New Perspectives in Policing V E R I TAS

HARVARD Kennedy School

Program in Criminal Justice

Policy and Management National Institute of Justice

JUNE 2015


Race and Policing: 

An Agenda for Action 

David H. Bayley, Michael A. Davis and Ronald L. Davis 

Executive Session on Policing and
 

Public Safety
 

This is one in a series of papers that will be


published as a result of the Executive Session on
 

Policing and Public Safety.
 

Harvard’s Executive Sessions are a convening


of individuals of independent standing who take
 

joint responsibility for rethinking and improving
 

society’s responses to an issue. Members


are selected based on their experiences, their


reputation for thoughtfulness and their potential
 

for helping to disseminate the work of the Session.


In the early 1980s, an Executive Session on Policing
 

helped resolve many law enforcement issues of


the day. It produced a number of papers and


concepts that revolutionized policing. Thirty


years later, law enforcement has changed and


NIJ and the Harvard Kennedy School are again 


collaborating to help resolve law enforcement


issues of the day.
 

Learn more about the Executive Session on 

Policing and Public Safety at: 

www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive Session 

Policing” 

www.hks.harvard.edu, keywords “Executive 

Session Policing” 

American police confront issues of race, daily, in 

almost everything they do. They confront race 

in the geographic distribution of criminality 

and the fear of crime as well as in assumptions 

about what criminals look like. They confront 

race in the suspicion and hostility of many 

young African American men they encounter 

on the street. They confront race in complaints 

from ethnic communities about being either 

over- or under-policed. They confront race in 

charges of racial profiling and unequal justice. 

And they confront race in decisions about hiring, 

promoting and assigning police officers. In short, 

race remains an “American dilemma,” as Gunnar 

Myrdal famously observed in 1944 (Myrdal, 1944), 

especially and inescapably for today’s police. 

The importance of race in policing has been 

demonstrated in discussions held since 2008 at 

the Second Executive Session on Policing and 

Public Safety at Harvard University. At almost 

every session, race emerged as a troubling 

preoccupation for police executives. Although 

many suggestions for dealing with the issue 

were discussed, the Executive Session did not 

try to formulate policies to deal with the various 
Cite this paper as: Bayley, David H., Michael A. Davis and Ronald L. Davis, 

Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action. New Perspectives in Policing Bulletin. 

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 

2015. NCJ 248624

 

 

 

2 | New Perspectives in Policing 

issues involving race. Concern about race 

seemed to become stalled in discussion rather 

than advancing to action. So, the authors of this 

article suggested to the Session members that 

we try to cull an agenda for action from the years 

of frank, insightful and sometimes passionate 

conversation. The Session readily agreed. These 

are the ideas we think are most promising in 

terms of what police executives might do to 

alleviate the problems of race in contemporary 

policing. They reflect what we have learned that 

might help the most. We alone are responsible for 

the contents of this agenda. 

Readers should also understand that the agenda 

consists of suggestions, not directions. Although 

some of these ideas have been tried, few, if any, 

have been evaluated. Furthermore, many of them 

are controversial. We include them nonetheless 

in order to provoke thought, often explicitly 

acknowledging their shortcomings. We hope 

that this agenda will move discussions about 

race from anger and yearning to concrete action 

by police leaders, and beyond. This is also not 

a “scholarly” paper that cites and explores all 

the writing that has been done on the activities 

suggested. That is beyond our ability. Therefore, 

before following any of our leads, readers 

should do their homework. Others, often more 

experienced than we, have thought about these 

issues before. 

The agenda is organized into two parts — Strategic 

Voice and Tactical Agency. Strategic Voice argues 

that problems of race in policing cannot be 

resolved by the police alone. Other people must 

help by understanding and ameliorating the 

social conditions that cause race to be associated 

with crime and hence become a dilemma for 

American policing. Rather than accepting these 

conditions as givens, police leaders with their 

powerful collective voice should actively call 

attention to what needs to be changed. 

Tactical Agency outlines what the police can do on 

their own initiative to deal with the operational 

dilemmas of race — in the communities they 

serve and in their own organizations. 

