Creating a Society That Ensures Safety for All

This mini-lesson is designed to be adaptable. You can use the activities in sequence or choose a selection best suited to your classroom. It includes:

• 3 activities 
• Student-facing slides 

Ask your students to use the Big Paper strategy to silently “discuss” the following excerpt from an article written by Cedric Alexander, a retired police officer and former president of the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives.

The police are the public and the public are the police . . . America’s current crisis, therefore, cannot be understood as a crisis of policing. It is a crisis of the American people, which, naturally, includes the police.

Good policing tactics, strategies, and policies are necessary to good policing. But they are not sufficient . . .

What we need to understand is that the acts of any individual officer come not alone from his or her head, heart, or instinct. Each act is also the sum of that officer’s training and the informed embrace of values received through the culture of the agency in which that officer serves.

We must, then, look beyond tactics, strategies, and policies to departmental values and culture. But precisely because the police are the public and the public are the police, we must also look to the context in which each law enforcement agency develops its values and culture. They are products of wider American society, laws, and history.

Good policing looks like the acts of each police officer. Each act is, in some essential way, the result of our society, laws, and history. Many politicians vehemently object to the notion of “systemic racism” in policing or American society.

Well, objection overruled. Racism is manifestly endemic [systemic] in the American system.

But systemic as well is our intense and enduring American aspiration toward what a slaveholding Thomas Jefferson described in the Declaration of Independence: a society in which all people are regarded as they were created— equal—all possessing the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The more that American policing succeeds in closing the gap between aspiration toward and realization of these systemic constituents of America, the more the nation’s policing will look like good policing. ¹

After students have completed the Big Paper discussion, ask them to share their thoughts or questions about the excerpt with the class. You can use the following questions to guide a class discussion:

• How do the ideas in this passage connect to what you have already learned about the history of policing or the problem of racial injustice in policing today?
• What do you think Cedric Alexander means when he says, “Good policing looks like the acts of each police officer. Each act is, in some essential way, the result of our society, laws, and history”? If the acts of individual police officers are a reflection of the larger society, then what does that suggest about the complexity of addressing problems in policing and the variety of strategies that might be necessary?

• 1Cedric Alexander, “40-Year Law Enforcement Vet Explains What Good Policing Should Look Like,” NYSBA, July 14, 2020.

Activists, policymakers, police officers, and scholars have proposed a wide range of reforms that they believe could improve public safety. These proposals range from individual interventions, such as changing police officers’ training, to a dramatic rethinking of the nature of policing and other public services. 

Give your students time to explore one or more of the following resources:

• Psychologist Examines What A 'Rapid Evolution' In Policing Might Look Like, NPR
  In this piece, Phillip Atiba Goff—professor of African American studies and psychology at Yale University and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity—describes different reforms he has helped police departments across the country implement. Ask your students to listen from 8:02–16:05 (You may want to print the section of the transcript that corresponds to this excerpt for your students, so they can read and annotate as they listen. The section begins with the phrase: “You gave a TED talk in which you . . .” and ends with the phrase . . . and then hopefully those things start to scale.”)

• Three Ways to Fix Toxic Policing, Scientific American
  This article describes three potential reforms to policing: transferring more responsibilities from police to social workers, curbing the militarization of the police, and increasing accountability.

• What Is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act?, The Legal Examiner
  This article describes the provisions of a police reform bill, which the US House of Representatives passed in March 2021. (Note: When this mini-lesson was last updated on May 21, 2021, this bill had not yet been considered by the US Senate.)

• Now Is the Time to Revolutionize Policing, Vox
  Ask your students to read the section of this article titled “A proposal for reform through divestment in federal agencies—and reinvestment in communities,” which describes the main provisions of a proposed bill called the BREATHE Act. (Note: When this mini-lesson was last updated on May 21, 2021, this bill had not been brought to a vote in the US Congress.)

Note: You can also ask students to research proposals to rethink public safety in your own community.

Then, ask students to consider the following questions:

• What solutions do the resource you examined describe?

• How do the solutions in the resource you examined address police tactics, strategies, and policies? In what ways do they address larger societal issues that Cedric Alexander described?

Ask students to reflect on what they have learned throughout this mini-unit and then respond to the following prompts in their journals:

1. If my community wants to address issues related to policing and racial injustice, what are the implications for our collective action and behavior? What new actions would we take on? What current actions or behaviors might we need to change?
2. What is at stake if communities do not take steps to change policing?