Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops, even after controlling for officer race, infraction severity, stop location, and stop outcome. This paper presents a systematic analysis of officer body-worn camera footage, using computational linguistic techniques to automatically measure the respect level that officers display to community members. This work demonstrates that body camera footage can be used as a rich source of data rather than merely archival evidence, and paves the way for developing powerful language-based tools for studying and potentially improving police–community relations.
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A recent study using computational linguistic techniques on 183 hours of Oakland police body camera videos found strong evidence that officers were less respectful to black persons stopped, after adjusting for potential confounders such as infraction severity and location.
“The utility of body camera data analytics is exemplified by a recent study using computational linguistic techniques on 183 hours of Oakland police body camera videos and finding strong evidence that officers were less respectful to black persons stopped, after adjusting for potential confounders such as infraction severity and location (Voigt et al. 2017).”
From Body Cameras, Big Data, and Police Accountability (2018) · cites this paper as Voigt et al. 2017
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- Authors
- Voigt, R., Camp, N. P., Prabhakaran, V., Hamilton, W. L., Hetey, R. C., Griffiths, C. M., Jurgens, D., Jurafsky, D., & Eberhardt, J. L.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-06-05
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 25
- Pages
- 6521-6526
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5488942
- OpenAlex
- W2623107000
- Cited by
- 407
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 107 · 2022: 44 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 5
- FWCI
- 154.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Issue Lab (Candid) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (G-1512-150464)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- police body cameras, racial disparities, police language, respect, traffic stops, police-community relations, procedural justice, police-community trust, thin slicing, computational linguistics, racial bias in policing
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Social Justice, Video Recording, Police, Trust, White People, Racial Groups
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