CU Boulder police training to improve inclusivity, accuracy in suspect descriptions
Jul. 18—The University of Colorado Boulder Police Department will soon train its officers on how to use more inclusive, accurate language in emergency alerts and suspect descriptions.
Topics in the justice, equity, diversity and inclusion training — or JEDI — will include inclusive language training, microaggressions, wording intent versus impact and the importance of taking feedback.
Patricia Gonzalez, assistant dean for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion at the College of Arts and Sciences, will deliver the training. Gonzalez developed the training and will be offering it in partnership with CU police and the Center for African and African American Studies.
Gonzalez said it's her goal to empower people to confidently acknowledge when they said something harmful, be open to correcting others and be receptive to feedback from others.
"It's important for us to be able to correct ourselves and to be okay with saying 'what I just said was not okay,'" Gonzalez said. "But also the accountability piece, and to hold one another accountable."
The goal of the training is to produce more accurate subject descriptions and inclusive emergency alerts. For example, instead of identifying a suspect as having "dark skin," the training guides officers to be specific about the identity of the suspect if it's known. If no identity is known, then the training instructs officers not to make assumptions and to focus on other identifying traits, such as type of car driven or color and type of clothing.
Gonzalez said making inaccurate identity assumptions about potential suspects has harmful impacts for the community. The goal of this training, she said, is to provide new guidelines for improving language use in suspect descriptions, which are sent community-wide through emergency alerts.
Other areas of the training include avoiding offensive jargon, derogatory terms and non-gender neutral language.
Reiland Rabaka, CAAAS director and professor of African, African American and Caribbean Studies, also contributed to feedback on the training as part of the partnership.
"We both (Rabaka and CU police Chief Doreen Jokerst) believe CUPD has a pivotal role to play, not simply in keeping CU safe and secure, but in helping diverse and often excluded campus community members feel seen and heard and, most of all, welcomed and wanted at CU," Rabaka said in a news release.
The training will be delivered this fall. This is one of multiple efforts by CU police and its partners to make emergency alerts more inclusive, including the option to receive alerts in languages other than English.
"We can collectively change this place by supporting each other, and I think that's what this partnership is all about," Gonzalez said.
