist and present all the evidence
25

Community and Suburban Papers
Daily and weekly papers serving individual communities and
suburbs
97% of newspapers in U.S. fall into this category
Community papers can and do win Pulitzer Prizes
Publish news people can’t get anywhere else
“A local paper won’t get scooped by CNN”
26
26
What Is News?
Timeliness
Proximity
Prominence
Consequence
Rarity
Human interest
27
27
Herbert Gans: Basic Journalistic Values
Ethnocentrism
The belief that your own country and culture is better than all
others

Altruistic democracy
The idea that politicians should serve the public good, not their
own interests
28
Responsible capitalism
The idea that open competition among businesses will create a
better, more prosperous world. But must be responsible
Small town pastoralism
Nostalgia for the old-fashioned rural community
29
Individualism
The quest to identify the one person who makes a difference
Moderatism
The value of moderation in all things. Extremists on left and
right are viewed with suspicion
30
Herbert Gans:
Basic Journalistic Values
Social order
When journalists cover disorder they tend to focus on the
restoration of order
Leadership

Media look at the actions of leaders whereas the actions of
lower-level bureaucrats are ignored
31
Media Transformation: Where Do We Go for the News?
People often choose their news sources based on their political
values
40% of Trump supporters in 2016 listed Fox News as main news
source; 18% of Clinton supporters listed CNN
Chart categorizes news outlets from liberal to conservative for
political point of view
32
Also be categorized by quality from Original Fact Reporting to
Inaccurate/Fabricated Information
www.ralphehanson.com/2018/05/21/ch-6-categorizing-news-
sources/
33
34

Dangers Journalists Face
In 2017, 46 journalists were killed in direct connection with
their work
Eight killed in Iraq, 8 killed in Syria, 6 in Mexico and 4 in India
Five journalists shot and killed at Capital Gazette in Annapolis,
Maryland in 2018
Big consequence of attacks is that stories from dangerous places
won’t get told
35
35
The Ethnic Press
African American press dates back to at least 1827
Freedom’s Journal, North Star published as emancipation papers
Chicago Defender started as yellow journalism paper; still
published in 2000s
Spanish-language papers face declining circulation like rest of
industry; El Nuevo Herald, in Miami, Florida, is one of the most
significant
36
36
The Gay Press
Gay papers started in late 1960s, copied on office equipment,
distributed in gay bars
Grew into profitable, professional papers

Hit hard by 2009 recession
Losing revenue as gay advertising moves increasingly into big
media
37
37
Alternative Weeklies
Started in 1960s and 1970s as “underground” papers
Targeted at young, urban readership that big media are having a
hard time reaching
Most face declining circulation
38
38
News in the Age of Mobile Media
National reach newspapers (NY Times, Washington Post, etc.)
seeing significant online growth
Paper delivery is becoming less important
“It’s wrong to say we’re becoming a digital society. We already
are a digital society. And even that statement is behind the
times. We’re a mobile society” – Marty Barron, executive
editor, Washington Post
39

39
The Future Is Mobile and Social
In 2016, 67% of adults get news through social media
Two-thirds (or more) of social media users get news through
social media
News is social and news is mobile
40
40
1
Chapter 7
Audio:
Music and Talk Across Media
2
Lin-Manuel Miranda:
Bringing Hip-Hop to Broadway
Kendrick Lamar and Miranda both win Pulitzers for hip-hop
Hamilton uses hip-hop to tell story of American revolution Uses
“language of youth and energy and rebellion”

Hip-hop now most popular musical genre in United States based
on sales
3
Storing Sound
1877: Edison invents phonograph, records sound on foil
cylinders
1888: Emile Berliner develops gramophone, plays music on
mass produced discs
1953: Hi-Fi is combination of technologies to create better
music reproduction
4
4
Signals at a Distance
1844: Samuel Morse’s telegraph allowed messages to be sent
over wires
1888: Theoretical work by Heinrich Hertz lays the groundwork
for wireless telegraph
1890s: Guglielmo Marconi develops wireless telegraph
1905: Reginald Fessenden makes Christmas Eve broadcast with
voices and music
5

