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UWPD to receive tools to better serve students of color on campus

Multicultural Student Center teams up with UWPD to help address racial biases
UWPD+to+receive+tools+to+better+serve+students+of+color+on+campus
Logan Reigstad

The Multicultural Student Center hopes to equip University of Wisconsin Police Department with the proper tools to combat issues of racial biases in a new training initiative program.

Racial biases against students and community members of color have sparked a conversation between UWPD and the student center about how biases should be addressed.

To address these racial biases and try to combat them, the student center and UWPD are in the process of finalizing a new training initiative program, Joshua Johnson, assistant dean of students and director of the Multicultural Student Center, said. The program is targeted toward understanding how people’s actions and behaviors can be influenced by racist decisions.

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UWPD, just like faculty, staff and students at UW all have issues with racial biases, Johnson said.

“Even folks that have really good intentions can sometimes make decisions that are filtered through racist ideas we are taught through the media and textbooks,” Johnson said.

Leaders hope to kickoff in December with a training video and in-person training with UWPD.

One of the center’s goal for the training will include a video that will show UWPD officers that their mere presence and the way they approach students of color may provoke fear and reactions that are different than when they approach white students, Johnson said.

The hope is that the video will help UWPD officers understand how historically, black people have been taught not to trust police officers, but to fear them, Johnson said.

“I fully believe that UWPD really wants to support students of color on campus,” Johnson said.

Following the events of last year, multiple incidents brought up the issue of police violence toward students of color.

When Tony Robinson,was fatally shot by a Madison Police officer in the spring, the community came together in peaceful rallies and protests.

Prior to this collaboration and the events that transpired last spring, UWPD already had an established unconscious bias training program.

And UWPD has already been working to educate their officers on how to identify automatic biases they form of people based on previous experiences, Sgt. Cherise Caradine, UWPD training specialist said.

UWPD has been focusing on these biases to help officers better identify biases they may have to ensure that people may all be treated fairly and equally, Caradine said.

Two trained officers are in charge of instructing UWPD’s fair and impartial policing, as well as their unconscious bias training, Caradine said. In addition, UWPD sends officers to specialty training programs and brings in specialists to talk to the department about policing bias.

Though UWPD has seen progress from these training sessions, Caradine said there is still work to be done.

“I see the future of the changes, but the way that policing has been for hundreds of years, it’s been a process to get us to where we are now and it’s going to be a process to get us where we want to be,” Caradine said.

This is only the beginning of conversation, Johnson said.

“The goal is to essentially check in with UWPD on a semester basis about what we are hearing from students and what they are hearing from students, and how we can work together to make things better,” Johnson said.

Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted Joshua Johnson. The article has been updated to reflect his original quote. The Badger Herald regrets this error.

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