Public Safety Tomorrow
SPD Partners with Center for Policing Equity
The Seattle Police Department today released the Center for Policing Equity’s (CPE) report on Seattle’s participation in the National Justice Database project (2014-2019).
CPE’s National Justice Database (NJD) is the nation’s first database to track national statistics on police actions. Police departments eager to better understand their disparities in policing outcomes through standardized data collection and analysis have provided CPE with available data to help assist in charting paths toward more equitable policing.
The Seattle Police Department identified disparities exist within the SPD. To further analyze those disparities, to identify their root causes and to seek remedies, the SPD engaged with CPE to expand its local efforts to the national level. In the time since the Department agreed to participate in the NJD project, SPD has undertaken numerous reforms and has performed its own advanced disparity analyses. The SPD disparity analysis (Part I and Part II) confirmed there were disparate outcomes of enforcement actions and began to identify potential responses by working with communities.
The NJD report provides a historic baseline for undertaking deeper analysis and working around disparities and strategies. This work is part of the overall effort to inform the re-envisioning of public safety More info...
SPD Joins National ABLE Project
The Seattle Police Department has been accepted into the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) Project, Georgetown University Law Center's national training and support initiative for U.S. law enforcement agencies committed to building a culture of peer intervention that prevents harm.
By demonstrating agency commitment to transformational reform with support from local community groups and elected leaders, the SPD joins a select group of more than 60 other law enforcement agencies and statewide and regional training academies chosen to participate in the ABLE Project's national rollout. To date, hundreds of agencies across the country have expressed interest in participating.
Backed by prominent civil rights and law enforcement leaders, the evidence-based, field-tested ABLE Project was developed by Georgetown Law's Innovative Policing Program in collaboration with global law firm Sheppard Mullin LLP to provide practical active bystandership strategies and tactics to law enforcement officers to prevent misconduct, reduce officer mistakes, and promote health and wellness. ABLE gives officers the tools they need to overcome the innate and powerful inhibitors all individuals face when called upon to intervene in actions taken by their peers.
Chief Adrian Diaz said, seeking inclusion to join the ABLE Project reflected important priorities for the SPD.
"Every member of the Seattle Police Department understands how critical it is for officers to watch out for each other," said Chief Diaz. "That responsibility includes inspiring each other to always do the right thing and being an active bystander when our behavior may need improving. Participating in the ABLE Project will encourage SPD Officers to speak up if they witness wrongdoing in their fellow officers, and you have my word those concerns will be addressed."
Assistant Chief Lesley Cordner, head of the SPD's Professional Standards Bureau, will oversee all ABLE Project training in the coming weeks. Instructors will be certified as ABLE trainers, and over the coming months, all the Department's officers will receive 8 hours of evidence-based active bystandership education designed not only to prevent harm, but to change the culture of policing.
Professor Christy Lopez, co-director of Georgetown Law's Innovative Policing Program, which runs ABLE, explained: "The ABLE Project seeks to ensure every police officer in the United States has the opportunity to receive meaningful, effective active bystandership training, and to help agencies transform their approach to policing by building a culture that supports and sustains successful peer intervention to prevent harm."
Chair of the ABLE Project Board of Advisors, Sheppard Mullin partner Jonathan Aronie, added: "Intervening in another's action is harder than it looks after the fact, but it's a skill we all can learn. And, frankly, it's a skill we all need - police and non-police. ABLE teaches that skill."
The ABLE Project is guided by a Board of Advisors comprised of civil rights, social justice, and law enforcement leaders, including Vanita Gupta, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Commissioner Michael Harrison of the Baltimore Police Department; Commissioner Danielle Outlaw of the Philadelphia Police Department; Dr. Ervin Staub, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the founder of the Psychology of Peace and Justice Program; and an impressive collection of other police leaders, rank and file officers, and social justice leaders.
- See the complete list of the ABLE Project Board of Advisors.
- For more information about the ABLE Project, visit the program's website.
- See a list of the ABLE Standards to which every participating agency must adhere.
- These articles share more information about active bystandership generally, and the ABLE Project in particular.
For more information on the ABLE Project, contact Liza, ABLE Program Manager, at lba17@georgetown.edu.