Can Cops Unlearn Their Unconscious Biases?
SALT LAKE CITY—On a clear, cold morning this fall, Police Sergeant Scott Stuck stood at the front of a long, high-ceilinged room, visible to a reporter outside, his brow furrowed as he faced more than a dozen officers.
Quietly and methodically, Stuck was trying to convince them of an idea that goes against much of what they’ve been taught it means to be a cop—one that at first blush seems to validate the deepest criticisms activists level against police, and even call into question whether the fundamental equation of policing itself might be flawed.
On that cold morning, Stuck was trying to convince the officers that they are biased.
And although nearly everyone I spoke with about the training seemed to take pains to avoid one word—“racism”—that’s the kind of bias that was on everyone’s mind.
“It’s just something that you don’t admit. It’s the elephant in the room that you just don’t talk about,” said Sergeant Sam Wolf, another trainer in the department. “You don’t talk about discrimination and bias, because then … people might think cops are discriminatory, they’re biased. If we admit that, then what does it mean about how we serve the public?”
The morning’s class was only the third to be offered in Salt Lake, but it puts the department among a growing number adopting similar courses, generally referred to as implicit-bias training. In at least four states, state police and their training academies offer the classes, as do local departments
