From The Washington Post:
At a 2007 Stanford conference on racial bias in policing, a commander from the Denver Police Department put a challenge to me. I had just presented a laboratory study on police officers dehumanizing Black people. She wanted to know: Did I have the courage to try fixing this in the real world?
The subsequent trajectory of my science and activism has largely been a response to Tracie L. Keesee’s challenge that day. In 2008, she and I co-founded the Center for Policing Equity (CPE). Our mission is to figure out the “how” — how to make policing less deadly, racist and omnipresent. How to prevent tragedies like the police shooting of Daunte Wright that happened last weekend.
Last year, the injustice done to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many others sparked one of the largest protest movements in history and a sea change in public opinion. Thanks to the hard work of organizers and activists, we have never had more opportunities to decide what reimagining safety should look like.
But the how is mostly left to localities. Local organizers, elected officials and other leaders are doing the hard work of turning reimagining into blueprints for systems that keep people safe. While federal and state actors play an important role, local efforts will ultimately determine whether we emerge with a more equitable paradigm or repeat the cycle of “hand-wringing, inaction and forgetting” that has followed racial violence for generations. Continue reading >>>
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