Police Officers are Biased (And So Are You)

Published in

Homeland Security

4 min readFeb 4, 2016

Patrick Hensley

I am a police officer and I am like you. Although I may not look like you, dress like you, walk like you and talk like you; I am still just like you. I laugh, I cry, I enjoy success and I know failure. I find humor in uncomfortable situations as it helps me get through my days. And sometimes I’m scared. I argue with my wife, worry about my kids, and I’m concerned about the future. I find peace in small unexpected moments throughout my day. I witness far too much death, far too much hatred and violence, and I know more than most how it only takes a second to change the course of your life. I am witness to good people having the worst day of their lives.

I am like you, and we are both biased. We are all biased. Yes, we the police officers and you who we serve.

I wake up every morning, put my pants on one leg at a time and wonder what my day will be like. Some days are great and many are not. We take nothing for granted. Every call is different and we have learned to expect the unexpected. A wife calls for help after being beat up by her husband. When we arrive and place him in handcuffs she attacks us with a baseball bat. A father tires of his toddler son wetting his pants, so he punches him repeatedly in the groin until the boy is hospitalized. A drunk driver kills an entire family and is only concerned about his car.

We stand as witness to countless examples of tragedy and violence. We learn to hide our personal feelings; no time for that now. We have no choice because another call for service is waiting. We will come; when you call we will come. It doesn’t matter if we know you, or how we feel about you. It doesn’t matter; we will come when you call and if need be risk our lives to save yours.

Bias can be defined as an action supporting or opposing a person or group in an unfair way by allowing personal opinions to influence judgement. Avoiding bias requires conscious and continuous effort. We interpret information through filters and evaluate that information against our past experiences. We rely on stories told to us from older generations, despite the fact that our experiences may be different. Who we are is a powerful influence when participating in the world around us. We don’t have the ability to turn off those filters, but we can certainly teach ourselves and each other to recognize the presence of biases and account for those limitations. Police officers rely on intuition and experience, and for good reason; often times it can be the difference between life or death for us and those we serve.

Let’s make an agreement. You don’t label me and I won’t label you. I won’t make assumptions about you and you don’t make any about me. Let’s agree to not allow our biases to influence our contacts with each other. Let’s agree we won’t allow our perceptions to influence our behaviors. Let’s agree to live in the moment and not allow either our past experiences or the experiences of others to cloud our judgments.

This can only work if we do it together and there is much work to be done. I am ready; are you?

Patrick has been a police officer for 21 years and currently occupies a command position with a mid-sized police department in the Bay Area. He is also a graduate student attending the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Homeland XYZ was developed in collaboration with members of his cohort to introduce a writing platform for students to publish and for crowd-sourcing answers to difficult Homeland Security questions.

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Police Officers are Biased (And So Are You)

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