Strategic Voice 

We believe there are two messages that police 

leaders must find the voice to deliver: (1) Police 

need to be supported by policies that address 

conditions causing criminality and disorder to 

be concentrated in particular places, especially 

in communities of color; and (2) police strategies 

must expand freedom and justice, not just 

provide safety. 

Strategic Voice One 

Police officers know, through hard-won 

experience, that crime is not randomly distributed 

in society. It is concentrated in particular 

places. Any good cop can drive immediately to 

the neighborhoods where crimes rates are the 

highest and 911 calls are most common. Most of 

the rest of their jurisdictions are virtually free of 

reported crime. 
 

 

 

Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action | 3 

The problem is that the highest rates of violent crime 

are in minority neighborhoods — those where 

African Americans, Latinos and new immigrants 

live. This creates the impression that race or 

ethnicity is implicated in criminality and that 

serious crime in America is particularly a “black 

problem” (Braga and Brunson, 2015). However, 

this reasoning gets the causality backward. Race 

does not generate criminality but, rather, the 

circumstances that create compacted disadvantage 

for minority groups also create criminality. As the 

police who work in minority communities know, 

people of color are no more tolerant of crime and 

disorder than others. It also obscures the fact that 

minority people are more likely than the majority 

of white people to be victims of crime. 

Police also know that their ability to reduce 

crime where it matters most, as in disadvantaged 

neighborhoods, is limited through both reactive 

law enforcement and proactive crime prevention 

programs. This is not to say that the police cannot 

do anything, although it is generally agreed that 

deterrence alone will not reduce crime for people 

most at risk from it. Police officers are often 

frustrated by what little they can achieve as they 

respond over and over to the same problems among 

the same people in the same places. They feel that 

they are only “a band-aid on a cancer.” 

So, our first recommendation is that police 

leaders call attention publicly to the conditions of 

economic and social disadvantage that generate 

crime and disorder and undermine the ability of 

communities to protect themselves. They should 

speak loudly about the connections they see in 

their own experience between serious crime and 

conditions of unemployment, poverty, truancy, 

education attrition, teen pregnancy, housing 

segregation, inadequate health care, crowded and 

unsanitary housing, homelessness, underfinanced 

public services, and a lack of civic amenities 

such as parks, public transportation and street 

lighting. They should say publicly, out loud, as one 

commentator said almost 40 years ago, that police 

can only “perform a holding operation until other 

institutions attack such problems with an array of 

resources” (Robinson, 1975: 278). 

Of course, it is one thing to be critical of, even 

outraged by, persistent, self-perpetuating 

conditions associated with high crime rates. It is 

another to frame policies that will successfully 

remedy them. Doing this will take the finest minds 

the country has. All we can do is suggest the sorts of 

policy changes that should be considered: 

1.	 Recognize that race endures as an issue in 

America, not just because people are prejudiced 

but also because they fail to support structural 

changes that equalize opportunity. Law 

enforcement should not be viewed as a morality 

play between good guys and bad guys. It is about 

circumstances that put people on different life 

courses. Police, black communities and even 

street gangs are, as David Kennedy (2011) has 

said: 

all, all of them, in their own ways strong 

and aspirational and resilient. They are, 

all of them, dealing as best they can with 

a world they did not make. They are all 

doing profoundly destructive things 

without understanding what they do. 
4 | New Perspectives in Policing 

There is, on all sides, malice, craziness, 

and evil, but not much, it turns out, 

not much at all. There is, on all sides, a 

deep reservoir of core human decency. 

(p. 17) 

2.	 Focus crime prevention programs on 

communities and neighborhoods, not 

just on individuals. In particular, improve 

physical environments, fix the famous 

“broken windows,” and develop the capacity of 

communities to organize for the advancement 

of common interests, whether using their own 

resources or mobilizing wider public and 

private help. 

3.	 Mobilize and coordinate all government 

services bearing on public safety rather 

than assigning responsibility exclusively to 

the police. If criminality is rooted in social 

conditions, especially chronic deprivations, 

then more than police action is required to 

prevent it. Effective crime prevention requires 

that all the resources of government — welfare, 

education, health, sanitation, recreation, 

public transport — be focused where 

criminality is concentrated. It requires wholeof-government planning and implementation. 

