A City Divided: Race, Fear, and the Law in Police Confrontations

Dr. David Harris On July 26, 2020, David Harris gave a sobering presentation, looking backward and forward into the future, pondering the challenges of Public Safety in our time. We hope you were able to join, but if you missed it or would like to watch it again, you can see the recording of the […]

Applaud this training in the city police force

The Public Safety Task Force of the Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network (of which I am a member) has been working to ensure violent confrontations between the police and residents of this city are things of the past. A hopeful sign has been a move by the Pittsburgh police department to add new modules to the training and retraining of its officers. The modules are: “Procedural Justice,” “Implicit Bias” and “Racial Reconciliation.” The first two have been implemented and the third is soon to follow.

Continue McLay’s good work

When Mayor Bill Peduto hired former police Chief Cameron McLay two years ago, it had been just a couple of short months since the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City. Across the nation, people were waking up to the reality that people of color are more than twice as likely to be shot by police than whites. Many were finally questioning how police officers operate in communities of color and the disparate treatment to which people of color are subjected.