With the goal of providing law enforcement training to all 100 counties in the state, the North Carolina Community College system has launched the Impartial Policing initiative.
The content for the training is developed through the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission and the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Education and Training Standards Commission. The community colleges act as the delivery agents.
“When a lot of the conversation began about concerns about policing, equity of policing and treatment of community members, particularly Black members in policing, we felt that certainly, we should be at the table of finding solutions for those problems,” said Dr. Kimberly Gold, senior vice president and chief academic officer of NC Community Colleges.
One of the main topics of discussion during the two-day, 16-hour training course is implicit and explicit bias. To better understand the idea of bias, one example used is people’s opinion on sushi.
“Some people like it, some people don’t,” said Jeffrey Robinson, dean of public safety education and chief campus officer at Wake Technical Community College. “Just looking at it, though, sometimes some will say, ‘I would never eat that because it doesn’t look good.’ Or ‘I’ll never try because I’ve talked to someone and they say it doesn’t taste good and I’m never going to try it.’ That is a bias that you have already.”
Impartial policing and rebuilding community trust are other topics of conversation. The training also looks at neuroplasticity and how the brain thinks under stress.
“People will find themselves in a scenario but they don’t know that there’s a bias under stress,” said Robinson. “You may not even know that you are being discriminative or you’re prejudiced, which really means prejudgments that you have. Sometimes you just don’t know that they exist.”