Strategic Voice One may be sensible and 

righteous, but it poses risks for police. It puts 

them squarely into politics by challenging the 

policy shortcomings of the very governments 

that hired them. Furthermore, these brave 

words undermine what police chiefs promise 

and what the public expects from the police — 

safety represented by effective crime control. 

They challenge the very raison d’etre of police. 

Although social policies undoubtedly contribute 

to crime, the police have been created precisely 

to minimize their effects. 

Strategic Voice One is also out of sync with 

American public opinion about structural 

inequality, according to an NBC/Wall Street 

Journal poll in June 2013 (Blow, 2013). Asked 

to explain poverty in the U.S., most people (24 

percent) blamed the individuals themselves, 

especially citing receipt of welfare that eroded 

individual initiative. Only 4 percent blamed 

“lack of government money.” They did implicate 

unemployment (18 percent) and poor schooling 

(13 percent), although one wonders where they 

thought the remedies would come from, if not 

from government. The article concludes that “the 

stereotypes of poor people in the United States 

are among the most negative prejudices that 

we have ... . It seems like Washington is a place 

without pity right now” (Blow, 2013). That these 

uncharitable views may be laced with racism 

goes without saying. 

Scholars, too, have been complicit in fostering 

doubts about the efficacy of structural 

interventions. In his 1975 book, Thinking About 

Crime, James Q. Wilson argued that government 

was ill-equipped to remedy the root causes 

of crime, even if they could be identified with 

certainty (Wilson, 1975). He believed that public 

policy should focus on changing the incentives 

for crime by increasing the risk to offenders and 

lowering the relative rewards. Criminology in 

the following years seemed to follow his lead, 
 

Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action | 5 

focusing more on exploring factors that facilitated 

criminality (such as “routine activity theory,” 

Cohen and Felson, 1979) or changing criminal 

trajectories of individuals than on macrosocial 

correlates (Sampson, 2012). Advocates for 

structural reform have been very few (Currie, 

2010). Intellectual predispositions, it would 

seem, may shape scholarship just as ideology 

does politics. 

Asking police leaders to speak with Strategic 

Voice One is asking a lot. It requires them to 

articulate a larger vision of the social forces and 

structural factors linked to crime, even as they 

direct the everyday efforts of their police officers 

to address specific incidents of crime. As one 

member of the Executive Session said, “I feel like 

if we are going to be the canaries in the coal mine 

about this issue [race] from a macro level, we are 

going to really injure our ability to do any good 

at the micro level.” 

Strategic Voice Two 

The primary purpose for which police have been 

created is to safeguard life and property. This 

should continue to be their operational focus 

because public safety is not only a human right; it 

is fundamental to any constructive social activity, 

including the kind of community reconstruction 

suggested by Strategic Voice One. Implementing 

this purpose is more complex in the United 

States, however, because public safety must be 

created in a particularly demanding way, namely, 

within a rule of law that protects individuals 

from unjustified intrusions of governmental 

power. American policing is not just about crime 

fighting; it involves enhancing human freedom at 

the same time. Policing in America has two goals, 

both equally important (Manning, 2011). 

Accordingly, we recommend that police leaders 

explain, publicly and repeatedly, what is involved 

in combining effective law enforcement with 

liberty. It begins with finding the voice to criticize 

criminal justice policies that produce high rates 

of black male incarceration, perceptions of racial 

profiling, unequal enforcement of drug laws, and 

justice outcomes affected by race and class. 

But it goes farther. It requires police, through 

word and deed, to obtain the public’s consent 

for their actions. Policing with consent is an 

old theme in the democratic police tradition. 

Sir Robert Peel, considered the founding father 

of modern Anglo-American policing (1829), is 

credited with formulating nine principles of 

policing, three of which involve policing with 

communities (CIVITAS, 2014): 

●● “To recognise always that the power of the 

police to fulfil their functions and duties 

is dependent on public approval of their 

existence, actions and behaviour and on their 

ability to secure and maintain public respect.” 

●● “To recognise always that to secure and 

maintain the respect and approval of the 

public means also the securing of the willing 

co-operation of the public in the task of 

securing observance of laws.” 

●● “To maintain at all times a relationship with 

the public that gives reality to the historic 

tradition that the police are the public and 
 

 

6 | New Perspectives in Policing 

that the public are the police, the police being 

only members of the public who are paid to 

give full[-]time attention to duties which are 

incumbent on every citizen in the interests of 

community welfare and existence.” 

