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37 U. Haw. L. Rev. 295 (2015)
Reducing Racially Disparate Policing Outcomes: Is Implciit Bias Training the Answer

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       Reducing Racially Disparate Policing

     Outcomes: Is Implicit Bias Training the

                              Answer?


                              Robert J. Smith*


                            I. INTRODUCTION

   While public defenders, civil rights organizations, and academics have
long championed the reduction of racially disparate policing outcomes,
their chorus has added some transformational actors recently. Attorney
General Eric Holder, for instance, has called for rigorous new standards
to help end racial profiling.' The police chief of Richmond, California,
Chris Magnus, recently joined a protest against police brutality-carrying a
sign that read Black Lives Matter.2 We get the conversation about use
of force, the deputy Richmond police chief later explained, This is an
opportunity for all police departments, including ours, to look inward and
examine our approaches and get better.3
  Racial disparities also are increasingly salient. Consider three events that
occurred within a matter of weeks last year. First, a grand jury in Staten
Island, New York failed to indict a white NYPD officer that choked to
death an unarmed black man during a botched attempt to arrest the man,
Eric Garner, for selling loose cigarettes.4 A few days earlier, a white police
officer in Cleveland, Ohio shot a twelve-year old black child, Tamir Rice,
who was holding a toy gun.' These two incidents occurred on the heels of a


   * Assistant Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law. Thank you
to all of the symposium participants, and especially to the editors of the Hawai'i Law
Review.
    1 Emily Badger, The Long, Halting, Unfinished Fight to End Racial Profiling in
America, WASH. PosT, Dec. 4, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/
2014/12/04/the-long-halting-unfinished-fight-to-end-racial-profiling-in-america/.
   2 Robert Rogers, Richmond Police Chief a Prominent Participant in Protest Against
Police  Violence,  CONTRA   COSTA   TIMES   (Dec.  9,   2014,  2:38   PM),
http://www.contracostatimes.com/west-county-times/ci 27102218/richmond-police-chief-
prominent-participant-local-protest-against.
   3 Id.
   4 See, e.g., J. David Goodman & Al Baker, Wave ofProtests After Grand Jury Doesn't
Indict Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold Case, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 3, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyregion/grand-jury-said-to-bring-no-charges-in-
staten-island-chokehold-death-of-eric-gamer.html?_r-0.
     See, e.g., Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Video Shows Cleveland Officer Shot Boy in 2
Seconds, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 26, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/video-shows-

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