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In an essay for TIME, “Building a Moonshot for Racial Justice,” Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-Founder and CEO, reflects on the progress made to eradicate racism in the United States in the five years since George Floyd’s death. While the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death saw a surge in local initiatives and some federal policy reform to make policing less racist and hold police more accountable, that momentum has since waned. Under the second Trump administration, the progress toward equality and justice has become much more challenging. A sustained effort that celebrates the smallest of victories is needed to create lasting systemic change: The third step is abandoning the idea that justice is a single achievement—a moon landing, one legislative win, one landmark court ruling, one budget reallocation that will fix everything. Justice is not a single scheme. It is not a destination. It is a sustained effort, something […]

As the Trump administration continues an aggressive rollback of DEI initiatives, The Guardian explores the impact these executive orders have on policing in the United States. Officers fear that the elimination of these initiatives will erode trust between police and communities, while legal experts warn it could lead to a rise in discriminatory policing practices. In the meantime, many departments are choosing to maintain their DEI initiatives, which, as Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-Founder and CEO, points out, comes with risks: Phillip Atiba Solomon, the chief executive of the Center for Policing Equity, an organization that collects and analyzes public safety data to improve policing outcomes, said he wondered whether the Trump administration might try to use the Department of Justice to investigate police departments with DEI programs for “reverse racism.” Read the full article on The Guardian’s website.

In an OpEd for The Atlantic, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-Founder and CEO, discusses the increasing threats to academic freedom following a new directive from the Trump administration’s Department of Education (DOE). In a “Dear Colleague” letter, the DOE has prohibited race-conscious policies at universities across the country, using their interpretation of the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard as justification. This approach, argues Dr. Solomon, is a strategy to promote ignorance in education. It is up to universities to resist these pressures and continue to uphold scholarship and the truth: The letter comes amid a flurry of executive orders that, taken together, will shape not only individual programs but national memory. These orders have limited how history is taught in K–12, ending what one order calls “racial indoctrination”; banned funding for programs at the Smithsonian Institution that promote “improper ideology”; and directed the Department

In early April, the Carrboro Town Council in North Carolina met to discuss their Safe Streets For All/Vision Zero action plan. One such update during the meeting was on the Carrboro Police Department’s quarterly traffic stop policy review and its mental health diversion program, which CPE has consulted on. According to The Daily Tar Heel: “Atack said the Carrboro Police Department is consulting with community stakeholders like El Centro Hispano, Chapel-Hill Carrboro NAACP and the Center for Policing Equity to analyze how officers can continue to eliminate racial biases in traffic violations.” Read the full article at The Daily Tar Heel’s website.

Since the murder of George Floyd five years ago, police departments, especially those in larger jurisdictions across the country have been grappling with staffing shortages for a number of reasons, including a criticism of policing practices. Such scrutiny has led to a rise in the implementation of co-responder or alternative response programs within law enforcement departments for calls involving mental health emergencies, for example.  Departments have also turned to these programs to increase recruitment and retention rates, though some raise concerns about the safety of those answering calls that would have normally been answered by police officers. CPE’s Charlotte Resing, Government Affairs Manager at CPE, explains why such concerns do not outweigh the benefits of alternative response programs: Still, just having uniformed cops show up can add stress to a situation. Although questions remain about which calls are safe for alternative responders to address without police backup, that’s not a

In a joint release, the Vera Institute of Justice, ACLU, the Center for Policing Equity, and the Policing Project, announced the launch of a new coalition, Traffic Safety For All, that “will coordinate and educate stakeholders on the importance of limiting low-level traffic stops and allowing law enforcement to focus on addressing offenses that are central to causing crashes and traffic fatalities.” CPE’s Charlotte Resing, Government Affairs Manager, discusses the need for such a coalition and the popular, nationwide reform it advocates for: “The country is grappling with two critical issues: traffic crashes and racial disparities in traffic enforcement,” said Charlotte Resing, Government Affairs Manager at the Center for Policing Equity. “Non-traffic-related stops are consistently discriminatory, with Black drivers 95 percent more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts. Communities should not have to compromise between road safety and equitable stop policies. It is entirely possible to achieve a

The Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee heard testimony from ACLU of Nebraska and Vision Zero Network on March 20, 2025 regarding LB 222, a bill aiming to reduce non-safety traffic stops in the state by reclassifying certain violations, such as expired registration tags, as secondary violations in which a driver would only be pulled over if they had a previous and more serious offense on record, such as speeding or a DUI. CPE also submitted written testimony in support of the bill: “LB 222 represents an educated step towards focusing police time and resources where they are most effective,” said Chris Burbank, former Police Chief of Salt Lake City and consultant with CPE. “Of the more than 100,000 traffic stops reported in Nebraska in 2023, just 1.1% led to an arrest: clear evidence that pretext stops are not an essential crime-fighting tool. The economic and social cost of traffic enforcement for

In a statement about the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) crowd management policies, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell noted the successful passage of new crowd management legislation that incorporates best practices recommended by partners like the Center for Policing Equity:  “The adopted ordinance regulates the use of less lethal tools and reflects national best practices for crowd management as recommended by the Office of the Inspector General for Public Safety, the Office of Police Accountability, the Center for Policing Equity, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. It affirms our One Seattle values to protect free speech and peaceful assembly while also giving officers the tools they need to respond to serious incidents and keep everyone safe.” Read the full statement on the Seattle Government’s website.

At 20, Marion Bowman was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Kandee Martin, a crime for which he maintains his innocence. Now at 44, he is the “fifth Black prisoner South Carolina would put to death for a crime committed under the age of 21 – compared to just one white prisoner,” reports the Death Penalty Information Center. The disproportionate rate at which young Black men are sentenced to death becomes more troubling as recent neuropsychological research finds that young adults aged 18 to 20 have the same deficits in critical thinking and impulse control as juveniles. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the United States Supreme Court prohibited the death penalty for those under the age of 18. In Mr. Bowman’s case, the adultification of Black youth may also have influenced his sentencing, with the Death Penalty Information Center citing CPE’s blog post on the phenomenon:  The ​“adul­ti­fi­ca­tion” of Black

KUTV, a television station and CBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, reports on data from the Department of Public Safety that shows a decline “in aggravated assaults, kidnappings, rapes and murders” in the city in 2024 compared to the previous year. The numbers are promising, but Chris Burbank, Law Enforcement Strategy Consultant at CPE and former Salt Lake City Police Chief, urges caution when looking at short-term versus long-term outcomes:  “What we really want to see is a long trend line that is showing a downward decline,” Burbank said. “You’re going to get little bumps, but by and large, crime over the last 30 years has been declining.” Burbank highlighted the importance of addressing systemic issues rather than relying solely on policing. “Our goal is not a low number; our goal is zero when it comes to crime and disorder in our communities,” he said. According to Burbank, crime reduction