Conference Paper: Police Stops of and Interactions With Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation
Howard Giles, Douglas Bonilla, Daniel Linz, & Michelle L. Gomez, University of California, Santa Barbara, L...@comm.ucsb.edu
Abstract
Following previous research on traffic stops involving police officers with African-American and White drivers, a content analysis of 69 recorded stops was conducted of Latino and Non-Latino drivers with Non-Latino officers. The study was guided by communication accommodation theory, and predicted a disparity in interactants’ communication strategies and stop outcomes based on ethnicity, driver accent, and the level of accommodative and nonaccommodative strategies. The results largely supported the hypotheses and suggested that there is a disparity in the treatment of certain stigmatized ethnic groups as evidenced in the dynamics of officer and driver communication behaviors. The findings are discussed in terms of their empirical, theoretical, and practical implications for negative experiences the Latino community may have with police.
This is a big and ambitious study from Howie Giles and his colleagues, and reflects two kinds of intergroup interactions – inter-ethnic, and police-citizen. Both of these can be fraught, and I would like to congratulate this group for doing so much to unpack the key role of communication accommodation in determining climate and outcome. This is a very important area, and studies of ongoing interactions are all too rare. This paper is well worth a careful read.
In my opinion, this study was very well-conducted – there are some compromises, but the benefits of having field research, with the potential to look at the conversation as well as the demographic and other features of the interaction, far outweighs them. Instead, I would like to ask the authors and everyone else some questions, mainly to explore options for continuing research in this important area, where lives may be at stake.
One question is about the impact of accent. It’s very interesting that accent – but not ethnicity (unlike earlier work with white and African American police-citizen interactions) – was related to accommodation (and non-accommodation to a lesser extent). This brings Lambert’s early work to mind – in particular, his view that judgements of ethnicity (or group membership), as signalled by language (or other characteristics) are the first judgements people make about each other – and that other judgements flow from this. Perhaps, in the case of white-Latino interactions, accent is the key characteristic, rather than physical characteristics (especially given that language-related features like name may not be available until later in the interaction). When do language and communication variables operate as the strongest indicators of group membership, and when are other variables more important? How could we study this, preferably in real-life interactions – in the lab, it is too easy to compare groups via a single variable (like a photograph, or a segment of speech), when this may not be the key variable in real interactions.
Secondly, I would love to see more analysis of the conversations themselves. You give tantalising examples of these, but I can’t help thinking that a fuller analysis would bring out subtleties of accommodation and non-accommodation. What are you doing with them? What is the potential for exploring this further?
Thirdly, I agree with you – this work cries out for an analysis by gender and ethnicity of both police and drivers. How do you think this could be done? In addition, I’m not so sure that female officers would be more non-accommodative – there is some evidence in the literature that they might be more accommodative – it’s an empirical question, I know.
Thanks again for submitting this to ICA, and to the IC judges for selecting it for the VC.
And just to add a bit of edge: Here in Australia, the police in one state (not the one where i live) have a reputation for brutality – and there have been a number of cases where police have killed citizens in ambiguous situations. These usually aren’t traffic stops, but what do you think is going on, in communication accommodation terms? On the face of it, I would think that the police may be less attuned to the citizens as individuals, and more as potential criminals – that is, they may see the encounter as highly intergroup. But the citizens may also be behaving in ways that provoke suspicion by the police – this is what your findings suggest. I think unpacking this may be very important for training both police and ordinary people.
Thank you for a SECOND posting! A number of modest reactions only from me. My first-hand experience in this arena is that alleged brutality is one thing and actual is quite another. Indeed, many journalists, lay observers and newspaper/TV news imbibers often arrive at conclusions based on only a small snippet/info bite of a target encounter. In this sense, what might be attributed as “ambiguous” will often be constructed as reasonable/necessary force in the situation by the officers who were sometimes the only ones on the scene. This is not to say police are not guilty of brutal heavy-handed reactions on occasion of course, but I contend there is a public bias to convict before all the information is explored systematically.
As you say, our data suggests that “victims” can be nonaccommodative when approached by the police – indeed an intergroup encounter par excellence! Again, calling on experiences (albeit Californian), those stopped in traffic stops are overwhelmingly nonaccommodative (e.g., belligerent, confrontational) when first approached, thereby initiating – for the little- or even ill-trained – a predictably reciprocal sequence of responses. And, a fact little appreciated by the public, is that sometimes situations can dramatically change for an officer and require communicative management/decision-making in a matter seconds… As you intimate, encounters in the field that are not traffic stops would be worth looking at, although I contend they would be largely similar in their dynamics if a violation is the reason for the encounter. Domestic dispute calls – which are also very dangerous for cops – would be another fruitful and contrastive arena, involving as it does an additional layer of familial issues and processes. (Policing protest parades with strident pro- and con-demonstrators would be another unique and fascinating situation from a multiple intergroup situation.) But, to return to your notion of brutality, agreed it would be important to examine situations when and why officer nonaccommodation moves on to the level of force (lethal or otherwise)….a mammoth, sensitive empirical challenge with its applied payoffs for training and public consumption.