5
Radio Music Box Memo
Written in 1915 by American Marconi engineer David Sarnoff
Suggested major uses for radio as mass communication tool
including news, music, and sports
More receivers than transmitters
6
6
RCA Monopoly
Created to bring together patents, develop radio as medium
Composed of General Electric, AT&T, Westinghouse, and
United Fruit Company
Why United Fruit Company? Held many radio patents to
communicate with ships carrying fruit
1920: KDKA in Pittsburgh launched as first commercial radio
station
7
7
Growth of Radio Networks
Sarnoff saw NBC as source of programming
William Paley saw CBS as advertising medium

ABC was splintered off from NBC
8
8
Growth of Radio Networks
9
9
Golden Age of Radio
Music
Drama
Little Orphan Annie, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow
Soap operas
Guiding Light started on radio in 1937, moved to television in
1952, ran until 2009
10
10
Radio’s New Look
HD tried to bring new life to broadcast radio, but few receivers;

to date a commercial failure
Satellite Radio – XM and Sirius merge. Single service more
successful
Mobile streaming increasingl y used in vehicles
11
11
Online & Mobile Audio
Streaming audio – can be connected to conventional radio
stations/networks or online-only services (Pandora, Spotify,
Apple Music)
Podcasting – portable audio you can download to a device and
take with you
Podcasts bring programing from both the short head and the
long tail
Named after Apple’s iPod – mostly discontinued, replaced by
smartphones
12
12
Smart Speakers
Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod
Deliver audio programing, control of “internet of things”
devices, online shopping
Essentially a full-time listening device in your home connected
to large external servers

“Living in the future” or “Creepy surveillance culture”?
13
Rock ‘n’ Roll and Musical Integration
Race Records: Rhythm & Blues
1950s: Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry
Dewey Phillips attracted multi-racial audience for Red, Hot &
Blue radio show
1950s and 1960s: Motown & girl groups
Music helped to drive the civil rights movement
14
14
British Invasion
A ‘rougher edge’ sound from British bands
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
Dusty Springfield
Many others
15

15
Role of Producers
What does a producer do?
Rise of concept albums
Growing role of producer with disco
16
16
Hip-Hop Culture
MCing – rapping over recorded music
DJing – playing recorded music from multiple sources
B-boying – hip-hop dancing, often referred to as breakdancing
Graffiti art – the visual images of the culture
Hip-hop gives voice to protest movements around the world
17
17
Country Music
Grew out of folk, hillbilly, and “old timey” music
Songs often relay a story about people in suburban or rural
settings
Revitalized in 1980 by movie Urban Cowboy
18

18
Finding a Niche: Popular Radio Formats
Country 13.2%
News/talk 12.3%
Adult contemporary 8.1%
Pop contemporary hit 7.1%
Classic rock 5.9%
19
19
Radio Business: Talk Radio
Political talk radio
Most political talk is conservative; Rush Limbaugh, Sean
Hannity most popular
Shock Jocks
Howard Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge
All-sports radio
Passionate listeners who won’t change channel
20

20
Public Radio
NPR founded in 1967
All Things Considered goes on the air in 1971
NPR’s Morning Edition news show has bigger audience than
any of the morning TV programs
21
21
Public Radio
NPR’s website is key part of network’s strategy
Is no longer National Public Radio, just NPR
22
22
Effects of Music on Young People
There have always been concerns about effects of lyrics on
young people
Adults and young adults have different interpretations of lyrics
and meanings
Hip-hop has attracted lots of controversy
Adults maintain connections with music from their youth
23

23
The Changing Musical Experience
Death of social music, played and performed in home for
entertainment, with the invention of phonograph and the rise
radio
Rise of “personal soundtrack” with Sony Walkman, then iPod
and other MP3 players
Personalized media use continues with downloads, podcasts and
streaming audio
Can lead to “withdrawal from social connections”
24
Rise of Digital Music
LPs versus 45s
With analog recordings, quality of copies degrades with each
generation
Digital recordings allow consumers to make perfect copies
CDs introduced in early 1980s, sold for premium price
Resurgence of analog/vinyl in 2010s
25
25
Consequences of Digital Music

Consumers “share” music over the Internet, possible violations
of copyright law
Artists can use Internet to promote music directly to consumers,
bypassing record labels and moving to “long tail”
26
26
Radio Consolidation
Broadcast ownership largely deregulated with
Telecommunications Act of 1996
Prior to 1985, could own no more than 7 AM and 7 FM stati ons
nation-wide
After 1996, could own unlimited number of radio stations
By 2003, Clear Channel owned 1,200+ stations. As of 2014,
renamed iHeartMedia, owned 862 stations
But radio economics remain difficult
27
27
Radio Without Radio
Audio shows no longer need radio stations to get widespread
distribution
Podcasting gives both senders and receivers new opportunities
for programming
What can we hear (see, watch) if we get away from legacy
media?

