Stefan Jovanović

Major cities are making fewer than half the traffic stops they did before the start of the pandemic, The New York Times reports. Their analysis suggests police may be reassessing traffic stops that can lead to racially biased and even fatal encounters between officers and community members. According to CPE’s Policy Director, Scarlet Neath: Communities should also reconsider if they really need someone with a gun and a background in detecting crime to fill out speeding tickets, said Scarlet Neath, the policy director at the Center for Policing Equity.  “It is estimated that 7 to 10 percent of all police encounters involve a person who has a mental illness. Most of these encounters do not involve any violence, and some don’t involve a crime at all,” according to information released by the organization. “People with mental illness are no more likely than anyone else to act violently. Despite this, police […]

The Daily Item reports that a Pennsylvania state grant will fund a mental health position at the Buffalo Valley Regional Police Department. The goal of the $277,000 reinvestment fund is to avoid sending a person experiencing a mental health emergency to a county jail. This is especially significant given the number of encounters that occur between police officers and people suffering from a mental illness, as detailed in cited CPE report.

As part of their preparations for the 2028 Olympic Games, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) sent a group of officers to this year’s Paris Games. According to The LA Times, LAPD worked with the French government to temporarily allow 32 officers to carry guns while providing a largely ceremonial presence. CPE Law Enforcement Strategy Consultant Chris Burbank spoke about his experience with security preparations for the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, additional considerations at the time, and the Games lasting impacting on SLC’s police force.

Ashtian Barnes was murdered during a traffic stop for unpaid toll fees. The officer that killed him was granted qualified immunity, which was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court. Seeking accountability in the death of Ashtian Barnes, Cato Institute, the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and CPE filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court.

A routine traffic stop in Rochester, NY, in June escalated when police pulled Marvin Taylor out of his car, first smashing his car window. Taylor, a Black man, had refused to get out of the car or roll down his window because one of the officers approaching him already had his gun drawn, the Democrat and Chronicle reports. Scarlet Neath, CPE’s Policy Director, was interviewed about findings regarding pretextual stops and how police officers approach them. Scarlet Neath, policy director at the Center for Policing Equity, pointed to a 2023 study that found “in stops that end in force and other escalation, officers are more likely to begin with a command and less likely to explain the reason for a stop.” Read the full article at Yahoo!News’ website.

The Modesto cited a study by the Center for Policing Equity that reveals that the average use-of-force rate for Black people in the United States is 3.6 times greater than the rate for White people:  According to a 2016 report released by the Center for Policing Equity, both arrest and population demographics were used as benchmarks to analyze use-of-force incidents. The study revealed that the average use-of-force rate for Black residents nationwide was 273 per 100,000 individuals, which is 3.6 times greater than the rate for white residents (76 per 100,000) and 2.5 times higher than the overall rate of 108 per 100,000 for all residents. Among those arrested, the average rate of use of force against Black individuals was 46 per 1,000 arrests, compared to 36 per 1,000 for whites. Read the full article on Yahoo!News’ website.

Following Minnesota’s passing of legislation restricting the concept of “excited delirium,” a term describing a supposed condition that leads to death in police custody, The Marshall Project explores what the term is and how it is employed in their Closing Argument newsletter. Research by CPE is cited in the newsletter article, and principal research scientist Justin Feldman explains the findings further: According to an analysis published this week by the Center for Policing Equity, excited or agitated delirium is mentioned in about 17% of official “cause-of-death statements” after someone dies following police use of force, when that force is not a gun. The think tank, founded in 2008, works on issues of racial disparities in policing. Justin Feldman, one of the researchers who conducted the study, told me that holding police accountable for deaths in custody goes beyond the problems with the concept of excited delirium. He’s skeptical that efforts

Following former president Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, TheGrio, a Black-led cable and podcast network, published an article on the nation’s response to the verdict. Specifically, they analyzed the phenomenon of victim mentality among White Americans. The publication argues that this victim mentality is a foundational element of the country’s anti-Blackness, and cites a CPE report on police use of force to support this argument:  This mentality is more than just a feeling; it is a foundational element of America’s anti-Blackness. Legislatures created slave codes to prevent Africans from reading, writing and gathering in groups to protect white people — not just slave owners — from becoming casualties of slave revolts. The Fugitive Slave Clause made every American a constitutionally bound slave-catcher because the founders imagined themselves as victims of Africans’ desire to be free. White people kill more cops, and according to a 2016

On the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-founder and CEO, spoke to PBS News Hour about the state of police reforms, including backlash to some of those reforms, and how public attitudes have changed. An excerpt from the interview:  So we have had some places that looked to literally abolish their entire police department and replace it with departments of public safety and some places that were making more incremental change. Some of the incremental change, like bans on choke holds, new pursuit policies, those have moved forward, and some of the attempts to reduce police budgets have maintained as well. But I have to say, post the murder spike in 2021 and 2022, we found ourselves unable to maintain that broad-spread momentum. What we can say, the good news around this is, in multiple municipalities, there are example projects, things that move forward

CPE Co-founder and COO, Tracie L. Keesee, joined experts from the United Nations Independent Mechanism to Promote Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement to collect testimony and investigate the link between racial profiling and law enforcement practices. An excerpt from the article published on World Today News:  Law enforcement. They carry out delicate work and for this reason they need additional support services for their health and that of their families, underlines the American Tracie L. Keesee, President of the Center for Policing Equity and member of the Mechanism during a press conference in Rome. Comprehensive race-based information is lacking in Italy, and this is a gap that hinders efforts to address racial disparities. Also because – comments the Argentine professor Juan Mendez, also on the panel of experts – the collection, publication and analysis of data disaggregated by race or ethnic origin, in all aspects of life but