Shooting of missouri teenager michael brown. Members are examining ways to improve relationships between Law Enforcement and the communities they serve. They are expected to give their recommendations to president obama the summer. This is to an half hours. Were going to get started. If you have a cell phone please turn it off for putting on to vibrate. Good morning welcome to the president s task force on 21st Century Policing. Today we have a distinguished and final panel all bills were outstanding but we save the best for last there will be the to the cochairs to explain the purpose of the panel and the thought process while we will close it out this way. And as you know, december 1st 2014 president obama announced his intent to create a president s task force with 21st Century Policing to deal with the issue of trust between police and many communities in the task force will be led by two distinguished cochairs was also a former assistant attorney general and to her left charros ramsey not only the Philadelphia Police commissioner but the police chief of washington d. C. But to put this together to ask them to come up with concrete recommendations for being here. It seems like a week or two when you think back on how compressed it has been. But a lot of good work came from it. I want to thank those that testified today and those that testified before you, submitted comments and participated in the audience. It has been helpful in us framing what will be the final recommendations we present to the president next week. I am not going to go anything about how it will happen. We have heard over 150 witnesses, we have listened and received even more written testimony, and after todays morning panel, we will be able to work together, deliberate, and come up with a recommendation on what to give to the president. So today as far as the panel discussion, theres no better way to end it. Before i continue, in the back of the room is a lot of staff. The cochairs have been very gracious, and i have think then each and every session. When the president created this task force, he identified the department of justice to support their efforts to make sure the task force has what it needs to do its job. My office was tasked with providing those services. And i will say tasked and honored to provide the services and support such a great team. And the staff has done just a tremendous job. You think about what has been accomplished in less than 90 days, it is amazing. I want to tell them publicly from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your leadership commitment kind of dedication, and thank you for the work that is yet to come. With that, i want to turn it over to the cochairs so they can lead the final panel and lead us to the conclusions of this process. I will start with cochair commissioner charles ramsey. Thank you, ron. This is been a very vast process that we have embarked upon over the last 90 days. It seems more like a week or two when you think back on how compressed it has been. A lot good work has come from it. I want to thank all of you for your testimony all of those who have testified before you, submitted written comments, participated in the audience. It really has been very helpful. We will be framing the final recommendations we will present to the president next week. Im not going to go over anything like that. Ron did a good job of that. Soon you will be introduced to the other taskforce members. I am chuck ramsey and i am a cochair along with Lori Robinson and i think we have made a good team over the past few months. I am currently the police chief in philadelphia. Seven years i have served in few months. That capacity. Prior to that where was the police chief in washington for almost nine. I started in chicago in 1968. I have been around for a while and seen a lot of changing in policing over the years. Very dynamic profession and this is a period of time when we have challenges to meet. We will meet those challenges. As we talk about and discuss things that really assist us in better serving the public today we wanted to put together to panel to lean forward and look at tomorrow and what lies ahead. That is why you are here today. Again, thank you very much. And i will now turn it over to Lori Robinson. Thanks so much, chuck. It has been a privilege working on this task force particularly with cochair chuck ramsey. I have been in this field for more than 30 years working with the American Bar Association about ten years with the department of justice and more recently in academia. Our time on the task force has been fast but remarkable with the opportunity to hear from so many witnesses bringing such expertise before us. But our intent with this panel was to look ahead. And i would characterize this as a Super Star Group here and that was the intent. I am looking forward to introducing the panel but before that i want to give the Task Force Members, who by the way have been wonderful to meet with, and what an opportunity to get the chance in what i call a bunker mentality and it is something i will think about for the rest of my career. This opportunity to work with them. I am starting at the end with roberto and we will move down the line. Good morning. As lori said, i am the chief of police for tucson, arizona. I grew up in the department and have been with them 35 years and chief for the past 6 years. This has been the culmination of my career and having the opportunity to give and receive input at this level from members like yourself and working with this group here. Instead of attending 150 different schools, i was able to bring 150 professors to me and sit there and be awed by the information they gave and pick the little pieces