Article Preview
TopIntroduction
In March of 2020, universities across the United States and around the world shuttered their doors and ushered students and faculty into an online learning environment. The abrupt shift from in-person learning to digital modes was shocking to many, in particular students themselves. In the wake of the educational upheaval, educational instruction continued largely uninterrupted. During the fall 2020 semester, once everyone became acclimated to online learning, brought a welcome respite after a summer of social unrest and the continuation of a global health crisis. This work, explores the virtual experiences in a graduate research course at an HBCU located in a Mid-Atlantic state, and serves marquee assignment for the course. This assignment explored, using a meta-analysis article (Gill et al., 2014) and a news article about the meta-analysis article (Maximino, 2015), the manner in which community-oriented policing could potentially serve as a solution to the continuing spate of killings by law enforcement of unarmed men and women in the United States who are classified as Black or African American. In addition to reviewing and exploring the journal article on community-oriented policing, the class also featured a watch party and screened the PBS Frontline documentary Policing the Police 2020, and a Q&A session followed the screening.
In addition, scholars in the course were divided into three groups and were assigned to explore topics related to community-oriented policing and the civil unrest witnessed in the United States in 2020. Those topics were qualified immunity, community engagement, and the concept of equity. Qualified immunity, a legal disclaimer or sorts introduced during Freedom Summer by lawmakers in Mississippi that prevented victims of police abuse from bring civil and criminal charges against law enforcement officers unless they were found to have violated a plaintiff’s human rights. At the close of the Civil Rights Era and the passing of the 1965 Civil Rights Act by Lyndon B. Johnson, most of the nation’s local precincts had adopted the law based on the legal precedent established in Mississippi (Manns, 2021). The nationwide law backed by the U.S. Supreme Court in numerous instances, absolved officers and other public officials from responsibility. In 2021, New York City passed laws ending the practice of qualified immunity for NYPD officers in the wake of years of violations that left families unable to seek criminal charges for egregious misdeeds (Ali & Clark, 2019; Manns, 2021; Williams, 2021). This topic was central to the assignments and discussions of police brutality and unwarranted killings of unarmed Black people and others as the failure to prosecute police leaves the impression that they are “getting away with murder of citizens.”
According to Pace Funders (2021), civic engagement is defined as the “process of helping people be active participants in building and strengthening their communities, whether defined as a place or a shared identity or interest.” This topic was also explored by one of the student groups in the course in order to incite the idea that change is a collective responsibility and scholars themselves must be encouraged to engage in this process to in order to improve their communities and solve existing challenges. Equity, is the concept of “achieving equality” by providing necessary resources and financial support to close existing economic, political and educational gaps in society with all public serving institutions engaging in fair, just and equitable distribution of associated resources (Longley, 2021: National Academy of Public Administration, n.d.). Equity was added to the assignment in order to assist scholars in learning about the historic and systemic imbalances in place under the system of white supremacy and to provide insights on how to challenge such imbalance.