How we can make racism a solvable problem -- and improve policing | Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff

When people meet me for the first time on my job,

they often feel inspired to share a revelation they've had about me,

and it kind of goes something like this.

"Hey, I know why police chiefs

like to share their deep, dark secrets with you.

Phil, with your PhD in psychology,

and your shiny bald head,

you're basically the Black Dr. Phil, right?"

(Laughter)

And for each and every person who's ever said that to me

I do want to say thank you

because that was the first time I ever heard that joke.

(Laughter)

But for everybody else, I really hope you'll believe me

when I tell you no police chief likes talking to me

because they think I'm a clinical psychologist.

And also I'm not.

I have no idea what your mother did to you, and I can't help.

(Laughter)

Police chiefs like talking to me

because I'm an expert on a problem that feels impossible for them to solve:

racism in their profession.

Now my expertise comes from being a scientist

who studies how our minds learn to associate Blackness and crime

and misperceive Black children as older than they actually are.

It also comes from studying actual police behavior,

which is how I know that every year,

about one in five adults in the United States

has contact with law enforcement.

Out of those, about a million are targeted for police use of force.

And if you're Black,

you're two to four times more likely to be targeted for that force

than if you're white.

But it also comes from knowing what those statistics feel like.

I've experienced the fear of seeing an officer unclip their gun

and the panic of realizing that someone might mistake my 13-year-old godson

as old enough to be a threat.

So when a police chief,

or a pastor,

or an imam, or a mother --

when they call me after an officer shoots another unarmed Black child,

I understand a bit of the pain in their voice.

It's the pain of a heart breaking when it fails to solve a deadly problem.

Breaking from trying to do something

that feels simultaneously necessary and impossible.

The way trying to fix racism usually feels.

Necessary and impossible.

So, police chiefs like talking to me because I'm an expert,

but I doubt they'd be lining up to lie down on Dr. Phil's couch

if I told them all their problems were hopeless.

All of my research,

and the decade of work I've done with my center --

the Center for Policing Equity --

actually leads me to a hopeful conclusion

amidst all the heartbreak of race in America,

which is this:

trying to solve racism feels impossible

because our definition of racism makes it impossible --

but it doesn't have to be that way.

So here's what I mean.

The most common definition of racism

is that racist behaviors are the product of contaminated hearts and minds.

When you listen to the way we talk about trying to cure racism,

you'll hear it.

"We need to stamp out hatred.

We need to combat ignorance," right?

It's hearts and minds.

Now the only problem with that definition is that it's completely wrong --

both scientifically and otherwise.

One of the foundational insights of social psychology

is that attitudes are very weak predictors of behaviors,

but more importantly than that,

no Black community has ever taken to the streets

to demand that white people would love us more.

Communities march to stop the killing,

because racism is about behaviors, not feelings.

And even when civil rights leaders

like King and Fannie Lou Hamer used the language of love,

the racism they fought,

that was segregation and brutality.

It's actions over feelings.

And every one of those leaders would agree,

if a definition of racism makes it harder to see

the injuries racism causes,

that's not just wrong.

A definition that cares about the intentions of abusers

more than the harms to the abused --

that definition of racism is racist.

But when we change the definition of racism from attitudes to behaviors,

we transform that problem from impossible to solvable.

Because you can measure behaviors.

And when you can measure a problem,

you can tap into one of the only universal rules of organizational success.

You've got a problem or a goal, you measure it,

you hold yourself accountable to that metric.

So if every other organization measures success this way,

why can't we do that in policing?

It turns out we actually already do.

Police departments already practice data-driven accountability,

it's just for crime.

The vast majority of police departments across the United States

use a system called CompStat.

It's a process that, when you use it right,

it identifies crime data,

it tracks it and identifies patterns,

and then it allows departments to hold themselves accountable

to public safety goals.

It usually works either by directing police attentions and police resources,

or changing police behavior once they show up.

So if I see a string of muggings in that neighborhood,

I'm going to want to increase patrols in that neighborhood.

If I see a spike in homicides,

I'm going to want to talk to the community to find out why

and collaborate on changes on police behavior to tamp down the violence.

Now when you define racism in terms of measurable behaviors,

you can do the same thing.

You can create a CompStat for justice.

That's exactly what the Center for Policing Equity has been doing.

So let me tell you how that works.

After a police department invites us in,

we handle the legal stuff, we engage with the community,

our next step is to analyze their data.

The goal of these analyses is to determine

how much do crime, poverty, neighborhood demographics

predict, let's say, police use of force?

Let's say that those factors predict

police will use force on this many Black people.

