Racism in policing


Anti-racism topic: all things police

This guide is organized by media type and in addition includes guided learning topics which feature multiple different resources.


This Resource Guide will provide you with different materials which will help you understand how police systematically perpetuate racism and violence against non-white people in our current society on an institutional level (not just a few bad apples). Focuses include the historical context of racism and policing, how that history informs and impacts policing today, and ultimately where we go from here (promising solutions and the re-imagining of justice and public safety).

Undoubtedly the road behind us is bleak, but the road ahead still does NOT have to be. We have the power to change our local, regional, and national policies around policing to ensure a more just and equitable future to come. The first step in this process is our collective education.

Thank You for coming along on this journey.


Guided Learning and Discussion Questions

History of Policing

Guided learning topics

Click the image for a curated resource guide on the chosen topic
which includes discussion questions for further reflection on the issues.


History of Policing

Data on policing

Scroll for discussion questions to consider while reading and interacting with these resources


Featured Media/ Resources

Click thumbnail to access

CNN Article

A great introductory article from CNN! Easy to understand, aesthetically pleasing data on deaths both by law enforcement directly, and in law enforcement custody.

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Mapping Police Violence

Mapping Police Violence - A downloadable database that aggregates deaths by law enforcement. Their dataset can be searched by department, demographics, armed status, etc. Includes useful associated content like their interactive 2017 Police Violence Report and (found at the bottom of their homepage) a list of academic studies about police violence.

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Center for Policing Equity

Center for Policing Equity - A research and data driven collective dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of issues of equity within policing. Explore their entire site for invaluable resources. Recommended reading: 2016 Report titled The Science of Justice, Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force.

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Police Use of Force Project

Police Use of Force Project - A comprehensive review of use of force policies in America's largest city police departments that finds that there were significantly fewer killings by police departments with strong policies limiting use of force. Find their full report here.

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CA Police Scorecard

Police Scorecard - A "report card" that grades police departments and sheriff's departments in the 100 largest cities in California. The project aggregates important information on race in relation to police violence, police accountability, and approaches to policing.


Discussion questions:

1. Are these rates of civilian deaths acceptable? Are they necessary to keep the public or even the officers themselves safe?

2. Does the data dispel any common arguments that you encounter about racial bias in policing? If so, which ones?

3. Were there any statistics that you found particularly striking or convincing? Do you think this statistic is common knowledge?

4. Can you use these statistics in your peer to peer conversations? Do you think they would be convincing? Why or why not?

5. After looking at your local jurisdictions use of force policy, scorecard, and number of deaths by law enforcement were you surprised by the data or the grade your department received?

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Further questions to think about as you learn more:

Police Accountability/ Oversight:
Are use of force incidents reported to the public by your local department? If so, how?

What is the process in place for determining if use of force was “acceptable” or “warranted”?

Who, if anyone, is responsible for holding police accountable in your community? Are these oversight mechanisms effective?

Policy-making:
Have your local officials talked about making data-driven/evidence-based policy changes to your local Police Department?

What factors are preventing data from being used in policy decisions on local, regional and national scales? What do we need beyond data to make good policy decisions?

Comparison to other countries:
Why are police officers in the United States killing people at such a higher rate than in other similarly developed countries?

What factors contribute to high officer involved shootings (departmental culture/ training, militarization, American gun culture, etc.)?

How is policing different in other developed nations where there are lower rates of civilian deaths? Is officer safety or public safety compromised in those nations?


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History of Policing

Scroll for discussion questions to consider while reading and interacting with these resources


Timeline of American Policing - Overview of important eras of policing throughout history to orient you as you explore the below resources


Featured Media/ Resources

Click thumbnail to access

NPR's Throughline - American Police If you are just starting your education on this topic, start here! This podcast is a very informative and accessible overview of the history of police in America. The hosts and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a renowned historian, discuss how policing got started, what happened during and immediately after the Civil War and how that legacy informs modern policing.

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The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops - Written by an assistant professor, this article is a great resource which links directly to academic literature (for those wanting to dig deeper into these subtopics).

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How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities - Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad gives another great interview to Vox's Anna North on how the history of protests and protest movements are directly linked to policing and racism.

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Peace Officer

Peace Officer Documentary - Retired Davis county sheriff, William J. Lawrence, discusses police militarization and over-use of S.W.A.T. teams after the S.W.A.T. team HE created in the late 1970's killed his son-in-law in 2008.

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A History of Police Uniforms and Why They Matter - An exploration of how uniforms have influenced interactions between cops and citizens since the start of American policing. Spoiler alert: If you dress like a soldier, you just might start acting like one.

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We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence - "The 50 songs discussed in this list often describe specific acts of police violence but they are not limited to that subject. Together they construct a kind of timeline of an ongoing movement within American music, stretching back more than a century. All contribute to the history of Black people showing what America's official histories would hide in plain sight: the destructiveness of white supremacy and the uprisings against it that are not only organized and political, but personal."