here and there i think go toward providing the framework of the best practices. It has been a wonderful experience and excited to get to the work of deliberation today. It will probably be long but i am sure we can come to agreement on a lot of the topics. Good morning, i am brian stevenson, the director of the equal justice initiative. I am an attorney and spent most of my career providing Legal Services to poor people, people convicted of crimes, people in prison. And people facing conviction. I want to also express my gratitude to the cochairs for the remarkable leadership they provided and to the cop staff and colleagues on the task force. This has been a remarkable and intense but really incredible insightful and educative process and we appreciate those of you who are here to complete the process. I am looking forward to working with the Task Force Members, and the administration, in hoping doing what we can to add to the quality of policing in the country and perhaps encouraging the debate and dialogue necessary to make policing what we hope it should and can be. I want to thank all of those who organized this and express my gratitude to you this morning for being here. Good morning. I am sean smoot, the director and Police Council for the Police Organization of illinois and the chair of Police Organizations. Over the last 20 years i have dedicated my life to advocating on behalf of rank and file Police Officers. I am especially excited about the panel today because i came up as a student of criminal justice at the time that Community Policing was really starting to filter out in the country. And starting my career working with Law Enforcement as a practitioner and later on as an advocate i have had the opportunity to see the ebbs and flows of Community Policing and departments of all sizes as large as chicago and small as a place like granite city, illinois. And on the national level. So i am really excited and encouraged and i have to say i would like to express my gratitude to president obama for empanelling this task force. I think it was a courageous thing to do and the right thing to do. I am honored to serve with my colleagues on the task force and look forward to closing out the listening session today with a look toward the future and my look is quite hopefully so thank you. Good morning. I am sue. Started my career in Law Enforcement 35 years ago as a Deputy Sheriff working patrol. 35 years flew by. The last seven years i was the elected sheriff in king county which is the area around seattle. I never in my wildest dreams thought i would have an opportunity like this. I think anybody having being able to be part of this panel would say this is amazing. We have the greatest minds in this profession coming together. Anyone who says the federal Government Works slow, not on this task force. It has been a miracle and such a privilege to be part of the movement and like sean i am very optimistic about the future. We are at a cross road with good people, good will and a lot of great ideas and i am looking forward to putting it together. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I am tracy near and i have been for the last 20 or years a legal academic first at the university of Chicago Law School and now at yale. My research focuses on criminal law policy and procedure and understanding the dynamics of Violent Crime in urban areas. I have been focused on policing and justice and this work we have been doing over the last six weeks has been extremely gratifying professionally for me but also an amazing opportunity to hear from experts like you but also voices from the community and people who have lost their children and struggling every day trying to deal with issue of crime in their community and how to best come up with a strategy to have policing and Law Enforcement be accountable for them. I am glad we are ending with a panel on policing for the future because it is my hope the report is a launching pad for change. Good morning. I am brittany. And 200 days ago today you would never convince me i would have spent the last six months standing on streets, very close to my childhood home, standing up for justice standing up for some of the 20,000 young people that i serve in my fulltime job as executive director of teach for america in st. Louis. And standing up for young men and women who look like my brother and myself and trying to and women who look like my brother and myself and trying to create change from tragedy. So this is not the only work that is going on in that realm but i am deeply thankful to be a part of this step. I never knew as an educator i would know this much about policing. And i am thankful to have had the opportunity to help be a voice for young people in this process. So i am hopeful but feeling urgent about the work that is ahead. And i thank you all for joining us. Good morning. New york city and new york state combines social services and Community Organizing to work with our 16,000 members to advance mostly a Public Policy at the city, state and national level. As on organization we are member of cpr Communities United for police reform. A campaign that started in new york city to challenge the stop and Frisk Program and the Youth Project at the road is currently in the final stages of our partnership with the public science project where we are working with about a dozen youth researchers to study the impacts of the stop, question and Frisk Program on the impact of 1824 year olds. Thank you for being here. Good morning and welcome. I am Cedrick Alexander and i am the current Public Safety director in decalb, georgia, and serve as the Vice President of noble. My career started in 1977 in florida