Daniel Nguyen of the Police Accountability Project makes two concrete proposals to address discriminatory policing: “A critical first step is to mandate the uniform collection, release and independent analysis of stop-and-enforcement data by police. It must be law that any time a police officer stops to question a member of public, they record the rationale for the stop, time/date/location, along with officer-perceived ethnicity of that person. Importantly, the reason for the stop and details of the police officer should be provided to the member of public as a receipt after the interaction. De-identified data should then be provided to an independent, monitoring body for the data to be analysed and cross-referenced with demographic data. … Secondly, there needs to be a truly independent system to investigate any alleged discriminatory practices or approaches. Any systemic review of police practices needs to be prompt, open to public scrutiny and independent and cannot involve police investigating their own colleagues. These two measures provide only a glimpse of what is required. Without a system to transparently monitor police data and to independently investigate misconduct, discriminatory policing will continue to affect those who have always been its target. Discriminatory policing is a global problem. Let’s make sure we tackle it in our own backyard.”
5 June 2020