Washington Lawyer - May/June 2023 - 33

FEATURE
Teaching and Learning. Eventually, all of the program's courses will be
made available asynchronously.
While in-person education can rely upon a certain degree of extemporaneous
lecture and Q&A, slide presentations must be carefully prepared
for each class. Material is organized and presented differently, and topics
that would normally take Lemley an hour to cover in a lecture are broken
into smaller segments.
Lemley has found that some of the newly developed material has made
its way into his in-person approach to teaching, as have the unique perspectives
of his foreign-trained students. " It's made me think about how
information is presented and what is interesting or confusing about the
law. I'm always trying to learn while teaching, and my favorite part about
teaching is when I learn something, " Lemley says.
TRANSFORMING POLICE CULTURE
To help address the country's overreliance on policing and incarceration
as solutions to society's ills, Georgetown University Law Center established
the Center for Innovations in Community Safety (CICS) to bring
community stakeholders together to transform how they approach
public safety.
Founded in 2019 by law professors Christy Lopez and Rosa Brooks, a
former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) reserve officer, CICS
works directly with local police to address deficiencies in the content
and delivery of police training.
The center's 18-month Police for Tomorrow Fellowship program, now in
its fourth cohort, engages MPD officers in monthly workshops and community
engagement activities,
covering topics such as
alternatives to arrest, adolescent
brain development,
and the history and demographics
of the District.
In 2020, as the country
grappled with police
accountability for the murder
of George Floyd, CICS
launched the Active Bystandership
for Law Enforcement
(ABLE) Project. Based on the
research of Dr. Ervin Staub,
active bystandership is a
skills-training approach
designed to help police
officers intervene to prevent
unnecessary, harmful behavior
by fellow officers.
Lopez, in her role as a deputy
chief in the Special Litigation
Section of the Civil Rights Division
at the U.S. Department
TAHIR DUCKETT
Center for Innovations
in Community Safety
of Justice, was a primary negotiator of the consent decree arising from
an investigation into discrimination by the Ferguson Police Department.
To date, ABLE has trained instructors from more than 320 agencies in 41
states.
JON HANSON
Systemic Justice Project, Harvard University
CICS Executive Director Tahir Duckett says that dialogues being facilitated
by the center are important in studying and implementing potential
solutions to systemic injustice. " I believe two things, " he says. " One
is that we need to decenter policing within our community safety apparatus.
Having them at the center of our system hasn't served us well and
won't serve us well. But I also believe that in order to form a new system
of public safety, you have to understand the policing function. "
CICS continues to explore areas in which a different intervention might
result in a better outcome. Its work with alternative first responder and
hospital-based violence intervention programs seeks to provide a nonpolice
response to community needs and to disrupt cycles of violence
by working directly with victims of gun violence. The alternative first
responder program will convene a first-of-its-kind conference in June.
" When someone comes into a hospital with a gunshot wound, they are
in need of protection [and] support, and if they don't get those things,
they may be more likely to become a victim again or to retaliate, " Lopez
says. " It's a really important inflection point for stopping the cycle of
violence. "
JUSTICE-CENTERED LEARNING
Imagine the perfect course of study for a law student, perhaps someone
who might go on to public service, interested in a critical examination of
the law, justice, and society. The creators of such a program would want
the involvement of a top-ranked law school, with its access to leading
scholars, and of the country's preeminent historically Black law school,
where conversations about equity and social justice have a long tradition.
MAY/JUNE 2023
* WASHINGTON LAWYER 33
Harvard Law School
Courtesy of Tahir Duckett
Washington Lawyer - May/June 2023

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