Police radio communications often include personally identifiable information, potentially creating privacy risks for the public, particularly Black males, a new study from Penn State and the University of Chicago reveals.
“This study provides a window into police activity as events unfold,” stated Shomir Wilson, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State and a co-author of the study. “We found that because police radio transmissions disproportionately involve Black suspects, there’s a proportionally higher privacy risk for Black people in these communications.”
The research involved analyzing 24 hours of human-transcribed and annotated police radio communications broadcasted within three Chicago dispatch zones. These zones, based on U.S. census data, included a majority non-Hispanic white zone, a majority Hispanic zone, and a majority non-Hispanic Black zone. Findings revealed that males were mentioned nine times more frequently than females, with Black males being most frequently referenced, even in the majority white zone.
