Law School Tackles Police Reform

• Author: Angela Morris
• Pages: 12-13

PHOTOS BY BILL PETROS/GEORGETOWN LAW AND JODY MCKITRICK

IN 2016, professor Ros a Brooks

was on a sabbatical fr om her posi-

tion at Georgetown Universit y Law

Center to finish a book. A fter it

was complete, Brooks bega n look-

ing for a new project and decided to

enroll in the police aca demy. As she

progressed through t actical train-

ing to become a volunteer reserve

police ocer in Washington, D.C.,

Brooks was surpr ised by what the

Metropolitan Police Department ’s

curriculum sk ipped: There was no

discussion about community m istrust

of police, racial di sparities or mass

incarcer ation.

Brooks pursued law enforcement

training in par t because of her inter-

est in police reform. At a ti me when

high-profile police shootings were

sparking protests, a nd the Black Lives

Matter movement was demanding

accountability, Brooks felt more could

be done to provide guidance to o-

cers on how profiling, arrest s and use

of force can impact the com munity.

“Our strong intuition was t hat if

you want to change police cultu re,

you have to do it from the bottom up,

really focusing on young ocers who

are at the outset of their car eers and

forming their sense of what it means

to be a police ocer,” Brooks says.

As co-fou nder and co-direc tor

of Georgetown L aw’s Program on

Innovative Policing, Brooks and her

colleagues decided to cre ate a fel-

lowship to supplement the train-

ing of patrol ocers. Every month

for 18 months, ocers visit the law

center for a three-hour workshop

on topics such as race and cr iminal

justice, mass inc arceration, youth

development and implicit bias. They

learn about the histor y of African-

Americans in t heir community and sit

down with homeless people and teen-

agers to hear their perspe ctives on the

police. So far, 18 ocers have gradu-

ated from the Police for Tomorrow

Fellowship Program; 26 more star ted

their studies this pa st September.

Some of the curriculum ha s made its

way into the police academy.

Opening Statements

12 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019

“Our strong intuition was

that if you want to change

police culture, you have to

do it from the bottom up.”

—Rosa Brooks

Law School Tackles Police Reform

New program oers innovative training