POLICING EQUITY

The Center for Policing Equity works with communities and inside of public safety systems to make law enforcement less racist and less deadly. We are a research and action organization that produces analyses to identify and reduce the causes of racial disparities in public safety. Our work is a direct response to the failure to measure how the state administers justice in our most vulnerable and neglected communities. By measuring justice and giving communities the tools to plan investments in public safety, we are delivering on what the social contract owes to those most in need of its protections.

In 2013, with the support of the National Science Foundation, we launched the National Justice Database (NJD)—the first and largest collection of standardized police behavior data in the country, which houses crime, use-of-force, police contact, and survey response data collected from police departments who have invited us to partner with them. We also began developing a tool to measure justice called COMPSTAT for Justice (C4J). C4J analyzes data from the NJD, officer surveys, community surveys, and the Census to identify the sources of racial disparity in policing and generate reforms to reduce them. Specifically, through C4J City Report we provide feedback to law enforcement on the portion of racial disparities stemming from their behaviors, spotlighting neighborhoods, activities, and conditions that facilitate the greatest harm and generating detailed findings that lead to significant shifts in policy, behavior, and outcomes.

Over the next 5 years, one of our principal goals is to scale C4J to serve 100 million people a year—nearly one in three Americans.

We have always been committed to empowering communities to define public safety for themselves. But now, as communities are calling out for their cities to reimagine public safety, we are accelerating our work to empower communities to lead public safety funding efforts in ways that are values-aligned, efficient, and safe.

CPE has been and will remain on the forefront of this issue, working directly with law enforcement and communities to provide key guidance and support. CPE has demonstrated the transformative impact that data-driven interventions can have on over 55 million people served by our partnering law enforcement agencies. By pairing law enforcement with world-class researchers, we have simultaneously helped police departments realize their own equity goals while also advancing the scientific understanding of equity issues in policing.

In each city, the key partners in our work are law enforcement, community organizations, and local and state agencies. The demand is high and continues to outpace our current capacity. We have a standard process that is centered on buy-in from diverse stakeholders. CPE receives direct outreach from the interested police department or an introduction from city government, federal monitors, or other community groups. CPE then aligns with the department on process. Second, we ask the department to identify the community groups that are most vocal in their concerns about police and we learn from them. Finally, we ask to speak with the mayor or city council. The goal is to establish local partnerships with those most credible and motivated for change.

Using the department’s data, officer surveys, and Census data, we calculate the portion of disparate outcomes for which law enforcement is responsible. This allows us to pinpoint areas most ripe for intervention. Once data is collected and analyzed, CPE discusses the analysis results with the police and community partners to gain additional context and then proceeds to make recommendations based on past DOJ consent decrees, national best practices, evidence-informed interventions, and good old common sense. We deliver these findings to Chiefs as a City Report that also establishes a framework to ensure law enforcement continues to hold themselves accountable. After findings are shared and policy recommendations are implemented, we begin to see powerful results.

The underpinning of all of our work is strong systems. CPE partners with Google on the analytics and software development of our data-driven interventions. We have collaborated with The Bridgespan Group, which has helped us translate what we do for our partners and design our organizational infrastructure around three primary categories: science; justice initiatives; and field engagement. We have also recently worked alongside advocacy groups including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Movement For Black Lives, the Black Futures Lab, and Brighter Days for Justice (formerly Million Hoodies).

With so much at stake, and so many ready to reimagine public safety, we need to expedite this work and scale to accommodate the nationwide demand. The work that we’ve already been doing, particularly our COMPSTAT for Justice work, is absolutely crucial to reduce racism within departments around the country.

Over the past year, CPE strengthened its infrastructure and is scaling sustainably in order to reach our five-year goal of serving one-in-three Americans.

In order to scale, we will continue to develop new partnerships with police departments and communities nationwide—the demand is high and continues to grow. As our work with police departments expands to new cities and communities ready to come to terms with injustice, we must push on many fronts to ensure that change is broad-based and systemic as well as localized.

This year, we have leveraged our data partnership with Google to develop and deliver the first interactive C4J City Report Dashboard and a "How to Justice" website. The dashboard and website will allow CPE to significantly expand the number of police departments we reach, empowering our law enforcement partners to understand and use their C4J City Report results more effectively than ever before. The companion "How to Justice" site will contain helpful information about our methodology, our analytic framework, and best practices for implementing our recommendations with the involvement of the community and other critical stakeholders.

CPE receives 100% of our financial support from grants and philanthropic contributions.
CPE has earned trust from both police departments and community leaders through our evidenced-based approach and because we don’t accept funds from those we are serving. If the police paid for it, communities might doubt our objectivity. If communities paid for it, we would place an additional burden on already overburdened people. In recent years, CPE has received a number of multi-year investments to help ensure our programmatic goals are met. However, we seek to raise additional funding to continue to build the program delivery systems for this broad-based work and continue to expand the thought leadership for how departments can reduce the harms of biased policing.

CPE has established itself as the leader in the movement to end racial bias in policing in part because police departments and community leaders trust our data and comprehensive approach. Data is critical, but data alone does not tell the story of disparate policing. CPE has led with analyses that allows both police and communities to see the ways in which policing is part of a larger set of concerns they can tackle together. Further, through our ties with both community organizations and each police department we work with, we have been able to engage both sides in what is increasingly a contentious and challenging environment for change.

America’s justice system is so deeply broken that untangling the problems can feel insurmountable. However, through research, data, analysis, and community engagement, CPE has seen measurable improvements in the cities where we have worked with partner police departments. Examples of our impact include: 25% fewer use of force incidents (Pittsburgh, PA); 11% fewer injuries to officers (Las Vegas, NV); 7% decrease in residents who agree that "police officers will treat you differently because of your race/ethnicity.” Across six cities, community perceptions of racial bias, neighborhood safety, and police legitimacy improved over a three-year period with CPE and other interventions. This was the case even for Black community members, usually the most distrustful of law enforcement.

The work that we've already been doing, particularly in creating the National Justice Database and building COMPSTAT for Justice, is absolutely crucial to reduce racism within departments around the country.

And now, as municipalities chart their paths towards new models of public safety, they look to CPE to help do so responsibly. Our evidence-based approach frames how our communities and law enforcement partners might create right-solutioned, right-sized departments without risking increased violence, aggravating racial disparities, or producing other unintended consequences that do not serve communities calling for change.

We help municipalities assess what resources—police or otherwise—are required to address community needs. For the hundreds of cities seeking change, this involves a field scan that compares the services needed by the community with services provided by the police. A subsequent analysis of need and resources gives communities a tool to provide services in a more cost-efficient way that ensures that the emergency responder sent to each crisis has the specific expertise, tools, and training necessary to handle that crisis.

We’ve outlined these steps and shared them publicly so that municipalities across the country can access our Roadmap for Exploring New Models of Funding Public Safety and begin exploring what investing in vulnerable communities might look like.

Through CPE’s work, we help to forge a path towards increased public safety, community trust, and racial equity.