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CPE announced the publication of a new white paper, Do Not Investigate: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Trans, and Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws. The resource provides recommendations for deprioritizing the enforcement of state laws that divert police resources away from serious crimes in pursuit of so-called “morality laws.” An excerpt from the press release:  “We know that lack of access to medical care caused by recent state legislation is having severe consequences,” said Scarlet Neath, Policy Director at CPE. “For example, a recent report confirmed that Georgia’s abortion ban caused the heartbreaking and preventable deaths of two mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. This much-needed resource shows how police departments and policymakers can take steps to ensure that the harms caused by these unjust laws do not extend to our public safety systems.” Read the release on AP News’ website.

CPE announced the publication of a new white paper, Do Not Investigate: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Trans, and Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws. The resource provides recommendations for deprioritizing the enforcement of state laws that divert police resources away from serious crimes in pursuit of so-called “morality laws.” An excerpt from the press release:  “We know that lack of access to medical care caused by recent state legislation is having severe consequences,” said Scarlet Neath, Policy Director at CPE. “For example, a recent report confirmed that Georgia’s abortion ban caused the heartbreaking and preventable deaths of two mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. This much-needed resource shows how police departments and policymakers can take steps to ensure that the harms caused by these unjust laws do not extend to our public safety systems.” Read the release on AP News’ website.

KTLA-5 reported on the California’s Irvine Police Department (IPD) purchase of an over $150,000 Cybertruck for use at community events and as part of the department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, also known as DARE. While the vehicle’s addition to the fleet is exciting for IPD, others, including CPE Director of Community Engagement Brittenay Causieestko-Lee, noted the lack of clear justification for the purchase Brittenay Causieestko-Lee, director of community engagement for the nonprofit Center for Policing Equity, explained that budget transparency is a concern for many, and city officials may have to answer for expenditures like this. “Spending $150,000 on such a high-performance vehicle for a program like DARE seems very excessive, especially for your taxpayers, especially when there’s cheaper alternatives as well,” she said. “And so a lot of that can cause tension, because many residents may feel that taxpayer money could be better spent on urgent community needs like

Launched in September 2024, the National Police Index allows residents from 17 states to access the employment history of police officers, according to the Detroit Metro Times. However, Michigan state police refused to disclose their public records for the Index, leaving Michigan residents in the dark. In response, Detroit Metro Times and the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit newsroom, sued Michigan State Police to obtain said records to track “wandering cops,” officers with histories of misconduct who avoid disciplinary action by moving from one police department to the next. Chris Burbank, CPE consultant and former Salt Lake CIty Police Chief, discusses why the Index is an important tool for transparency and police accountability:   “This tool will address a shortcoming in law enforcement hiring practices that has plagued our nation for years,” said Chris Burbank, former Salt Lake City Police Chief and current law enforcement consultant with the Center for Policing Equity. “Lacking prior accountability,

Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-Founder & CEO, published an op-ed in The Hill about how Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign will need to navigate unconscious and unspoken biases in the months and weeks leading up to Election Day. An excerpt from the op-ed:  Post Labor Day, however, coverage of the vice president will shift from the drama of President Biden’s withdrawal and the newness of her campaign to Harris herself. As that happens, the scientific literature suggests that her candidacy will run up against layers of bias that have primed the electorate to see her as less likable and less competent over time, and that are quite sticky once they set in. How the Harris campaign navigates these often unconscious and unspoken biases may go further than any other factor in determining the result. Read the op-ed on Yahoo!News.

Fatal police encounters have been on the rise in Wisconsin, with police departments on track this year to exceed the record of 26 deaths set in 2017, the Wisconsin Watch reports. Notably, the state’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has excluded many non-shooting incidents from their tracking of police-related deaths. Justin Feldman, Principal Research Scientist at CPE, calls out factors not mentioned in official documents that may have contributed to the death of Kaukauna resident Eric VanSyoc in October 2023: that “Officers…sat on [VanSyoc’s] back for six minutes,” after he was Tasered and before he was injected with ketamine. He later died at the hospital. “It’s been well known for many decades that you’re not supposed to keep people lying on their stomach,” said Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at Harvard University and researcher with the Center for Policing Equity. “You’re supposed to, at minimum, put them on their side.” Read the full

The killing of Victoria Lee by New Jersey police officer Tony Pickens while she was experiencing a mental health crisis has sparked outrage at the police handling of mental health emergencies nationwide, especially in the Korean-American community. In an interview with Newsweek, CPE CEO and Co-founder, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, explains more about this tragic trend and why alternatives to police response in these situations are needed:  Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CEO and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, said police kill about three people per day on average. “All of them are tragic,” Solomon said. “The ones that are especially tragic to me, or some of them that are the most tragic are the ones where family reached out for help, someone was dealing with a mental illness, they made it painstakingly clear, ‘hey, here’s what to expect’ and the police still kill that person.” He said that appears

CNN reports on the nation’s progress toward preventing the killings of unarmed Black people a decade after Mike Brown’s murder “brought the issue of police use of force against unarmed Black Americans to the forefront of US policy and politics.” In short, progress to reduce and eliminate police excessive use of force has been frustratingly slow, and the families’ of those killed at the hands of the police often feel overlooked. In an interview for CNN’s reporting, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE CEO and Co-Founder, discusses the challenges to truly addressing the issue of police killings and systemic racism:  Solomon co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, which uses data and science to try to find a way to make policing in America “less racist and less deadly,” according to the organization’s website. But the weight of each person killed by police lands like a boulder, Solomon said. And making progress, he

Sonya Massey, a Black woman in Springfield, Illinois, was murdered in her home by former Sangamon County Deputy Sean Grayson. A Huffpost article details how, despite Illinois’ 2021 police reform laws, officers often fail to apply their training, escalating situations instead of defusing them. CPE Vice President of Public Safety Innovations Hans Menos discusses how Grayson needlessly escalated this particular encounter, causing the tragic and avoidable death of Ms. Massey:  Hans Menos, vice president of public safety innovations at the Center for Policing Equity, said while officers may have training to de-escalate interactions with civilians, especially those with mental health, some officers tend to escalate the encounters anyhow. Menos said neither Grayson nor the other deputy needed to go inside Massey’s home and described the decision as escalation, which led to Massey’s fatal shooting. Menos said the officers were “looking for more” than the actual reason they were called to Massey’s home.

Despite short tenures at five police departments in three years, the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office still hired Sean Grayson, the former officer who shot Sonya Massey in her own home after she called for assistance about a suspected prowler. Chris Burbank, Law Enforcement Strategy Consultant at CPE, was interviewed by WGLT, part of the NPR Network, regarding the red flags that were missed in Grayson’s hiring: “My bottom line — they were insufficient in evaluating this individual’s background before hiring, and to that extent, I believe they negligently hired this person, and bear some responsibility for his poor actions,” said Burbank, who is now a law enforcement strategy consultant with the Center for Policing Equity. Read the full article at WGLT’s website.