Joe Gutierrez | Office of Strategic Communication | (909) 537-5007 | joeg@csusb.edu
Moving from rhetoric to action when it comes to police reform will be the focus of the next Conversations on Race and Policing program at Cal State San Bernardino.
“From Rhetoric to Action: Police Reform in a ‘Post’ Racialized America,” by Thaddeus L. Johnson, a former ranking law enforcement official in Memphis, who is now an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, will be presented at 1 p.m. Tuesday, April 25, on Zoom.
The talk, which is free and open to the public, can be accessed from a PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/97960458784.
Johnson’s current research focuses on police policy and innovations, urban violence, crime control, and racially disparate justice outcomes. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and reports and a book, “Deviance among Physicians: Fraud, Violence, and the Power to Prescribe.” In addition to having his research featured in national media outlets, he has written on police reform issues for the popular press and appeared on numerous broadcast radio and TV news programs in the U.S. and Europe.
Conversations on Race and Policing, also known as CoRP, began in the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis, Minn., police officers. A video of the incident posted on social media led to widespread protests, the firing of four police officers, the arrest and conviction of one officer on a second-degree murder and related charges, the other three on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder – and a spotlight worldwide on race and policing.
The series has featured scholars, journalists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, activists, artists, educators, administrators and others from throughout the nation who shared their experience and expertise on issues related to race and policing.
More than 50 forums have taken place, and video recordings of the sessions are posted online on the Conversations on Race and Policing Lecture Series Archive.
The series is organized by CSUSB students, staff and faculty, including recent history master of arts graduate, Cecelia Smith; history master of arts student Matt Patino; Mary Texeira, professor emerita, sociology; Jeremy Murray, professor of history; Robie Madrigal, public affairs/communication specialist for the CSUSB John M. Pfau Library; and community member Stan Futch, president of the Westside Action Group.
The spring semester lineup of Conversations on Race and Policing, each at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, includes:
- May 2: “Paid for by Crime: Civil Asset Forfeiture and the War on Drugs,” with Kenneth Alyass, a Ph.D. student in history at Harvard University where he studies race, class, and crime in American cities during the late 20th century.
- May 9: “In Conversation with Cat Brooks,” the host of KPFA’s “Law and Disorder,” a weekly radio show in the San Francisco Bay Area that, according to its website, “exposes the cracks in our system, agitates for resistance and collectively builds a new world where all of us thrive.”
For more information, contact Robie Madrigal at rmadriga@csusb.edu or Jeremy Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.