Ten years after the death of Amadou Diallo, questions still persist

Ten years ago today, four New York City police officers shot at Amadou Diallo 41 times, hitting him with 19 bullets. Diallo, a 22-year old immigrant from West Africa was unarmed. The officers, all charged with second-degree murder, were eventually acquitted. One of the many unanswered questions surrounding the Diallo shooting is: If Amadou Diallo were an unarmed white man would he have been shot at? That’s a question that Joshua Correll has been trying to answer since 2002. Correll is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. His primary line of research uses videogame simulation of police encounters to examine racial bias in shoot/don’t-shoot decisions. He joins us to discuss his results.