How Can Police and Public Create Safer Neighborhoods Together

Tracie L. Keesee, PhD,  is a 25-year police veteran. She retired as a captain of the Denver Police Department before joining the NYPD as the Deputy Commissioner of Training followed by Diversity and Inclusion.  She is the Project Director of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, a Department of Justice project led by the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College. The initiative is designed to improve relationships and increase trust between minority communities and the criminal justice system, as well advance the public and scholarly understandings of the issues contributing to those relationships. Dr. Keesee is also the co-founder and director of research partnerships for the Center for Policing Equity, which promotes police transparency and accountability by facilitating innovative research collaborations between law enforcement agencies and empirical social scientists, and seeks to improve issues of equity–particularly racial and gender equity–in policing both within law enforcement agencies and between agencies and the communities they serve.