Woe to the officer that stops Shaun King or Rachel Dolezal
Via Denver Post:
Denver police plan to begin collecting racial data about the people officers stop by the end of the year, after years of saying such an effort would be too difficult and expensive to implement.
Chief Robert White said the policy reversal is an effort to ensure accountability.
“Officers need to know and citizens need to know how everyone’s actions are going to be held accountable,” White said last week in an interview with The Denver Post. “Without it, we can’t prove anything one way or the other. That does not benefit the transparency or the credibility of the department.”
White’s decision comes after the department spent years resisting calls from the city’s minority communities to collect the data. It would be the first time in 14 years the department has tried to study racial bias within its officer ranks.
The current climate in law enforcement demands it happen, White said. His plans for collecting the data are still in the works, but he said he did not plan to involve community representatives in putting it together.
White, who was hired in 2011, said he never has been opposed to collecting racial and ethnic data. Community activists have heard excuses ranging from it would be too time-consuming to it wasn’t necessary for years and say this is a new position for the chief.
“If DPD was willing to collect demographic data all along, why was there a litany of voices from community groups, legislators, the Denver Auditor and Independent Monitor all pushing for them to collect it?” said Lisa Calderone, co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum’s Denver chapter. “Because DPD refused to collect it.”
Denver is the first of the state’s largest departments to voluntarily collect the data. During a state legislative committee meeting in 2015, most departments that testified, including Colorado Springs and Aurora, said they did not collect information on the race and ethnicity of contacted individuals.[…]
Among those who have demanded that Denver police study racial profiling within its ranks are Black Lives Matter 5280, the Colorado Latino Forum, The Denver Justice Project, the NAACP’s Denver chapter, the ACLU of Colorado and Showing Up for Racial Justice.