Discussion questions:

1. What implications do the origins of policing have on modern police structure, culture, and tactics today?

2. What were the different law enforcement tactics adopted in the North and the South following the Civil War?

3. How did racism manifest in policing in Northern vs Southern states? How did regional attitudes about race shape police behavior? Are these origins reflected in today's police forces?

4. Given these facts about the racist history of the police, can a modern police department truly be anti-racist? What would that take? If no, what are your thoughts moving forward with public safety?

5. In your opinion, should police have military equipment? Has the militarization of our modern police made our cities safer?

6. Does the physical appearance of a police officer matter? Does this impact the officer's attitude or behavior? What psychological impact could police appearance have on the civilians they are interacting with?


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Remember: Patience is a virtue

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documentaries

Click thumbnail to watch

Featured Content

Peace Officer

Highly Recommend:
Peace Officer
Retired Davis county sheriff, William J. Lawrence, discusses police militarization and over-use of S.W.A.T. teams after the S.W.A.T. team HE created in the late 1970's killed his son-in-law in 2008.

Whose Streets?
Peace Officer
16 Shots
Profiled
Let the Fire Burn
I am Not Your Negro
Crime + Punishment
Copwatch
Do Not Resist
LA 92
13th
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
The Force
Policing the Police
When Justice Isn't Just
Let It Fall Los Angeles 1982-1992
Time: The Kalief Browder Story

Fiction/ Based on a True Story

When They See Us
Oprah Presents When They See Us Now
The Hate U Give
BlacKKKlansman

Podcasts

Click thumbnail to listen


Throughline - American Police

Throughline - American Police

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Code Switch - An Immune System

Code Switch - An Immune System

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Reply All - The Crime Machines (Parts I & II)

Code Switch - An Immune System

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Hidden Brain - The Air We Breathe: Implicit Bias And Police Shootings

Hidden Brain - The Air We Breathe:Implicit Bias &Police Shooting

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Code Switch - What To Make Of Philando Castile's Death, One Year Later

Code Switch - What To Make Of Philando Castile's Death 1 Year

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Code Switch - The Dangers of Life as an American Nobody

Code Switch - The Dangers of Life as an American Nobody

16 Shots - all episodes

16 Shots - All Episodes

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The Daily - The Systems that Protect the Police

The Daily - The Systems that Protect Police

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The Journal - The City That Disbanded Its Police

The Journal - The City That Disbanded Its Police

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Hidden Brain - How A Theory Of Crime And Policing Was Born, And Went Terribly Wrong

How A Theory Of Crime And Policing Was Born, And Went Wrong

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Code Switch - 46 Stops: On 'The Driving Life And Death Of Philando Castile'

Code Switch - 46 Stops: On The Driving Life & Death Of Philando

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Code Switch - Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop

Code Switch - Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop

News Articles

Click link to read

How we got here

How a Theory of Crime and Policing was Born, and Went Wrong

Where we are

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop
I was a police chief stopped by my own officer.
We train police to be warriors
Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproport
To Protect and Slur: Inside Hate Groups on Facebook, Police
Inside 100 million police traffic stops: New evidence of racial
The Problem with "Broken Windows" Policing

Where we go from here

Policing: A Public Good Gone Bad
How I Became a Police Abolitionist
Abolish The Police isn't New. This Energy is.
How to Defund the Police

How we got here

Where we are

Where we go from here

Books

Click thumbnail to purchase

The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism
Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Polic
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferg
The End of Policing

I have an ebook copy of 'The End of Policing' downloaded from Verso when it was free last month.
DM me on Facebook and I can send that your way!

When Police Kill
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, Modern Urban America
The New Jim Crow:Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Survival from the Transformative

Academic Journal Articles

Click thumbnail or link to read

A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops acr
A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops acr

Websites

Click thumbnail to go to site

The Stanford Open Policing Project

Stanford Open Policing Project - A collection of over 200 million traffic and pedestrian stops by law enforcement agencies all over the United States created by a team of Stanford researchers and journalists. They have numerous data sets available for download (and tutorials on how to use that data).

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Mapping Police Violence

Mapping Police Violence - A downloadable database that aggregates deaths by law enforcement. Their dataset can be searched by department, demographics, armed status, etc. Includes useful associated content like their interactive 2017 Police Violence Report and (found at the bottom of their homepage) a list of academic studies about police violence.

.

Center for Policing Equity

Center for Policing Equity - A research and data driven collective dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of issues of equity within policing. Explore their entire site for invaluable resources. Recommended reading: 2016 Report titled The Science of Justice, Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force.

.

Police Use of Force Project

Police Use of Force Project - A comprehensive review of use of force policies in America's largest city police departments that finds that there were significantly fewer killings by police departments with strong policies limiting use of force. Find their full report here.

.

CA Police Scorecard

Police Scorecard - A "report card" that grades police departments and sheriff's departments in the 100 largest cities in California. The project aggregates important information on race in relation to police violence, police accountability, and approaches to policing.

Music

Click icons to listen to playlist

Miscellaneous/ Other

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