Housatonic — Ricky Bernstein, a full-time visual artist in Sheffield, splits his time between making art and directing a small, non-profit literacy program, Hands in Outreach, for poor girls in Nepal. The program sponsors the education of 150 girls and their mothers in Kathmandu.
As if that’s not enough, for the last twelve years Bernstein has been producing the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series. While the speakers are rarely household names, they all have experience and expertise in various aspects of the eternal American quest for social justice. Bernstein has a committee of human rights advocates who choose the speakers. The series is funded by donations from the interfaith community and by grants from many of the local area cultural councils.
The 2015-2016 season has focused on race relations.
This Sunday (January 15) at 1 p.m. the talk features Tracie Keesee, the Deputy Commissioner of Training for the New York Police Department. She will speak on race and policing at the Unitarian Meeting House in Housatonic.
Keesee has devoted her long career in policing to strengthening better ties between the police and minority communities. She began her police work in Denver, where she grew up. She wrote her doctoral thesis, “Driving While Black: Stories Through the Driver’s Car Window,” using 34 interviews she had conducted with Denver police officers and African-Americans. Her particular interest was in the interaction of the police (mostly white) and the arrested drivers (black) during traffic stops. Although previous studies showed that the police were more likely to fire at blacks than whites, her research found that training made the police less likely to shoot on the basis of race.
Her tenure in the Denver police force ended somewhat acrimoniously. In 2012, the department busted her down from division chief to captain after a letter she wrote criticizing the Denver police chief became public. She retired shortly thereafter and became the deputy director of the Colorado Information Analysis Center.
Currently, Keesee is the Project Director of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, housed at John Jay College in New York City. This program was designed to improve relationships and increase trust between minority communities and the criminal justice system.
Keesee is also the co-founder and director of research partnerships for the Center for Policing Equity, which promotes collaborations between law enforcement agencies and social scientists. Their current project was designed to improve issues of racial and gender equity in policing.
Civilian relations with the police is a complicated subject. Tracie Keesee’s experience with law enforcement and her academic training combine to make her an authoritative speaker… and a nice way to spend a cold January Sunday afternoon.