These principles became meaningful at first 

through the encouragement of the public to 

contact police directly whenever something is 

wrong that needs authoritative intervention, such 

as the commission of crime. Operationally, this 

became the 911 dispatch system developed during 

the 20th century. The importance of public input 

in creating the police agenda was reaffirmed by 

the First Executive Session on Police and Public 

Safety, 1986–1992, but with a new wrinkle. Rather 

than having police work defined by individuals 

as well as the police themselves, the First Session 

stressed the importance of police consulting 

with, as well as mobilizing, communities with 

common interests. This was called community 

policing. Two of the recommendations were 

to create neighborhood advisory boards and 

for police officers to conduct periodic visits 

to individual homes and businesses. In effect, 

community policing introduced a new level of 

social organization into policing by consent — 

groups of individuals organized by interest and/ 

or geography. 

Toget her, 911 and communit y policing 

empowered the public to shape what police do 

through individual and neighborhood instigation. 

Through them, policing by consent became 

radically democratized. It shifted the authority 

for determining what police do away from formal 

government, represented by the police, and 

directly to the public. As a result, police in the 

United States and in other democratic countries 

became more than agents of government. They 

became the citizens’ police (Bayley, 1985). 

“Consent” in democratic countries means more 

than acceptance by the public of what the police 

are doing; it also means the ability to shape that 

activity directly through personal contact. This 

represents a radical change in the relation of 

security institutions to the public — one that 

has become the distinguishing characteristic 

of democratic policing. Policing by consent, in 

this sense, exists in only a handful of countries 

worldwide. 

Policing with consent has another dimension, 

one more recently discovered: namely, how the 

police act in their encounters with the public. 

Beginning in the early 1990s, Professor Tom 

Tyler showed that when people are treated by 

the police in ways they regard as respectful and 

fair, they are less likely to resist and more likely 

to conform to what the law requires (Tyler, 2006). 

Robert Peel, in fact, made much the same point 

in one of his nine principles of policing (CIVITAS, 

2014): 

[Police should] seek and preserve public 

favour, not by pandering to public opinion[,] 

but by constantly demonstrating absolutely 

impartial service to law, in complete 

independence of policy, and without regard 

to the justice or injustice of the substance 

of individual laws[;] by ready offering of 

individual service and friendship to all 

members of the public without regard to 

their wealth or social standing[;] by ready 
 

Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action | 7 

exercise of courtesy and friendly good 

humour; and by ready offering of individual 

sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. 

Tyler’s research moved significantly beyond Peel’s 

generalities by showing that police behavior, both 

in attitude and procedure, could improve law 

enforcement outcomes even with people who 

have violated the law. “Procedural justice,” as he 

calls it, undercuts a common belief among police 

that authority has to be visibly demonstrated 

to actual and potential lawbreakers and that 

adhering to technicalities of legal procedure 

undermines deterrence. Procedural justice 

challenges the mindset that there are tradeoffs 

between effectiveness in controlling crime and 

observance of civil rights guaranteed by the 

Constitution. 

Giving voice to policing by consent is probably 

less controversial than the social reforms of 

Strategic Voice One. Priorities in police work 

and the behavior of officers are ongoing topics 

of conversation within contemporary police 

agencies, well within the “police line of work.” 

Moreover, police officers understand from their 

own experience the importance of having the 

public “on their side.” Exercising “discretion” in 

applying the law is an accepted part of police 

professionalism. Police officers know that 

different folks need different strokes. The crucial 

question is, which folks? 

At the same time, some of the issues embedded 

in policing with consent are controversial among 

police, and discussing them in public is not 

something they may be comfortable doing. 

Responding to calls for service in a timely 

manner, for example, is enormously popular 

with the public and politicians alike. It is costly, 

however, and may divert resources that might 

be more effectively employed in proactive crime 

prevention. Some of the popular new strategies, 

such as predictive and hot spots policing, depend 

on analyses done by headquarters staff, not input 

from the public. Police may also know better, in 

some cases, about how to deal with particular 

forms of crime. Furthermore, police are 

increasingly expected to address not just crimes 

that affect individuals (street crime) but also 

crimes that affect the society as a whole, such as 

terrorism, drug markets, human trafficking and 

violent youth gangs. Within this crowded agenda, 

encouraging and facilitating direct public input 

may seem a luxury from a bygone age (Bayley and 

Nixon, 2010). 

