COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & EDUCATION
Meaningful, comprehensive policing reform is not an event but a long-term process. It must be led jointly by policing agencies and the civilian populations they serve, with a shared sense of ownership and responsibility for public safety.
We envision a new model of community engagement— based not on investigating the latest incident of police misconduct, but rather on pre-emptive, ongoing, collaborative problem-solving to achieve systemic, transformational changes.
“For far too long, the responsibility to change policing culture and behavior has rested solely on policing agencies. The public can voice demands, local governments can issue regulations, but the burden to change is shouldered by the police alone. We want to change that paradigm so that civilians and police, together, can lead a healthier, supportive reform process through authentic, collaborative partnerships and, ultimately, achieve transformational outcomes.”
We are engaging communities throughout the country to build a self-reflective and sustainable process of reform, through which police and civic society learn and share with each other, jointly analyze policing issues and needs from multiple angles, generate mutually beneficial solutions, and establish the reforms necessary to implement them, such as requiring new academy standards or legislating local accountability mechanisms.
This model should facilitate deep and lasting changes that increase confidence in policing agencies’ capacity to deliver a fair and equitable service, empower civilian populations to effectively influence how they are policed, and, most importantly, greatly increase public safety and respect for human dignity for all members of the community.
