Attitudes toward the police tend to be negative in many communities of color. Some theories suggest that these attitudes are the result of disproportionate stressful negative contact with police. The purpose of this study was to examine police contacts and stress in African American college students. A previous study showed that African American college students rated police contacts less stressful than other types of events (school, non-police discrimination, financial, interpersonal), and that men rated police contacts as more stressful than women; however, the nature of police contacts (benign vs. malignant) was not examined. The current study examined differences in police contact stress scores as they were related to the nature of the contacts (benign vs. malignant), personal and vicarious subtypes of contact, and individual characteristics (i.e. gender, ethnic identity, emotions and frequency of police contact). African American undergraduate students (N = 102) completed a questionnaire packet, including a listing of common stressful events faced by undergraduates, several racism-related stressors, and police contacts. Events were rated on 5-point likert scales for stressfulness and frequency of occurrence. A principle component analysis of police contact items distinguished different categories reflecting malignant contacts and a single category reflecting more benign contacts. Preliminary analyses indicated significant effects for types of contact (p<.0001), indicating that stress scores differed across types of contact. Stress means for malignant categories were significantly different from benign (p's< .01). There was no significant effect for gender by category of police contact. However, on average, men's stress scores were higher than women for all categories of police contact. Final results and conclusions will be discussed.