28
28
Media Transformations:
Working and Living in the Long Tail
Doug and Telisha Williams perform as the band Wild Ponies
Indie musicians can make a middle-class living by engaging
with listeners
Kevin Kelly’s Theory of 1,000 True Fans
Digital technology puts creative media power in hands of
individuals
29
29
New Economic Models for Music Industry
File sharing, user-generated content, and YouTube changing
marketplace
But report in 2017 notes revenue from recorded music has been
steadily increasing in recent years
Driving force is streaming services
Artists seeking range of options to make money
Touring, sale of merchandise, commercial endorsements, direct
sales of music to consumers
30

30
Journalistic Values Notes
Gans’s Basic Journalistic Values.
There is more to the bias argument than the liberal-versus-
conservative issue. For example, some observers charge that the
media have a bias toward attractiveness or charisma. There can
also be a bias toward making money or attracting an audience.
Political scientist and media scholar Doris Graber argued that
when it comes to selecting stories for coverage, the strongest
bias is for those that will have the greatest appeal to the
publication’s or program’s audience.87 (Links to an external
site.)
Rather than looking for examples of bias in the news, media
sociologist Herbert Gans set out to find the actual values
exhibited within the stories themselves. He asked what the
values—the biases—of journalism were. To find the answer, he
studied the content of the CBS and NBC news
programs, Time magazine, and Newsweek.
Gans found eight enduring values in the stories he studied:
ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism,
small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, social
order, and leadership. These values were not stated explicitly;
rather, they emerged from what was presented as good and
normal and what was presented as bad.88 (Links to an external
site.) Let’s look briefly at each of Gans’s values:
1. Ethnocentrism is the idea that your own country and culture
are better than all others. This shows up in the U.S. media in
stories that compare other countries’ values to American values.
To the degree that other countries live up to American ideals,
they are good; if they are different, they are bad. Therefore,
enemies of the United States are presented as evil because they
don’t conform to our values. Stories can be critical of the

United States, but they are criticizing deviance from basic
American values, not those values themselves.
2. Altruistic democracy is the idea that politicians should serve
the public good, not their own interests. This leads to stories
that are critical of corrupt politicians. By the same token,
citizens, as voters, have the same obligation to work for the
public good and not for selfish interests. Special interest groups
and lobbyists are suspect because they are not working for the
common good. This was perhaps best illustrated by the
Watergate hearings in the 1970s, which revealed the corrupt
behavior that occurred in the White House so that President
Richard Nixon could stay in power. President Bill Clinton was
criticized for his affair with Monica Lewinsky in part because
he was serving his own interests rather than working for the
good of the American public. President Donald Trump has been
criticized for maintaining a controlling interest in his global
business empire while being in charge of American foreign
policy that could affect the value of that business.
3. Responsible capitalism is the idea that open competition
among businesses will create a better, more prosperous world
for everyone. But by the same token, businesses must be
responsible and not seek excess profits. The same is true of
labor unions. Hence the news media tend to be harsh in their
coverage of greed and deception by big businesses, yet they still
tend to praise people who develop and grow companies. This is
why there has been so much negative coverage of banking and
investment companies following the stock market crash and
recession in the late 2000s.
4. Small-town pastoralism is nostalgia for the old-fashioned,
rural community. The agricultural community is where all
goodness is rooted, while big cities are dangerous places that
suffer from numerous social problems. Suburbs, where many
people live, tend to be overlooked entirely.
5. Individualism is the constant quest to identify the one person
who makes a difference. People like the notion that one person
can make a difference, that we are not all cogs in a giant

