Radios are essential for the operations of modern police departments, and they function as both a collaborative communication technology and a sociotechnical system. However, little prior research has examined their usage or their connections to individual privacy and the role of race in policing, two growing topics of concern in the US. As a case study, we examine the Chicago Police Department's (CPD's) use of broadcast police communications (BPC) to coordinate the activity of law enforcement officers (LEOs) in the city. From a recently assembled archive of 80,775 hours of BPC associated with CPD operations, we analyze text transcripts of radio transmissions broadcast 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on August 10th, 2018 in one majority Black, one majority white, and one majority Hispanic area of the city (24 hours of audio) to explore three research questions: (1) Do BPC reflect reported racial disparities in policing? (2) How and when is gender, race/ethnicity, and age mentioned in BPC? (3) To what extent do BPC include sensitive information, and who is put at most risk by this practice? (4) To what extent can large language models (LLMs) heighten this risk? We explore the vocabulary and speech acts used by police in BPC, comparing mentions of personal characteristics to local demographics, the personal information shared over BPC, and the privacy concerns that it poses. Analysis indicates (a) policing professionals in the city of Chicago exhibit disproportionate attention to Black members of the public regardless of context, (b) sociodemographic characteristics like gender, race/ethnicity, and age are primarily mentioned in BPC about event information, and (c) disproportionate attention introduces disproportionate privacy risks for Black members of the public.

翻译：无线电是现代警察部门运作的关键工具，它既是一种协作通信技术，也是一个社会技术系统。然而，先前研究很少探讨其使用方式、与个人隐私的关联以及种族在警务中的作用——这两个议题在美国日益受到关注。作为案例研究，我们考察了芝加哥警察局（CPD）如何利用广播警察通信（BPC）来协调该市执法官员（LEOs）的活动。基于近期建立的80,775小时与CPD行动相关的BPC档案，我们分析了2018年8月10日上午9:00至下午5:00在该市一个黑人占多数、一个白人占多数以及一个西班牙裔占多数区域播出的无线电传输文本记录（共24小时音频），以探究四个研究问题：（1）BPC是否反映了警务中报告的种族差异？（2）性别、种族/民族和年龄在BPC中如何及何时被提及？（3）BPC在多大程度上包含敏感信息？这种实践使谁面临最大风险？（4）大型语言模型（LLMs）在何种程度上可能加剧这种风险？我们通过分析警察在BPC中使用的词汇和言语行为，将个人特征的提及与当地人口统计数据进行比较，考察BPC中共享的个人信息及其引发的隐私问题。分析表明：（a）芝加哥市的警务人员在不同情境下均对黑人公众表现出过度关注；（b）性别、种族/民族和年龄等社会人口特征主要在BPC的事件信息中被提及；（c）过度关注导致黑人公众面临不成比例的隐私风险。