Finally, how which officers construe which types of individuals in intergroup terms, when and why, would be perhaps a more feasible endeavor. It is true that officers, say on graveyard shifts, see the under-belly of a city and have to deal with very complex situations with often dangerous (and sometimes evil) people. Having that be the perennial diet over years of your professional life would likely shape one’s perceptions of, for example “good vs bad” guys – and differentially from cops who are, say, community-relations officers meeting the public who often have requested their presence and support.
All good stuff and thanks again for raising same. For anyone reading this, note the Handbook of Intergroup Communication (Routledge) has just appeared and besides other inviting topics includes a chapter on police-civilian interactions…
Thanks – I take all those points, but they don’t explain why one state (and not one of our cowboy states at that) would have this reputation over a long time. In that state, there is certainly a more intergroup climate between police and ordinary citizens – and by the way, they have had some exceptionally good high-profile police – in that state, the police union is unusually strong (compared to other states). Anyway, I think it would be worth unpacking these kinds of (potential) system-level differences and examining their impact on intergroup attitudes and accommodative communication. In addition, it would be good to look at the reverse – can training in accommodative communication (which, as you say, is not life-threatening and might even be life-preserving) lead to any change in attitudes, etc.?
Thank you for taking on this role for the unit so responsibility. Also thanks for the kind and generous sentiments about our work.
First, you raise the issue of when language (e.g., accent) becomes more salient than other cues. In a chapter forthcoming in the Hbk of language and social psychology, Tamara Rakić and I talk about this issue in the following way (or at least as currently drafted!):
“Gratifyingly, systematic investigations of interactions between accent and other cues is on the upswing (e.g., Freeman & Ambady, 2011a; Ko et al., 2006). Recently, theoretical advances have been made in accounting for people’s ability to manage complex social cues, and the so-called dynamic interactive theory of person construal (Freeman & Ambady, 2011b) suggests that when trying to understand how people are perceived, one should account for the multiplicity of cues that need to be processed. Therefore, rather than trying to argue that face or voice is more important, we should strive to use both these (and other) cues in order to be able to understand what are the underlying processes leading to negative evaluation of, for example, nonstandard accented speakers.”
Second, you are right that more in-depth analyses of what constitutes accommodative versus nonaccommodative behaviors would be invaluable, that is, above and beyond the coding of subjective elements of same. With this end in mind, we invited a conversational analyst to begin this process – initially by a case study looking at tapes where the same officer stopped a white non-Latino and a Latino. Unfortunately, it seems that this has not surfaced to the top priority for this scholar and I must get back to him/her. However, we have a vast minefield of data here with the transcripts of our 69 encounters available. Anyone interested in coming onboard with us?
Third, yes indeed, gender is a big issue. Unfortunately, and despite the fact that the target County is quite a large one, there were not sufficient women officers on the one hand or Latino officers on the other to accomplish the complete design a la Dixon et al. (2008). Now one interesting question is: perhaps there really are, but for some reason these were screened out (?) Hence to follow this up, we would have to go to another agency where the demographics are favorable to our quest but, as you know, obtaining these data are unforgivably difficult; the present data set took us 5 years to garner.
Now to your question about women being more accommodative. Yes indeed, this is what the CAT literature would predict. However, from observations of many female officers in the field – albeit anecdotal and perhaps biased – my impression is that this would not be the case. We have here women in a male-dominated profession with masculine values very salient. Indeed, it is possible that female officers are recruited, selected, and self-selected if they endorse such inclinations. My impression is that such officers would be nonaccommodative to both males and females, but for somewhat different reasons – and perhaps the nature of the nonaccommodations would be different as a consequence. It is likely that women when stopped will try and accommodate the female officer and plead shared gender concerns and issues; said officer would assert her “authority” in most such situations to gain control. When stopping a male (who might be physiognomically much bigger), the officer is again likely to assert her authority nonaccommodatively and especially if the suspect is aggressive or sexually oriented towards her. All good stuff for future research, as you say!
Thanks for opening up the curtain/debate and I apologize for the late response.
Okay, all fair comment – so only empirical science can solve the gender question this time – and this would be really valuable for comm accom theory.
Hermes Replica…
Your article Conference Paper: Police Stops of and Interactions With Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation | ICA Online 2012 write very well, thank you share!…