I had the great opportunity to partner with Dr. Nick Crofts of the Centre for Law Enforcement and Public Health (Australia) to serve as the Guest Editor for a special issue of the Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being. The special issue, Envisaging Healthy and Safe Communities, shares lessons from a project we led that sought to document and highlight initiatives across the globe that are taking alternative approaches to promote health and safety.
30×30 Initiative: The Unique Value of Women Officers
Research shows that gender diversity can help improve law enforcement agencies and reduce use of force, and the 30×30 Initiative is working to make it happen.
Biden can change federal policing practices and set the floor for policies nationwide
Recently, I published a commentary in the San Antonio Express-News detailing the ways in which the Biden administration can and should utilize its executive authority to enact reforms across the dozens of federal agencies employing over 130,000 federal law enforcement officers. Such an effort would both meet needed reforms in these agencies and set a path for local and state law enforcement.
Policing Reform Continues Even as the Senate Fails
While partisanship doomed congressional action, state-level legislation and White House leadership can still promote accountability and transparency.
Envisioning the Future: Police & Public Health
Happy to share a recent publication I wrote with colleagues for the Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being, a Canadian-based international journal founded on the principles of multi-sector collaboration. The piece details our current project to document practical examples from jurisdictions across the world of alternative approaches to solving entrenched social challenges and problems without relying upon a punitive and enforcement-led policing model
Police and Harm Reduction
Sharing the 2018 guidance document I wrote for law enforcement personnel around the world on practical steps they can take to advance public safety, public health, and public confidence, particularly in relation to drug enforcement. As overdose deaths, police violence, and public protests all continue to soar, this guidance has become even more important. There are other options to keep communities healthy and safe.
On Kyle Rittenhouse’s attempted surrender, the police’s disregard, & what this reveals about anti-Black racism, policing, and public safety.
Some thoughts after after watching the videos of Kyle Rittenhouse try to turn himself in to police & the police drive right by him. And what this reveals about the other side of anti-Black racism in policing and how this further undermines our safety. In the video, Kyle walks toward multiple vehicles and they zoom …
“Looting as Pathology of Order.” The ways in which looting is invoked to recreate oppressive and racialized forms of social control & order.
In 2011 my graduate thesis was approved & published. It focused on an analysis of looting as an analytical lens to understand how social order is constructed & enforced through anti-Black racial ideologies and discourses, private property norms, and use of exceptional force by the state.
Police face backlash over virus rules. Enter ‘violence interrupters’.
Alternatives to police responses to community needs & conflicts are needed now more than ever.
But let us not stop with Covid. These & other approaches need to be invested in and prioritized now and in the future.
Book Launch—City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands – July 11 NYC
I am very happy to host this book launch and moderate the subsequent discussion with Dan Werb, Maia Szalavitz, and Dr. Patty Gonzalez-Zuñiga, and featuring Dan's new book City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands. Having visited and supported harm reduction and community safety work in Tijuana for the past several …