President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing

The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing was created by an executive order signed by United States President Barack Obama in December 2014.^[1] Obama created it in response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer there.^[2] The eleven members of the task force include academics, law enforcement officials, and civil rights activists.^[1][3] The co-chairs of the task force are Philadelphia police commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and George Mason University professor of criminology, law and society Laurie Robinson.^[4] On March 2, 2015, the task force released its interim report, and on May 18 of that year, it released its final report.^[5] The final report called for, among other things, more data on police shootings and on civilians' attitudes toward the police, as well as for the removal of policies that reward police who produce more arrests and convictions. In another report released a year later, the task force released an update saying that at least nine states and cities in the United States had adopted the task force's recommendations. However, because there are 18,000 police departments in the United States, some members of the task force, as well as President Obama himself, have expressed frustration with the slow rate at which its recommendations have been adopted.^[6]

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