actually. Tallahassee, orlando and in dade county where i left i think about 1992 and decided to go back to school and become a clinical psychologist and i am still trying to determine if that was a good idea or not. But nevertheless that training has helped me a great deal in moving through this progression and helping the profession change, too. But with that being said, i think over the last 35 years and i remember back in 1980, and many of you may remember the riots during that time. Those riots actually grew out of the whole lot of years of distrust and quite frankly Police Brutality that had been occurring throughout that community for a long period of time. The reaction of that community after the loss of a life in the hands of the police. They have done a great job trying to change the trajectory and relationships that still exist in that community today. There is plenty of opportunity here i think for us to continue to progress the field. As i often hear ron davis say and who has been brilliant for leading us through this. I would like to say thank you and look forward to the dialogue. Thank you. Let me turn back let me turn ba do so. As part of this process, we also brought aboard the outstanding cop staff. We have great Technical Advisor sitting at the table who are kind of behind the scenes, but they have been an invaluable assistance. I also want to remind people before we get to the first panel that this is being live streamed , webcast. We are encouraging comments from the community at large. You can provide comments by going to the cops website. There is an icon that you click on that says president s task force and you can leave comments recommendations. We receive them. You can also give us comments through twitter. Please take it of those venues to do so. And with that, madame cochair, i think we are prepared to start. In introducing the panel i am going to make brief induction introductions. The full bios for the witnesses are on the website. These are very distinguished and accomplished individuals and unfortunately we dont have time to go into their full backgrounds. Starting off with dr. Philip garth. Welcome and look forward to cower your comments. Thank you cochair and to the task force and those working behind their scenes. It is my honor to be here and particularly on this panel of distinguished individuals. My work as a research and president of the center for policing equity has sought to bridge gaps for the citizens and Law Enforcement bridge daily. I want to talk about stronger Evidence Base in policing and using that to ensure criminal justice particularly in the area of race. Social science can set the table for forces to come together and move toward the future. So as a scientist both in my full time job and spare time it bothers me no end where there is an important question that lacks an answer and i have never been more bothered by that tendency than i was late one night in september of 2008. As the son of a reference librarian i am good at finding things. At least i thought i was. I started at 10 a clock and ten and a half hours later i had to take a break. I had not find anything but the Research Staff had not either and i called my mom and she could not find anything. As the task force understands that is because there is no National Data on police use of force or on police stops or Police Behavior in general. And what arrested me or stopped me in that moment was not just the embarrassing lack of data on something so fundamental on what and what arrested me or stopped Police Officers do. But the data is part of Human Behavior and something we know more about than anything else. I want to talk to you about flee things we would be considering differently if we took the social Science Insights seriously. First, social science has revealed for quite some time we engage with others to the degree that they make us feel about ourselves much more than the degree we feel about them. In Close Relationships you are likely to make a commitment to a partner because they make you feel good about you than because you are attracted to them. In race and social justice, the work of Jennifer Richardson and myself and others shows that concerns with how you might appear in an interracial act action is more important than any level of prejudice and what that means if we take it seriously in the domain of policing is we would not put emphasis on how we treat the community but the perception for Law Enforcement is fundamental. And attitudes predict about 10 of behavior at best it has been found. That includes racial behaviors. And that means that if we were to neutralize all of the prejudice, implicit or explicit, we would only get rid of about 10 of behavior that is discrimination at best. And that leads me to the third insight which is situations are often more powerful predictors of behavior than character. If we take those insights seriously, it means in addition to focusing on training we would focus on the policies and understanding what policies lead to chronic situations making people vulnerable to their own bias and stereotypes. Our goal is to take this sear seriously and the success of the model is what led me here. We are the first to cover police stops and we cover 25 of the nation for those committed to doing this. Law enforcement executives came together saying we need this and want to do it in the best scientific way and came to the scientist to ask for help. I would ask the task force to do three things. I would ask the task force to encourage federal funding to keep up the statistics. And second i would ask them to encourage federal stakeholders to have more opportunities for Law Enforcement and communities to learn from social science as the