Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. We live in the age of if you see something, say something. What started as a public anti terrorism campaign in the wake of the September eleventh attacks has morphed into a state of vigilance for any kind of suspicious behavior, and sometimes it pays off. In For example, a day after twenty nine people were injured in a string of New York City bombings, two men saw a suspicious bag with wires sticking out of
it left on a dumpster in Elizabeth, New Jersey. They alerted police, which used robots to disarm five pipe bombs. Later that night, another nine one one call led police to a man sleeping in a tavern doorway who turned out to be the bomber. But for every report of suspicious activity that leads to an arrest, there are many others that are, unfortunately not based on any kind of
criminal act, but on bias. Airline passengers of Arab descent have been pulled from flights or not allowed to board when fellow passed a Jer's notified flight attendance of suspicious
behavior that included reading the news on their phone. People of color are routinely followed by store security personnel or even asked to leave if they haven't bought anything a k a shopping wall black, and most recently, Starbucks landed in hot water after one of its store managers in Philadelphia called the police on two black men waiting for
a friend. The men were handcuffed and escorted from the cafe for behavior asking to use the bathroom and not buying anything that witnesses said would never have drawn attention if they had been white, which made us wonder if ordinary Americans have been tasked by law enforcement to speak up when they see something, then what's the definition of something and how can they check our racial or ethnic biases when making mental calculations of who and what is
truly suspicious. We spoke with Sergeant Robert Parsons, the public information officer for the Dunwoodie Police Department outside of Atlanta, Georgia. When he and his fellow police officers talk with community members about reporting suspicious activity, they start with this message, people aren't suspicious, behavior is suspicious, Parsons said, context is really important. Just because someone's walking down the street and you may not recognize that person, it doesn't mean that
they're suspicious. Instead, the Dunwoodie Police and departments nationwide instruct community members to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior
that's indicative of actively planning or committing a crime. Sketchy behavior includes someone walking down the street and looking into multiple car windows or trying the door handles, an unknown person trying to forcibly enter a neighbor's house while they're out of town, or someone claiming to represent a utility or security company without a uniform or an I D. Parsons says that calls from the community are invaluable and that they are often the only way to solve crimes
like burglaries and car brake ins, but that this value only goes for tips that identify clearly suspicious behavior in some cases. He says it's undeniable that bias is a factor. He said, we have gotten the calls. I don't recognize this person. He doesn't live in this neighborhood. Unfortunately, it puts the officers in a bad position because we have to respond to the calls were given and we have to stop people. People rightfully get offended. I'm not walking,
I'm jogging, I'm not doing anything suspicious. We also spoke with Reggie Schufford, executive director of the a c l U of Pennsylvania, who posits that the risks involved with police responding to bias based tips go much further than people getting offended. Shufford, who is himself black, said, black men in particular live under a constant cloud of suspicion and fear. I think that endangers our lives because often those situations escalate into violence and we end up dead.
While a lot of attention over the past few years has been focused on the dangers of biased policing, from controversial stop and frisk programs to multiple police shootings of unarmed black men, Shufford believes that biased reporting of suspicious behavior by average citizens is equally troubling. He said, these eyewitness accounts of what constitutes suspicious behavior are unreliable precisely because we are a culture that's steeped in racial bias.
Much of it is implicit. Sometimes we don't even know that we're harboring racial bias, but sometimes it's explicit. Either way you look at it, It's dangerous for private citizens to use their concept of suspicion to engage the police bias training is now mandatory at many police academies and police departments nationwide, and Starbucks announced that they will be closing all eight thousand of its US stores on May twenty nine for an afternoon to educate employees about racial bias.
But what about educating the general public. Some would like to see the police take a more active role. Curtis Read, Jr. Is the executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, an organization working to make Vermont an attractive destination for people of color. For the past fifteen years, Read and his group have conducted bias training for state and local police, government officials, and business owners in Vermont.
Says Read, police dispatchers are trained to engage callers who want the cops to come and check out, for example, three black guys standing on the corner. Basically, the dispatcher will simply ask what the guys are doing. If they're not engaged in any suspicious or criminal behavior, the dispatcher will explain that to the caller, declined to send a cruiser and offer to transfer them to a supervisor if
they have more questions. When Red looks at what happened at the Starbucks in Philadelphia, He sees a missed opportunity for the police to educate community members that being black is not a criminal offense. He said, if I were the officers sent to that Starbucks, I would have asked the manager what criminal behavior were the two black men engaged in. I would have asked them was their behavior any different than any of the other patrons who frequent
that Starbucks? Because ultimately it's the perception of the manager that needs to be changed. And who better than these officers coming in and asking those very questions Dune what he police officer Parsons says that beyond spreading the message that people aren't suspicious, behavior is suspicious. The department doesn't provide any public education on the role of bias in community crime reporting quote, but it may be something that we do in the future. Of course, change starts with
all of us. If you're interested in engaging your own implicit biases based on race, gender, sexual orientation, mental health, and more, and in learning what you can do to help take the short online tests offered at Project Implicit. It's project by Harvard. Just google it, it'll come right up. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other social topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.