So, too, with procedural justice. Many police 

officers believe that respect comes from a display 

of authority. They believe that they are the best 

judges of people who are deserving of soft or hard 

treatment, and they resent having their decisions 

challenged. The public, too, is ambivalent about 

procedural justice. Many people believe strongly 

in being “tough on crime” and not “coddling 

criminals,” and they are willing to excuse 

intrusive and punitive policing when they fear 

the crime is close at hand. 

Selling procedural justice will be much easier 

in the abstract than in the particular. In areas 

experiencing high levels of violence, police and 

the public may doubt that procedural justice 

will gain enough consent, especially from 
 

8 | New Perspectives in Policing 

troublemakers, to improve safety significantly. 

Perhaps in those situations, consent is more likely 

to come from being “tough on crime” rather than 

from procedural justice (Tankebe, 2009). Issues 

like these are being explored and tested in a 

departmentwide training program developed 

by the Chicago Police Department in 2011. It 

has already been given to over 3,000 employees 

(Meares and Neyroud, 2015) 

Finally, supporting policing by consent involves 

taking a stand on another development that 

is very controversial among police, namely, 

civilian review. In the U.S., racial minorities have 

repeatedly criticized the willingness of police 

agencies to investigate themselves. Their consent 

to be policed turns, to a considerable degree, on 

whether they believe police are being held to 

account. Civilian review is supposed to provide 

that assurance. Civilian review panels have 

been used to evaluate both the crime-control 

effectiveness of the police and the behavior of 

police in carrying out assigned duties. 

The questions for American police are not 

“whether” to allow civilian review but, instead, 

“when” and “how.” More than 100 American 

cities have already developed some form of 

it. All Canadian provinces and all Australian 

states have; so, too, has Great Britain (Stenning, 

2011; Walker, 2010). Civilian review is being 

advocated by both the United Nations and the 

U.S. government as fundamental to police reform 

in countries emerging from civil strife. For many 

people in democratic countries, civilian review is 

essential for ensuring that police are practicing 

procedural justice. 

What is often not recognized in debates about 

civilian review is that it is not unidimensional. 

It varies from place to place in membership, 

powers and ambit of oversight. Some civilian 

review boards, for example, only evaluate the 

rigor with which the police receive, investigate 

and discipline allegations of misbehavior and 

then publish the results. Others have the power 

to oversee particular investigations and provide 

advice about them. Still others completely 

remove investigations and the determination of 

sanctions from police authority. Being either in 

favor or opposed to civilian review in principle 

is naive — especially when one considers that, 

in democratic countries, civilian review already 

occurs by elected officials, courts and the media. 

“Civilian review” may be new, but review by 

civilians is not. 

In sum, speaking with Strategic Voice Two is easy 

to do in normative generalities. It fits America’s 

democratic heritage. The difficulty comes in 

convincing police officers and the public that 

policing with consent improves the effectiveness 

of crime control. Scholars and many police 

officers believe that it does. Strategic Voice Two 

requires police leaders to participate in a public 

discussion about the importance of policing with 

consent in achieving public safety. In particular, 

it challenges them to discuss openly whether 

small encroachments on civil rights enhance 

public safety or, at the very least, to explain when 

exceptions are justified. 
Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action | 9 

Tactical Agency 

Police may do important things to address the 

dilemmas of race in policing without waiting for 

outside support in the form of either additional 

resources or progressive social policies. Indeed, 

many departments have courageously accepted 

the need to confront issues of race, instituting 

new programs and revising customary ways of 

doing business. We provide references to some 

active programs (see “References”). However, 

given the number and variety of American police 

agencies, the implementation of such actions has 

been uneven. To encourage and assist in reform, 

we make the following suggestions, drawing on 

the growing experience of police themselves and 

on the research by scholars. Our suggestions 

are divided into two parts — engaging the 

community and managing police agencies. 

