Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade Leading Initiative to Reform Policing

The Community Policing Innovations Initiative is a partnership of several foundations to support and develop community-driven, substantive and pragmatic changes in policing and public safety services. The initiative recently awarded $200,000 grants to five Southeast Michigan police departments, including Detroit and Dearborn, to help fund these reforms. 

“Thinking about how we allocate our public safety dollars is part of what this initiative is about.” –Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade

Listen: How Southeast Michigan police departments are working toward reform.

Guest

Barb McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She chairs the new Community Policing Innovations Initiative, which she says came from “a yearning so many of us have to do something to address systemic problems in our police departments … to address systemwide policing disparities.”

McQuade says the five departments that received $200,000 grants are already allocating the funds to address systemic problems. “Inkster wants to hire social workers to show up at the scene in issues that require de-escalation … while Dearborn and Detroit will use their grants for data collection,” she says. 

McQuade says another key part of this initiative is working within the communities to better understand their history with police. “If you’re a well-intentioned police officer and you want to do your job … maybe you don’t understand that not everyone views police in the way you do.” She says equitable community funding will also be addressed by the project. “Thinking about how we allocate our public safety dollars is part of what this initiative is about.”