machine. Reporters like to use a single person as a symbol. That
explains in part why journalists focused on the actions of Emma
González following the Parkland school shooting. Instead of
trying to talk about the gun control movement as a whole, the
press used González as a symbol to represent all the
protesters.89 (Links to an external site.)
6. Moderatism is the value of moderation in all things.
Extremists on both the left and the right are criticized. Although
the media attempt to present a balance of opinions, they tend to
report on views that are mildly to the left and right of center.
One of the strongest criticisms the media can make is referring
to an individual as an extremist.
7. The value of social order is seen primarily in the coverage of
disorder. When journalists cover stories that involve disorder,
such as protests, floods, disasters, or riots, the focus of the
story tends to be on the restoration of order. Once media
coverage of the Flint water crisis got started, social order was a
big issue, and the press focused heavily on how that order, in
the form of clean, running tap water, might be restored.
8. Finally, the media value leadership. The media tend to look
at the actions of leaders, whereas the actions of lower -level
bureaucrats—which may well be more important—are ignored.
This is in some ways an extension of the bias toward
individualism, the difference one person can make.
Overall, Gans argues that there is reformist bias to the media,
which tend to advocate “honest, meritocratic, and anti-
bureaucratic government.”90 (Links to an external
site.) Journalists like to argue that since both sides criticize the
press, they must be doing a good, balanced job.91 (Links to an
external site.) Perhaps a better explanation for why both
conservatives and liberals charge the media with bias is that the
eight values Gans found within the media reflect a combination
of both liberal and conservative values—again illustrating why
people holding a particular viewpoint will see bias in the
media’s attempt to be neutral and balanced.

CMST 432 Media Systems and Communication Technology
Recommended Text and Materials
Hanson, R. E. (2018) Mass communication: Living in a media
world (7th ed.). SAGE.
Recommended Resources for Additional Exploration
The Mass Communication student companion
website: http://edge.sagepub.com/hanson7e (Links to an
external site.)
This site is a particularly good resource for review of course
materials.
Journalistic Values Assignment
Gans’s Basic Journalistic Values (see the “Journalistic Values
Notes” file attached)
Pick up a copy of a major newspaper (USA Today, Seattle
Times, Wall Street Journal) or the nearest urban
newspaper (Renton Reporter, Seattle Medium) and look at the
front page.
You can also read the front pages online at this
website https://www.freedomforum.org/todaysfrontpages/ (Link
s to an external site.)
Mark each example of Gans’s basic journalistic values that you
can identify.
Give the name and date of your paper.
· List every story by headline on the front page.
· List the basic journalistic values from Gans for each story and
provide examples of how you see them. Not all stories will fit
perfectly but review them and give your best argument for why
you think its fits into one category versus another. Be specific.
HINT: You should have something to say about each story on
your front page.

Biased-Based Policing Reports Are Failing
the Police and the Community
Why Agencies Need to Stop Using Census Data
Richard R. Johnson, Ph.D.
September, 2016
Recent public opinion surveys have revealed that the vast
majority of Americans believe that use
of racial profiling by the police is widespread.1 This is deeply
disturbing for two reasons. First, it
is disturbing because it undermines police legitimacy among the
vast majority of our citize ns.
Second, it is disturbing because the vast majority of law
enforcement officers I have known do not
engage in bias-based policing. While racial profiling likely
occurs among a small number of
individual officers acting outside the bounds of their oath to
uphold the Constitution, it is unlike ly
that racial profiling is systemic to law enforcement in the
United States.

This begs the question, then, why do so many people perceive
that racial profiling is widespread?
We could blame individual members of the news media that
seek to raise their ratings by stoking
the flames of controversy, or certain protest organizations that
seek to capitalize on distrust of the
police. To be sure, these sources have contributed to the
problem. Another factor that has also
contributed to the problem, however, is the fundamentally
flawed information that many
law enforcement agencies have given the public through their
biased-based policing data that
was gathered and reported incorrectly.
Many law enforcement agencies gather data on the race and
gender of the individuals their officers
stop, search, and arrest. They report these data to the public in a
biased-based policing report.
Agencies produce these reports for a variety of reasons, such as
statutory requirements, as part of
their compliance with CALEA Standard 1.2.9.d, or simply out
of a sincere desire to embrace
transparency. While most law enforcement agencies, and
individual officers, claim they do not
racially profile, the vast majority of these reports show
members of minority groups, especially
African-American men, are disproportionately stopped,
searched, and arrested. Why? One factor
at work is the use of incorrect research methodologies and

