In response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, individuals and groups around the country have taken a heightened interest in the rightness and wrongness of what police do and how they do it.
This page contains initial information concerning The Police Governance Project, a new nonprofit organization whose mission is to
- eliminate the ideological and structural vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow from municipal police departments,
- create a comprehensive model state law governing municipal police departments, and
- develop a code of professional responsibility for police officers and police departments.
To learn more, download
- the One-page Proposal for the Police Governance Project – General or
- The Police Governance Project – A Prospectus.
Want to get involved? Contact Mike Palmer: mike (at) winbeforetrial.com.
Check out some of these resources for learning more about policing in America:
Into America with Trymaine Lee. Several of the podcasts are devoted to issues related to policing. All are relevant to the realities of Black people in America. Great show.
See also Asking the Right Questions about the Killing of Breonna Taylor
Washington Post Series on Reimagining Safety.
History: The Invention of Police by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker)
Police Executives Research Forum (PERF)
Founded in 1976 as a nonprofit organization, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) is a police research and policy organization and a provider of management services, technical assistance, and executive-level education to support law enforcement agencies. PERF helps to improve the delivery of police services through the exercise of strong national leadership; public debate of police and criminal justice issues; and research and policy development.
PERF is founded on the following principles:
- Research, experimentation, and exchange of ideas through public discussion and debate are paths for development of a professional body of knowledge about policing.
- Substantial and purposeful academic study is a prerequisite for acquiring, understanding and adding to the body of knowledge of professional police management.
- Maintenance of the highest standards of ethics and integrity is imperative to the improvement of policing.
- The police must, within the limits of the law, be responsible and accountable to citizens as the ultimate source of police authority.
- The principles embodied in the Constitution are the foundation of policing
The Center for Policing Equity
Many resources available, including Prevent Harm and Lead with the Truth, a joint effort between the Center for Policing Equity and the Yale Justice Collaboratory. The goal is to highlight the policies that science and experience say have the best chance to make the most progress towards producing public safety systems that are both effective and align with our values.
See The National Justice Database Sample City Report
TED Talk by Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff: The Bill Has Come Due
Lexipol provides a unified solution—content, policies and training—for law enforcement agencies. A risk management company for law enforcement, fire departments, EMS, and government, Lexipol has a full library of customizable, state-specific policies as well as thousands of hours of online learning content—all accessible 24/7 through in-vehicle computers or smartphones.
Dr. Walker is a nationally recognized expert on police accountability. His specific areas of expertise include citizen oversight of the police, early intervention systems to identify problem officers, federal pattern and practice litigation, and mediating citizen complaints. He is also an expert on the history of civil liberties, with books on the history of the ACLU and the controversy over hate speech.
He is the author of numerous books and articles, including The New World of Police Accountability, must reading for anyone who wants to understand how policing works in America and what we can do to improve it.
Fair and Impartial Policing provides implicit-bias-awareness training to agencies of all types and sizes, including state, local, federal and university police organizations.
Over the past decade, police personnel, researchers, community leaders and other stakeholders have engaged in a national discussion about public safety and bias; biases based on race and ethnicity have received the most attention. Fair & Impartial Policing helps trainees understand the ways in which unconscious, implicit biases affect their thinking and actions.