Engaging the Community 

1.	 Reorient the culture of policing from going 

to war against lawbreakers to engaging with 

communities to help those at risk and in 

need. One way to do this is to take the time 

to educate police officers about the history of 

the communities to which they are assigned, 

stressing the fact that their inhabitants, 

especially the children, have no control over 

that history. 

2.	 Embrace community policing as the 

primary strategy for policing. This is not an 

uncomplicated suggestion. Community 

policing has been consistently advocated 

as a philosophy applicable throughout 

policing (see, e.g., Bayley and Skolnick, 

1988). Views differ considerably, however, 

about its programmatic elements (Maguire 

et al., 1997). As a result, officers have been 

confused about what it means for their work, 

frequently dismissing it with the comment, 

“community policing, whatever that means.” 

For this reason, many officers have come to 

the conclusion that it was largely a matter 

of rhetoric, a flavor-of-the-month whose 

time had passed. Problem-oriented policing 

(POP), often associated with communityoriented policing, has enjoyed greater 

staying power precisely because it has a 

clear implementation program. POP quickly 

became identified as a set of activities — 

scanning, analysis, response and assessment 

— identified by the acronym SARA. 

3.	 Police officers should develop the habit of 

explaining what they are doing whenever they 

act (Fridell et al., 2001). This is particularly 

important when an encounter has occurred 

as a result of the initiative of the police officer, 

especially when African Americans are the 

target. 

4.	 Patrol supervisors should regularly assess how 

people contacted by the police feel about the 

treatment they received. This may be done 

systematically through surveys or by direct 

contact with individuals who have solicited 

help or have been contacted proactively. 

5.	 A simple, user-friendly system for receiving 

complaints from the public about police 

behavior should be created. Its receptiveness 

should be tested periodically by sending 

civilians or plainclothes police officers to 
 

10 | New Perspectives in Policing 

file complaints. For example, the Charlotte­ 2. Managers must search out and confront racial 

Mecklenburg police in North Carolina have and ethnic tensions among officers, especially 

created a website for filing complaints online perceptions by minorities that they have not 

(http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/CMPD/ received equitable treatment in assignments 

Pages/Complaints.aspx). or promotions. Frank discussions with 

6. Routinely collect and publish information 

about allegations of police misbehavior, 

organizations representing minority officers 

can be very helpful. 

the results of investigations into them, and 3. In place of detailed regulations, statements 

their disciplinary outcomes. This kind of of values should be developed that guide all 

transparency is important for reassuring aspects of policing that involve the public. 

communities that police are serious about Having clear statements about standards of 

investigating and punishing misbehavior. behavior is necessary in order to empower 

It makes the issue of police discipline supervisors in taking corrective action. As one 

discussable publicly. participant at the Executive Session remarked, 

Managing the Organization “It’s easier to act your way to right thinking 

than to think your way to right acting.” Right 

Police organizations are themselves microcosms behavior is ensured when it is required by the 

of the community they serve, where larger immediate supervisors. 

societal issues have very real implications for 

running an effective organization. In order to The Madison, Wis., police department 

make progress externally, the police need to pioneered this approach in the early 1980s. 

improve race relations internally. The Milwaukee Police Department has 

a detailed code of conduct specif ying 

1. Officers in supervisory positions must the department’s mission, values and 

demonstrate, by word and action, that disciplinary guidelines. (See http://city. 

protection of human rights should permeate milwaukee.gov/police under “About MPD/ 

all aspects of policing. Their performance Code of Conduct & Standard Operating 

in this regard should be part of their annual Procedures”). 

evaluations. In particular, supervisors at all 

levels must never tolerate attitudes (often 4. Take time to explain the importance of 

revealed in denigrating language) that excuse neighborhood histories so that officers 

differential treatment of particular groups, understand the people they will be dealing 

such as “We have to be tough with those with. This is usually done through “cultural 

people” and “Those people only respect force.” sensitivity” programs featuring presentations 

by members of racial and ethnic communities. 
Race and Policing: An Agenda for Action | 11 

A better way is to show recruits what the world 

looks like from subcultural points of view. 

This can be done by assigning recruit officers 

to live among and with minority families for 

short periods of time or to serve as interns for 

neighborhood nonprofit organizations. 

5.	 Develop procedures for evaluating whether 

officers engage effectively with communities, 

and reward them in recognizable ways. 