measures that are biased (often
unintentionally) against officers from the start. One of the most
damaging of these incorrect
methodologies is the use of U.S. Census data as a benchmark
comparison.
http://dolanconsultinggroup.com/
http://dolanconsultinggroup.com/ins tructor/richard-r-johnson-
phd/
Benchmarks
In order for any racial profiling data collection activity to be
meaningful, the racial composition of
police stops, searches, and arrests need to be compared to
something. A benchmark is generally
defined as a point of reference from which measurements may
be made; something that serves as
a standard by which others may be measured or judged; or a
standardized problem or test that
serves as a basis for evaluation or comparison. In the context of
biased-based policing evaluatio ns,
a benchmark is the percentage of a racial or gender group that
one would expect to be encountered
if officers were not biased.

For example, imagine that 20% of the people speeding down a
particular stretch of roadway were
male and Hispanic. This makes 20% our benchmark for
speeding stops of male Hispanics. We
would expect that unbiased stops by police for speeding in this
area would show that only about
20% of those stopped for speeding were male Hispanic drivers.
However, where do we get these
benchmarks? Unfortunately, most of the benchmarks used are
fatally flawed. These flawed
benchmarks consistently suggest officer bias, regardless of what
officers are actually doing. The
most common flawed benchmark is U.S. Census data.
Census Data
The U.S. Census Bureau collects data on the social and
demographic characteristics of the
individuals who live within the U.S. This data is freely and
easily accessible from the U.S. Census
Bureau website and can be analyzed within different geographic
regions, down to the zip code and
census block levels. Many have used Census data as their
benchmark for police activity because
of its ease of access. The problem, however, is that the
demographic characteristics of the
people living at any one location have nothing to do with the
driving population there, nor
who is breaking the law in any specific area. We use our

vehicles to travel to places away from
our homes, as people generally do not work, shop, or recreate in
their homes. Two studies illust rate
this well.
The first study, conducted by sociologists Albert Meehan and
Michael Ponder at Oakland
University, examined the racial composition of drivers across
one suburb in the Detroit area.
According to the U.S. Census, the suburb they studied had a
population that was 3% African-
American, but the city also contained a popular shopping
district and a major auto factory. The
researchers placed pairs of observers at major intersections
across the three police beats in the city,
and the observers recorded the races of 3,840 drivers who
stopped at these intersections. Despite
the city Census population of 3% African-American, in the
police beat that bordered the city of
Detroit, 49% of the drivers were African-American. The other
two beats revealed 11% and 3% of
the drivers were African-American.2
Think about that. What if the officers working these different
beats stopped African-Amer ica n
drivers as the exact rates that African-Americans drove in these
beats? Any study of this particular
suburb using 3% African-American as its benchmark would
falsely claim that officers working in

two of the beats were racially profiling. When the stops from all
three beats are combined as
department-wide data, the whole department would incorrectly
appear to be racially profilin g
because more than 3% of their stops were of African-American
drivers, despite the fact African-
Americans actually made up far more than 3% of the drivers on
the road.
Another example was a study, of which I was a part, that was
conducted by a research team headed
by criminologist Robin Engel at the University of Cincinnati.
This study examined 315,705 traffic
stops conducted by troopers of the Pennsylvania State Police.
These stops occurred on interstate
highways, U.S. highways, state routes, county roads, and village
and city streets. An examina t io n
of these stops revealed that 96% of drivers stopped by the
police were stopped outside of their
home zip codes. Furthermore, 66% were stopped outside of their
home county, and 27% were
stopped outside of their home state. This study went on to
conduct observations of the races of
66,741 drivers along various roadways in 27 counties of
Pennsylvania. When compared to the
Census statistics for each township where these observations

were made, the Census statistics on
race never matched the racial composition of the drivers that
were observed.3 Census data is no
reflection of who is driving in a given area.
Not only are Census statistics inaccurate measures of who is
driving in any given area, Census
data also fail to identify the racial and ethnic composition of
who should actually be stopped by
the police. Just because 49% of the drivers in a police beat are
African-American, that does not
mean 49% of the people stopped by officers should be African-
American. If African-America ns
were stopped just because they are driving in an area, without
having done anything wrong, this
would amount to stops for “driving while black.” Instead we
need a measure of the racial
composition of the drivers who are driving poorly by breaking
traffic laws and driving unsafe
vehicles (equipment violations). It is traffic law violators who
should be at risk of traffic stops if
no bias is present. The Census data in no way measures driving
behavior.
Alternative Benchmark
So what should be used as a proper benchmark for these types
of reports and studies? Hiring a

