White Caller Crime: An Analysis of Legislation to Combat Racially Biased 911 Calls

Abstract

Racialized police communication is the false reporting of alleged criminal behavior as a form of discrimination. Although social media has filled the vacuum left by a lack of formal remedy, not all incidents go viral and make national headlines. This thesis first identifies racially biased 911 calls as deserving systemic treatment as a policy issue. This creates a need for formal public policy. Existing laws are not equipped to handle racially biased 911 calls. There are a variety of remedies identified by scholars, and this thesis focuses on public policy as a site of solution for racialized police communication. Racialized police communication is a policy issue because it further compounds the fraught relationship between Black Americans and law enforcement. This leads to harms that affect crime fighting and diminishes police efficacy. Frivolous, non-emergency calls made just because of someone’s race waste taxpayer money and divert police attention and resources from real emergencies. Moreover, the victim of the call may be humiliated, traumatized, physically harmed, or killed as a result of responses to a biased report of crime. Racialized police communication diminishes the person targeted and their rights afforded by citizenship. To expand existing theory around the practice of racially biased 911 calls, this thesis will focus on the practice’s gendered as well as racial aspects. With a preponderance of white female callers among viral incidents of racialized communication, the act of calling the police on minorities invokes the Karen figure, and this deserves interrogation to expand theory around racialized police communication. Using Imani Perry’s concept of legal personhood, I propose that a theory of racialized police communication should take into account how white women, even as a (relatively disadvantaged group, have historically enjoyed legal recognition not afforded to other minority groups. This combination of this historical analysis along with intersectional analysis elucidates why racialized police communication takes on a notably gendered form. I applied this expanded theory to analyzing legislation passed to deal with racialized police communication. I conducted interviews with state and local officials to understand their motivations for decisions around legislation, and how certain factors affected the passage of legislation. I then conducted policy analysis through legislative documents and floor sessions, news reporting, and interviews with elected and city officials revealed that lawmakers were focused primarily on callers and victims as actors in cases of racialized police communication. They identified benefits in deterring racially biased 911 calls and saving police resources for actual emergencies. My discussion focused on identifying common themes and points of departure regarding what factors and choices were made by lawmakers and how these elements affected the passage of the bill. Several practical recommendations arose to answer the question of what kind of legislation should be crafted around racialized police communication. First, how racialized police communication is defined in the text of a bill matters. Language that defines an act of racialized police communication should also capture more than just the act of making a false call. Next, there was variation between what penalties were attached to bills. Findings demonstrated that both kinds of penalties have been identified to change behavior. The choice of penalty will likely be determined by the norms and legislative environment. Concerns of the chilling effect on citizen police calls to law enforcement often cited in opposition to this kind of legislation was not founded.