A recent psychological research study concluded police officers tend to be much more disrespectful when speaking to Black drivers than with white drivers.
After analyzing the body-worn camera footage of more than 100 police officers, researchers found officers approached Black motorists -- particularly Black men -- with harsher tone and verbiage than when they encounter white drivers.
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"We were analyzing this footage both to identify challenges with police-community relations and to try to offer some suggestions," said Nicholas Camp, assistant professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study from the American Psychological Association.
Former Redondo Beach, California police lieutenant Diane Goldstein agreed with the findings published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and called on police departments to take a "serious look at the study's findings."
"It's really important to have this very difficult conversation around the issue of race," Goldstein, executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, told NBC News. "I know it makes law enforcement uncomfortable, but if we don't squarely face it, we are not going to be able to transform police in the fashion that we should and we aren't going to be able to protect our communities."
Body camera footage showed officers harassed and threatened to tase U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario before pepper-spraying and knocking him to the ground during a traffic stop for tinted windows.
"The fact that these guys were willing to behave like this knowing that they were going to be recorded is mind-boggling," Nazario's attorney said about the case, which goes to trial in March 2022.
"These interactions are becoming very scary, and our perception of racial profiling means nothing until somebody gets killed," Minnesota state Rep. John Thompson told NBC News last week after being pulled over on Independence Day. "These traffic stops are turning cars into caskets for young Black men."
Many police departments evolved from the first slave patrols, PolicyLink managing director Anand Subramanian noted, describing the law enforcement system as "deeply anti-Black."
"It starts with the idea that Black folks are inherently violent, that intercommunal violence in Black communities is worse than police violence against Black folks and that Black folks should be viewed with suspicion," Subramanian told NBC.