group of researchers to go out and record the races and traffic
violations of drivers across your
jurisdiction is usually too time-consuming and expensive for
most law enforcement agencies. A
simple solution, however, is to collect race and ethnicity data
on all traffic crashes in your
jurisdiction and use this data as your driver benchmark. While
no state currently collects race data
on its state vehicle crash form, if your agency starts collecting
race data in-house, your agency will
eventually have a benchmark of bad drivers across the various
beats of your jurisdiction.
Using traffic crash data as a traffic stop benchmark has a
number of advantages. First, it identifies
the drivers most likely to be stopped because crashes result
from moving or equipment violat io n s
of the law. While there are some people who are blameless for
their crash (such as the person
waiting at a red light who is hit from behind), all crashes had at
least one driver or equipment error
at fault, and many had multiple drivers at fault. Second, officers
investigating traffic accidents can
verify the race and ethnicity of the driver when they complete
their report, as opposed to a
researcher trying to determine a driver’s race in a passing car.
Third, as traffic crashes occur almost
everywhere (even off of public roadways in parking lots and
driveways) they are good samples of
the bad driver or poorly maintained vehicle population

throughout a district or beat. Research
observers tend to focus just on certain thoroughfares. Finally,
crash data come from the citize nr y
who report crashes to the police, so no suggestion can be made
that there was bias by the police in
gathering this data.4
If you agency is currently using Census data as your benchmark,
it is imperative that you stop
immediately and find a valid benchmark like the alternative
discussed here. Using Census data is
rigged against your officers as it almost always suggests
disproportionate stops of minority group
members, even when no officer bias occurred. If some outside
individual or organization proposes
to analyze your officers’ stops using Census data as their
benchmark, oppose it vehemently, using
the studies cited here to support your argument. If your state
collects statewide data, as does
Illinois, Missouri, and Texas, lobby your state lawmakers to
stop using Census data as the
benchmark comparison and begin to collect valid benchmark
comparison data by modifying the
state vehicle crash form to include race and ethnicity
information.

Conclusion
The overwhelming majority of racial profiling studies done by
academics, and biased-based
policing self-examinations by police departments, have
produced results that people of color,
especially African-Americans, are disproportionately stopped by
the police.5 It is likely, however,
that the majority of these findings are in error as most relied on
methodological errors that were
guaranteed to show bias even when there was none. Using
Census statistics as a benchmark, that
in no way resemble the driving population or the traffic violator
population, is just one of these
many methodological errors.
The Dolan Consulting Group LLC now offers a training
workshop that addresses these many
errors, and offers suggestions on how to correct them. Biased-
Based Policing Reports: Best
Practices is a one-day course that teaches personnel from law
enforcement agencies how these
studies should be conducted and their reports written. It
explains how to collect, analyze, and
present your information in a manner that creates the least
chance of misinterpretation or
manipulation by the media, and presents the work of your
agency in a fair manner. The informa t io n
offered in this workshop is crucial to the creation of a data

collection effort and report that is truly
unbiased against the hard-working and principled officers who
are policing their communities in
a fair and impartial manner.
References
1 Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2005). Racially-biased policing:
determinants of citizen
perceptions. Social Forces, 83(3), 1009-1030.
2 Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2005). Racially-biased policing:
determinants of citizen
perceptions. Social Forces, 83(3), 1009-1030.
3 Engel, R. S., Calnon, J. M., Tillyer, R., Johnson, R. R., Liu,
L., Wang, X. (2005). Project on
Police-Citizen Contacts: Year 2 Final Report. Cincinnati, OH:
University of Cincinnati.
4 Withrow, B. L., & Williams, H. (2015). Proposing a
benchmark based on vehicle collision data
in racial profiling research. Criminal Justice Review, 40(4),
449-469.
5 Withrow, B. L. (2006). Racial Profiling: From Rhetoric to
Reason. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson / Prentice Hall.

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168 public administration review • march april 2017 publi