Members of our Community Editorial Board, a group of community residents who are engaged with and passionate about local issues, respond to the following question: This fall, the CU police department will train its officers on how to use more inclusive and accurate language in emergency alerts and suspect descriptions. Your take?
The core of the CU Police Department’s mission is “to develop a partnership with the greater campus community and to improve the overall safety and quality of life for all CU affiliates through fair and impartial, transparent and consistent policing.” This new training — developed in consultation with key stakeholders and partners — should then help advance the public-facing vision and purpose as well as the internal day-to-day workings of the CU Police Department.
They are undertakings in line with research insights and innovations in other communities too. These are the sorts of aspirational efforts that are critical to making justice, equity, diversity and inclusion explicit and meaningful. This can bolster (not displace) vital crime-reduction police functions while promoting ongoing community safety and security.
Racial bias has been embedded in our U.S. institutions and practices over many decades and these changes can build further trust, and belonging for everyone in the CU community. I share this solicited view from my positionality as a white male community member. I am also someone who would be 18 days younger than George Floyd today if he was not murdered in May 2020.
Centrally, the ways we speak influence the ways we behave (and vice versa). In other words, discourses are tethered to material realities and social habits. Furthermore, accounting for discourse-practice interactions helps consider how power imbalances flow through our shared cultures, politics and society. It also helps us then interrogate how power, in turn, constructs and maintains knowledge, norms and ways of doing things. Consequently, we can more readily see that things are not found but are constructed, and therefore things often can and should be remade or made differently. While George Floyd’s death sparked newfound consciousness for many people in 2020, this training revamp is a promising part of larger and overdue generational work.
Max Boykoff, mboykoff@gmail.com
When I learned about the CU Police Department’s upcoming training on inclusive and accurate language for emergency alerts and suspect descriptions, my inner scientist urged me to dig deeper. On the surface, it seemed ill-conceived, but I needed more information. So, I reached out to Dr. Patricia Gonzalez, assistant dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI, yes, you read that right) in the College of Arts and Sciences, and CUPD Chief Doreen Jokerst. Despite their responses and article referrals, my skepticism remained.
A fundamental question arises with any new training: what problem does it address? In pursuit of data underscoring the need for this initiative, the response was nebulous. I was informed it’s not a policy, but just a training. In emergencies, accuracy is paramount. The use of inclusive language shouldn’t compromise the clarity of a suspect description; otherwise, are we inadvertently hindering justice? I don’t want officers hesitating over descriptors for fear of facing backlash. Picture this: If a criminal is on the loose, a vague “tall guy causing trouble” doesn’t suffice. In the interests of immediate identification, descriptors like skin color and sex can be crucial, at least in my view.
The alignment of the CUPD with this specific training initiative is still ambiguous. While there was mention of a “general partnership,” the finer details remain shrouded. Interestingly, this initiative seems to be the brainchild of the College of Arts and Sciences, an academic entity with a different core mission than the CUPD. I can’t help but wonder if this is less about genuine need and more a point to be added to someone’s performance review or resume. Without solid evidence supporting its relevance or a mechanism to evaluate its effectiveness, one must question its actual intent and, more importantly, its realistic impact.
Hernán Villanueva, chvillanuevap@gmail.com
Can’t you just hear the “woke!” accusations? This effort is precisely the kind of story the current far-right movement points to in supporting their claim that the lefty liberals are tearing down police and policing with political correctness. There are examples where this accusation may be true, but I doubt this is one of them.
Each of us has a massive life-long challenge to integrate the words we say with the authenticity of who we are. Being instructed to use the “right words” by others, even if we are good at using them, can come off as highly inauthentic if they don’t match who we truly are, which in turn blunts any good that might have come from using such words. You see this disconnect a lot in large companies, where HR usually functions as a control center from which employees of all kinds get DEI, safety, harassment, speech, etc., trainings, often as online courses that must be completed. It is the rare company that follows up to see if the trainings are effective, much less whether the same attributes being “taught” are considered seriously in hiring and retention. We all know examples where someone at work might be a total jerk, but a productive and smart jerk, so is kept on despite the chaos caused (even with the requisite “training”). The hiring and retention of such people render worthless any efforts undertaken to make them more authentic, more human.
It is in that context I look at the CUPD efforts and find myself wondering whether this is just another exercise in box-ticking, or if it is a valuable reinforcement for a group of people who are already fundamentally committed to the safety and well-being of all humans falling under their authority. I truly hope it is the second.
Fintan Steele, fsteele1@me.com
This particular training, part of a series the CUPD is doing to improve interactions with the university community, sounds good to me. (Note: The work of JEDI — justice, equity, diversity and inclusion — is campus-wide, not just a police department project.) The training intends to foster “adaptable communication practices” — not dictate to officers how to do their job or what they can and can’t say. If it helps officers become more aware of how they think and learn to question assumptions, what could be wrong with that in public-facing, sensitive work like campus policing?
Language has power and can’t be separated from actions. And because it can amplify a sense of threat, implicit bias can lead to more volatile and deadly encounters between law enforcement and the public. We ALL have implicit biases. This doesn’t make us bad people; it makes us human, and the products of our upbringings, education, experiences, etc. “The double standard in the treatment of minorities by police officers has less to do with hatred than the simple cerebral categorization that happens automatically when we aren’t paying attention,” says Charles Hayes, author of “Blue Bias.”
Americans continue to grapple with the ways our historical, foundational racism shapes contemporary life. Every day in the news there’s something to witness and think about. From a personal standpoint, I’m white with a Black daughter-in-law and a biracial grandchild. The baby’s mom has many stories from her two years living as a person of color in Boulder County, like the time a police car rolled up as she took her dog on an early morning walk. Nothing “bad” happened, but it made her feel she was perceived as not belonging in her own neighborhood. Campus policing has unique rewards and challenges. I commend the CUPD for embracing growth and innovation in their training.
Diane Schwemm, parksidediane@gmail.com
