Campus Safety Task Force Calls for Transparency, Ongoing Review

After many months of discussion about best practices in policing, the Task Force on Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety has completed its report. I served as co-chair of the task force. UC Davis News has highlighted the report in the story excerpted below - read the full article.

"Future changes to policing at UC Davis should include increased transparency, restorative justice, new approaches to mental health crises, regular review of the arming of police, and ongoing review and dialogue to ensure the campus Police Department is meeting the community’s needs, a 32-person task force convened by Chancellor Gary S. May said in its final report last week.

The group, the Task Force on Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety, convened a year ago as discussions of police reform swept the nation in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others. It delivered its preliminary report to the chancellor in December and followed up with the full report and eight recommendations on June 15.

“I’m grateful to the members of the task force for their thorough, comprehensive and superb efforts in conducting the review and producing this report,” May said. “As I accept these recommendations, I want to be clear that this report itself is not an endpoint. Instead, we will continue to operate in a mode of continuous improvement.”

The group was co-chaired by Kevin Johnson, dean of the School of Law, and Renetta Garrison Tull, vice chancellor of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and included faculty, staff and students from the Davis and Sacramento campuses, and alumni, too. The task force was given six months more than originally planned to complete its report so it could seek additional input from the university community, and did so through 11 public town hall meetings and its website."