Setting a National Agenda for Research on Equity in Law Enforcement at the CPLE 2010 Summer Conference
Nation’s Largest Police Departments to Set Agenda for Racial Equity
–
Major city police chiefs are taking unprecedented steps to address issues of racial equity in law enforcement. Recent coverage of the Oscar Grant shooting, the Sean Bell shooting, and the Arizona Immigration Law (SB1070) have focused the nation’s attention on racial tensions between law enforcement and the communities they police. This month, chiefs and sheriffs are dedicating their time to fixing these problems. In a landmark gathering of police leadership, executives from 27 of the largest agencies in the U.S. and Canada will convene a meeting of researchers, federal officials, and community advocates to set an agenda for ensuring racial equity in law enforcement.
The meeting represents the largest collection of major city chiefs, researchers, and community advocates ever gathered to confront issues of equity within policing (e.g., racial profiling and immigration policy enforcement). The two-day event will take place in New York City on August 25 and 26, 2010, at New York University and John Jay College. The goal of the conference is to set an agenda for racial and gender equity that can guide law enforcement policy, community engagement, and scholarly research on the topic in the years to come.
Organized by the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity, the event will include over 30 researchers from leading universities and representatives from police and sheriff departments in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore County, Calgary, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Los Angeles (City and County), Montgomery County (MD), Newark (NJ), Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Tucson, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Jose, St. Louis, Toronto, Vancouver, and Virginia Beach.
Morning sessions are closed for conference invitees only, but evening sessions will be free and open to the public and will begin at 6:00 PM at John Jay College in the Cafeteria at North Hall. Panelists on the evening of August 25 will include Bernard Melekian, Director of Community Oriented Policing Services, Roy Austin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General from Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice, and Ellen Scrivner, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Justice. Panelists on the evening of August 26 will include executives from the American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Rights Working Group.
An organized press event will be held at John Jay College on Thursday, August 26 at 7:45 PM in the Faculty Dining Room at North Hall. Please contact the Staff Coordinator, Tattiya Kliengklom, for more information.
