FBI Director Acknowledges Racial Bias Of Police

Photo: FBI Director James Comey Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Note: These are surprising words from the director of the FBI. We hope he puts these words into action. As reporting the race of people shot or in other ways being on the receiving end of police violence will do a great deal to curtail it.

– PopRes

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Speaking at Georgetown University today, FBI Director James Comey said that American law enforcement officers can be racially biased and have a history of discriminating against black citizens—and asserted that the FBI needs to do a better job collecting comprehensive data on police killings and other uses of force against suspects nationwide.

Comey’s remarks acknowledged that authorities have often protected the interests of white Americans by discriminating against blacks: “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.” It’s not a controversial point, objectively, but in the hyperbolic world of post-Ferguson police/race discourse, it’s a notable one for a law enforcement official to be making in public—particularly a white official like Comey who worked at the Justice Department as John Ashcroft’s deputy during the Bush administration.

Comey also attested to research that “points to the widespread existence of unconscious [racial] bias” among Americans and said that even officers “of good will” can develop unjustified prejudices and habits of racial profiling. “We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve,” Comey said, ading that officers need “to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement.” (In an Obama-esque “but on the other hand” rhetorical move, Comey added that Americans need to acknowledge that police are “not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods,” citing the importance of “role models, adequate education, and decent employment” in preventing violence.)