Are GTA V's cops racist?

When GTA V was first released, players immediately noticed an interesting phenomenon: Franklin, the black player character, seems to get harassed by the cops a lot more often than the white characters.

Rockstar, the game studio which developed the series, quickly came out with an announcement that GTA V's cops were not racist. But after mountains of anecdotal evidence piled up, a group of YouTube gamers called The Game Theorists decided to run some tests.

What they found does seem to indicate that Franklin attracts more attention from the cops than the other characters. However, they theorize that this could be because the police AI analyzes two factors when determining whether or not to attack: how rich their neighborhood is, and how poor the player character is. The richer the character, the less likely they will be harassed by the police. And Franklin happens to come from one of the game's poorer neighborhoods.

The Game Theorists also point out that their sample size is small. Still pretty interesting stuff, though!

Image courtesy Flickr/Darren