Over the last year or so, multiple videos of people calling the police on black men and women engaging in mundane activities—babysitting, eating lunch, going for a swim—have gone viral. The (usually, white) callers are often swiftly meme-ified: “Golf Cart Gail,” “Apartment Patty,” and “BBQ Becky” have become familiar characters in the Internet’s ever-expanding pageant of outrage.
But the popularity of this mini-genre raises other questions: Is there empirical data that sheds lights on whether such racially charged calls to authorities have, in fact, increased over the years? And if so, where exactly is this happening?
