Howard University Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center
Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety
Metropolitan Police Department
In DC and across the country, police stop more people of color than white people.1 As one step towards addressing racial disparities in DC’s criminal justice system, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) asked The Lab to help them better understand police stops. The Lab, Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety, and Howard University held a series of workshops with community members, researchers, and practitioners in October 2020. Attendees discussed the current state of police stops and how to reimagine police stops and their role in public safety. Their insights informed a white paper, policy considerations to reduce harm, and sample learning agendas for how to direct the use of police stops to more effectively reduce harms and promote public safety.
Workshop participants used virtual sticky notes to brainstorm and share their ideas, like the harms (orange) and benefits (yellow) from stops.
Why is this issue important in DC?
In September 2019, MPD reported that 70% of people they stopped were Black, while 15% were white.2 This disparity on its own does not confirm racial bias in who MPD stops,3 but it highlights the need for a better understanding of police stops and a reimagining of their role in public safety.
What did we do?
We gathered nearly 130 community members, advocates, researchers, and members of law enforcement to share their experiences and expertise about police stops. The ultimate goal was to reimagine stops to reduce harm while promoting equity and public safety. Over 6 days, participants engaged in small-group conversations, presentations, and panel discussions held virtually. The participants explored and weighed the harms and benefits of police stops, discussed best practices and research methods related to stops, and recommended policy solutions to improve the effectiveness of stops in Washington, DC, and around the country.
What have we learned?
Meaningful change in public safety cannot start without direct and uncomfortable conversations. We needed not only to hear from the community, experts, advocates, and law enforcement, but also learn from their conversations with one another.
“Instead of asking communities, ‘How do you want to be policed?’ we should be asking them, ‘What do you need for your community to be safe and healthy?”
What comes next?
The ideas and insights share at the workshop served as the foundation for three documents:
- A white paper summarizing the workshop series
- Policy considerations for reducing harm from Howard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center
- Sample learning agendas and a measurement guide authored by The Lab @ DC. This resource includes literature reviews, example research questions, and recommended statistical methods for measuring bias in police stops. We recommend that future analysis of police stop data follow the guidance in that document to promote accurate results.
DC Government has multiple pilots to reimagine police stops that are consistent with what we heard in the workshop. This work has expanded from MPD’s regular analysis and release of data on stops to programs exploring non-police responses to mental health crises, speeding and redlight violations, fender benders, and parking complaints. Moreover, a metric related to disparities in police stops has been proposed in DC’s first Racial Equity Action Plan.
What happened behind the scenes?
For this workshop, it was critical that we fostered open and productive conversations between people with different experiences, identities, and perspectives. Our talented facilitators were professors and students from Howard University, Morgan State University, DC Government, Georgetown University, and Coppin State University who all had experience guiding sensitive, constructive discussions about race, equity, and public safety. These talented facilitators made difficult breakout conversations collegial and productive. They established relationships and modeled norms with each of their breakout groups so that participants could all express their individual experiences and learn from one another.