-  The Milwaukee Police Department: High Fives and Pedestrian Safety
        - Improving Police-Community Relations in Six U.S. Cities
        - On the Beat over the Holidays: In Conversation with Wayne Vincent
        - The Peacemaker Corps: Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Conflict Resolution
        -  Private Prisons: Change in Policy and Practice
        -  Social Media: How Police Agencies Are Re-writing the Communications Handbook

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### The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice: Improving Police-Community Relations in Six U.S. Cities

In September 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced  a three-year, $4.75 million grant to establish the National Initiative for  Building Community Trust and Justice. Led by the National Network for Safe  Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the National Initiative  comprises a partnership of the Center  for Policing Equity, the Justice  Collaboratory at Yale Law School, and the Urban  Institute. The National Initiative is designed to improve relationships between law  enforcement and minority communities, as well as advance public and scholarly  understandings of the issues contributing to those relationships, with special attention to youth,  immigrants, LGBTQIA communities, victims of domestic violence and sexual  assault, and other marginalized communities.

Over the past two years, the National Initiative has worked  with police departments, community organizations, academic researchers, experts  in transitional justice, and others around the country to develop an actionable  plan for six pilot sites chosen based on their demonstrated ability and  willingness to participate, the strongest possibility for positive treatment,  and leadership and institutional readiness. These include Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania; Stockton, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas;  Gary, Indiana; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. As it approaches its third year, the  National Initiative continues to build upon its work in each site, researching,  designing, and implementing a combination of  existing and newly developed law enforcement interventions oriented around  three pillars: 
        - Enhancing  procedural  justice : the way police interact with the public, and how those interactions  shape the public’s views of the police and their engagement in co-producing  public safety.
        - Reducing the impact of  implicit  bias : the automatic associations individuals make between groups of people  and stereotypes about those groups, and the influence such associations have on  policing.
        - Fostering  reconciliation :  frank engagements between minority communities and law enforcement to address  historical tensions, misconceptions, and mutual mistrust.

The National Initiative has worked with each city’s police  department to create a first-of-its-kind procedural justice curriculum, developed  with the Justice Collaboratory, to equip officers with principles and practices  that emphasize giving community members a voice, employing neutral decision making  grounded in transparency, demonstrating respect for citizens’ rights and  dignity, and increasing the police department’s trustworthiness. All sworn  officers in each city have now completed the first module of this curriculum. Also  in development with the Center for Police Equity is a curriculum on implicit  bias, to be administered over the coming year. Reconciliation activities,  designed with the National Network for Safe Communities, are now underway in  several cities and in planning phases for others. Surveys of community  attitudes toward police have also been conducted as a baseline for evaluation  of the National Initiative’s interventions.

Reconciliation work in **Minneapolis, Minnesota**, began in June  2016 with meetings between Police Chief Janee Harteau and influential leaders from  African American, Latino, Native American, Somali, and LGBTQIA communities,  each with their own history of tensions with the police. During this time, Chief  Harteau announced several changes to the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD)  use of force policy, describing them as a “first step” to repairing the broken  relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. Under the revised policy, which centers around  “sanctity of life,” officers are required to both intervene and report if they  witness improper use of force by their colleagues. De-escalation, a practice  previously encouraged but not enforced, will also be formalized through  training delivered to MPD’s current class of 32 police recruits. The American  Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, praising MPD’s “promising changes,” called  upon other law enforcement agencies, including the St. Paul Police Department,  to implement similar model policies for police-citizen encounters. 

**Birmingham,  Alabama**was the second site to begin reconciliation work, in August  2016, through facilitated reconciliation meetings between Police Chief A.C.  Roper and members of African-American,  youth, and LGBTQIA communities. Building upon these  initial reconciliation meetings, Birmingham Police Department was the first to  premiere the National Initiative’s “Safety and Equity Circles” over three weeks  in October. Involving officers from all levels of the  department and residents of the East and West Side communities, they  created authentic opportunities to connect with each other, expose  misconceptions, and build trust for future collaboration. This process, co-facilitated  with reconciliation experts Susan Glisson and Charles Tucker of the  organization Sustainable Equity, asked participants to meet for a one-day  retreat during the first weekend and three days a week for two-hour meetings  thereafter.

In **Fort Worth, Texas,**the police department is presently focused on developing “internal  procedural justice”—structures and practices that lead officers to perceive the  department as treating them fairly and respectfully—which is key to their  willingness to incorporate principles of procedural justice in their  interactions with the public. As a result, Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD)  has developed new communication mechanisms between the command staff and all  other levels of the department. These include an internal email address for officers  to contact assistant chiefs directly with concerns and questions, and new ways  to responsibly share the outcomes of Internal Affairs investigations, which can  be a common source of speculation and miscommunication. FWPD is continuing to  explore other mechanisms for internal buy-in, sustainability, and transparency,  such as building a larger training corps to sustain the work of the National  Initiative through the second and third installments of procedural justice and  implicit bias training. 

The police department in **Gary, Indiana**, having successfully delivered procedural justice  training to all of its 200-plus sworn officers, is now exploring ways to  establish procedural justice as a foundational concept in neighboring law  enforcement agencies. For example, Gary Police Department will facilitate a  local “train-the-trainer” event for members of the Lake County Sheriff’s  Department and the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Agency, and the National  Initiative is working closely with departmental leadership to institutionalize  and sustain the curriculum as a core part of its future policies.

In **Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,** the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police (PBP)—partnering with the Summer Institute and  the University of Pittsburgh Center on Race and Social Problems—collaborated to  teach a “Community Procedural Justice” class to approximately 70 people with  guidance from Center for Policing Equity. The class represents the PBP’s expansion  of its procedural justice training, creating opportunities not only to educate  the community on the department’s work under the National Initiative, but also  to receive feedback on ways to improve their procedural justice curriculum. Building upon its efforts  to collaborate with communities, the PBP also developed a Youth Police Advisory  Committee that convenes Pittsburgh students and law enforcement to improve the relationships  between them in four critical areas: dialogue, cultural literacy, positive  interaction, and youth with disabilities. The committee, helmed by former Chief  McLay, meets monthly to discuss citywide issues and develop “Closing the Gap  Resolutions.”

**Stockton,  California**has worked closely with the National Initiative to  institutionalize Stockton Police Department’s (SPD) procedural justice  curriculum as a core part of its existing and future policies. Significant  progress has been made on this front, including inserting language into  officer, sergeant, and field training officer evaluations requiring  documentation of procedural justice practices; requiring supervisors to  evaluate their officers’ understanding and application of procedural justice in  transfer request and promotional examinations; and adding the tenets of  procedural justice to the department’s “Conduct Toward the Public” and “Conduct  Toward Fellow Members” policies. Additionally,  SPD has become a local and statewide educator on procedural justice, organizing  classes with representatives from the District Attorney’s Office, San Joaquin  County Probation Department, the Stockton Unified School District Police,  Stockton Peacekeepers, and others. As of August 2016, SPD is helping to lead an  initiative headed by the California Attorney General to train all California  police departments in procedural justice.

Sonia TsuruokaResearch and Communications AssociateNational Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice

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 The Milwaukee Police Department: High Fives and Pedestrian Safety| The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice: Improving Police-Community Relations in Six U.S. Cities  |  On the Beat over the Holidays: In Conversation with Wayne Vincent  |The Peacemaker Corps: Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Conflict Resolution  | Private Prisons: Change in Policy and Practice  | Social Media: How Police Agencies Are Re-writing the Communications Handbook 

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