There?

So our next question is,

how many Black people actually are targeted

for police use of force?

Let's say it's this many.

So what's up with the gap?

Well, a big portion of the gap is the difference

between what's predicted by things police can't control

and what's predicted by things police can control --

their policies and their behaviors.

And what we're looking for are the types of contact

or the areas in the city

where that gap is biggest,

because then we can tell our partners,

"Look here. Solve this problem first."

It's actually the kind of therapy police chiefs can get behind,

because there is nothing so inspiring in the face of our history of racism

as a solvable problem.

Look, if the community in Minneapolis asked their police department

to remedy the moral failings of race in policing,

I'm not sure they know how to do that.

But if instead the community says,

"Hey, you're data say you're beating up a lot of homeless folks.

You want to knock that off?"

That's something police can learn how to do.

And they did.

So in 2015, the Minneapolis PD let us know

their community was concerned they were using force too often.

So we showed them how to leverage their own data

to identify situations where force could be avoided.

And when you look at those data,

you'll see that a disproportionate number of their use-of-force incidents,

they involved somebody who's homeless, in mental distress,

has a substance abuse issue or some combination of all three --

more than you expect

based on those factors I was just telling you about.

So right there's the gap.

Next question is why.

Well, it turns out homeless folks often need services.

And when those services are unavailable, when they can't get their meds,

they lose their spot in the shelter,

they're more likely to engage in behaviors that end up with folks calling the cops.

And when the cops show up,

they're more likely to resist intervention,

oftentimes because they haven't actually done anything illegal,

they're literally just living outside.

The problem wasn't a need to train officers differently in Minneapolis.

The problem was the fact that folks were using the cops

to "treat" substance abuse and homelessness in the first place.

So the city of Minneapolis found a way to deliver social services

and city resources

to the homeless community before anybody ever called the cops.

(Applause)

Now the problem isn't always homelessness, right?

Sometimes the problem is fear of immigration enforcement,

like it was in Salt Lake City, or it is in Houston,

where the chiefs had to come forward

and say, "We're not going to deport you just for calling 911."

Or the problem is foot pursuits,

like it was in Las Vegas,

where they had to train their officers to slow down and take a breath

instead of allowing the adrenaline in that situation to escalate it.

It's searches in Oakland;

it's pulling folks out of cars in San Jose;

it's the way that they patrol the neighborhoods

that make up Zone 3 in Pittsburgh

and the Black neighborhoods closest to the waterfront in Baltimore.

But in each city,

if we can give them a solvable problem,

they get busy solving it.

And together our partners have seen an average of 25 percent fewer arrests,

fewer use-of-force incidents

and 13 percent fewer officer-related injuries.

Essentially, by identifying the biggest gaps

and directing police attentions to solving it,

we can deliver a data-driven vaccine against racial disparities in policing.

Right now, we have the capacity to partner with about 40 cities at a time.

That means if we want the United States to stop feeling exhausted

from trying to solve an impossible problem,

we're going to need a lot more infrastructure.

Because our goal is to have our tools be able to scale

the brilliance of dedicated organizers

and reform-minded chiefs.

So to get there we're going to need the kind of collective will

that desegregated schools

and won the franchise for the sons and daughters of former slaves

so that we can build a kind of health care system

capable of delivering our vaccine across the country.

Because our audacious idea

is to deliver a CompStat for justice

to departments serving 100 million people across the United States

in the next five years.

(Applause and cheers)

Doing that would mean arming about a third of the United States

with tools to reduce racial disparities in police stops, arrests and use of force,

but also tools to reduce predatory cash bail

and mass incarceration,

family instability

and chronic mental health and substance abuse issues,

and every other ill that our broken criminal-legal systems aggravate.

Because every unnecessary arrest we can prevent

saves a family from the terrifying journey through each one of those systems.

Just like every gun we can leave holstered

saves an entire community from a lifetime of grief.

Look, each and every one of us,

we measure the things that matter to us.

Businesses measure profit;

good students keep track of their grades;

families chart the growth of their children

with pencil markings in doorframes.

We all measure the things that matter most to us,

which is why we feel the neglect

when nobody's bothering to measure anything at all.

For the past quarter millennium,

we've defined the problems of race and policing

in a way that's functionally impossible to measure.

But now the science says we can just change that definition.

And the folks at the Center for Policing Equity,

I actually think we may have measured

more police behavior than any one in human history.

And that means that once we have the will

and the resources to do it,

this could be the generation

that stops feeling like racism is an unsolvable problem

and instead sees

that what's been necessary for far too long is possible.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)