6.	 Create early warning systems for detecting 

patterns of behavior, such as complaints 

filed against officers, that indicate potential 

vulnerabilities for the officer and the 

department. The primary purpose of such 

systems is not to punish but to provide 

counseling to officers so as to reduce their 

level of risk. The creation of such a system was 

a key recommendation in the 1997 consent 

decree between the U.S. Department of Justice 

and the Pittsburgh police department, and 

many other accords since then. 

Conclusion 

The purpose of this article has been to move 

the discussion about the dilemmas of race in 

policing from talk to action. Although we think 

these actions will help to ease tensions at the 

intersection of policing and race, race will remain 

difficult to talk about. However, at some point in 

the career of every senior officer, the need to do 

so will almost inevitably arise. It will occur when 

a white officer shoots a black man, when police 

of any color arrest distraught minority women 

amid a jeering crowd, and when crime-control 

activities in high-crime neighborhoods weigh 

more heavily on minority people. In situations 

like these, race becomes “the third rail” in 

discussions between police leaders and their 

communities, leading to an angry disconnect. 

Because of its sensitivity, therefore, police leaders 

should think carefully about what they should say 

when race-infused events occur. 

The key is for police leaders to remember that 

they are not trying to change the minds of the 

people who are either irretrievably bigoted or 

already open-minded. Some people are attuned 

to expect prejudice in all dealings with the 

police, others reflexively defend the police and 

discount charges of unequal treatment, and still 

others wave the “bloody flag” of race for their own 

purposes. The target audience is not these, but the 

vast majority who know little about either policing 

or race. For these people, the discussion needs 

to move away from charge and countercharge to 

an understanding of what police work requires 

and what minority status compels with regard to 

treatment. 

If approached with forethought and no small 

amount of courage, controversial race-implicated 

events should be seen as opportunities to develop 

new understandings and not just as inevitable 

public relations disasters. Police officials should 

not speak hastily before they have basic facts 

about what occurred. And they must be willing 

to “let the chips fall where they may” if mistakes, 

individual or organizational, have been made. 

This requires police leaders to do a tricky twostep — reassuring their officers that there will be 
 

12 | New Perspectives in Policing 

no rush to judgment while convincing minority 

communities that justice will be done. 

Police officials should use these occasions to 

point out that confrontations between police 

and minorities do not arise primarily out of 

differences in values. Minority individuals, 

except for a few unredeemable criminals, want 

safety and order as much as the majority of people. 

Sadly, however, many minority individuals have 

been raised within a structure that limits their 

ability to have stable families, obtain necessary 

education, and be gainfully employed. Their 

culture is not at fault, but the circumstances into 

which they were born are. 

On the other hand, most police officers are not 

prejudiced against minorities, although some are. 

Most act according to inherited understandings 

that focus enforcement attention on minority 

people, especially young males. Police officers are 

required to prevent crime by acting on suspicion 

within a society where many people, white as 

well as black, identify young, black males as likely 

threats and stereotype them as criminals. 

Developing this kind of empathic voice in 

contemporary policing is a tall order. But words 

can shape events, creating new and more positive 

directions as scenarios unfold. In particular, they 

can diminish the perception that race is the sole or 

primary issue affecting police-minority relations. 

References 

Bayley, David H. 1985. Patterns of Policing: 

A Comparative International Analysis. New 

Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 

Bayley, David H., and Christine Nixon. 2010. The 

Changing Environment for Policing, 1985–2008. 

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School. 

Bayley, David H., and Jerome H. Skolnick. 1988. 

Community Policing: Issues and Practices Around 

the World. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of 

Justice, National Institute of Justice. 

Blow, Charles M. “A Town Without Pity,” The New 

York Times, Aug. 10, 2013, A19. Report of NBC 

News/Wall Street Journal poll, June 2013. 

Braga, Anthony, and Rod K. Brunson. 2015. The 

Police and Public Discourse on “Black-on-Black” 

Violence. New Perspectives in Policing Bulletin. 

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. NCJ 

248588. 

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Society). 2014. The Nine Principles of Policing. 

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Metropolitan Police, 1829, by Sir Robert Peel, and 

republished 1956 as appendix in A New Study of 

Police History, by Charles Reith (London: Oliver 

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44: 588–608. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2094589 

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Unhappy.” Criminology and Public Policy 9(1): 

1–10. (Vollmer Award Address, American Society 

of Criminology, 2009.) 
 

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Fridell, Laurie, Bob Lunney, Drew Diamond and 

Bruce Kobe. 2001. Racial Profiling — A Principled 

Response. Washington, D.C.: Police Executive 

Research Forum. 

Kennedy, David. 2011. Don’t Shoot: One Man, a 

Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in InnerCity America. New York: Bloomsbury. 

Maguire, Edward R., Joseph B. Kuhns, Craig D. 

Uchida and Stephen M. Cox. 1997. “Patterns of 

Community Policing in Nonurban America.” 

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(3): 368–394. 

Manning, Peter K. 2011. Democratic Policing in 

a Changing World. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm 

Publishers. 

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Police — the Political Role of the Police in Society,” 

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vol. 2. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications. 

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Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

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the Police in Ghana: Does Procedural Fairness 

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Author Note 

David H. Bayley is Distinguished Professor 

Emeritus in the School of Criminal Justice at the 

State University of New York, Albany. 

Michael A. Davis is the Chief Law Enforcement 

Officer for Northeastern University and former 

Chief of Police for Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. 

Ronald L. Davis is the former Chief of Police for 

East Palo Alto, California. 
Findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily 

reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
NCJ 248624

Members of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety

Chief Edward Flynn, Milwaukee 

Police Department 

Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent, New Jersey State Police 

District Attorney George Gascón, San 

Francisco District Attorney’s Office 

Mr. Gil Kerlikowske, Director, Office of 

National Drug Control Policy 

Professor John H. Laub, Distinguished 

University Professor, Department of 

Criminology and Criminal Justice, College of 

Behavioral and Social Sciences, University 

of Maryland, and former Director of the 

National Institute of Justice

Chief Susan Manheimer, San Mateo 

Police Department 

Superintendent Garry McCarthy, Chicago 

Police Department

Professor Tracey Meares, Walton Hale 

Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale Law School 

Dr. Bernard K. Melekian, Director, Office 

of Community Oriented Policing Services 

(retired), United States Department of 

Justice

Ms. Sue Rahr, Director, Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission

Commissioner Charles Ramsey,

Philadelphia Police Department

Professor Greg Ridgeway, Associate 

Professor of Criminology, University of 

Pennsylvania, and former Acting Director, 

National Institute of Justice

Professor David Sklansky, Yosef 

Osheawich Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law 

Mr. Sean Smoot, Director and Chief Legal Counsel, Police Benevolent and Protective 

Association of Illinois 

Professor Malcolm Sparrow, Professor 

of Practice of Public Management, John F. 

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard 

University 

Mr. Darrel Stephens, Executive Director, 

Major Cities Chiefs Association 

Mr. Christopher Stone, President, Open Society Foundations

Mr. Richard Van Houten, President, Fort 

Worth Police Officers Association

Lieutenant Paul M. Weber, Los Angeles 

Police Department

Professor David Weisburd, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, 

Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University; 

and Distinguished Professor, Department 

of Criminology, Law and Society, George 

Mason University

Dr. Chuck Wexler, Executive Director, 

Police Executive Research Forum

Commissioner Anthony Batts, Baltimore 

Police Department

Professor David Bayley, Distinguished Professor (Emeritus), School of Criminal 

Justice, State University of New York at 

Albany 

Professor Anthony Braga, Senior Research 

Fellow, Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management, John F. Kennedy School 

of Government, Harvard University; and 

Don M. Gottfredson Professor of EvidenceBased Criminology, School of Criminal 

Justice, Rutgers University

Chief Jane Castor, Tampa Police Department

Ms. Christine Cole (Facilitator), Executive Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management, John F. Kennedy School 

of Government, Harvard University 

Commissioner Edward Davis, Boston 

Police Department (retired)

Chief Michael Davis, Director, Public Safety 

Division, Northeastern University

Mr. Ronald Davis, Director, Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services, 

United States Department of Justice

Ms. Madeline deLone, Executive Director, 

The Innocence Project

Dr. Richard Dudley, Clinical and Forensic 

Psychiatrist

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

8660 Cherry Lane

Laurel, MD 20707-4651

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