Next Conversations on Race and Policing will focus on ‘Bad Apples or Bad System? Corruption and Torture in the Chicago Police Department’

The next program in the Conversations on Race and Policing series will be a student roundtable that will focus on “‘Bad Apples or Bad System? Corruption and Torture in the Chicago Police Department.”

The program will feature two short films and will examine the examples of Ronald Watts and the late Jon Burge, two disgraced officers in the Chicago Police Department.

Free and open to the public, it will take place at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 28, on Zoom and can be accessed from a PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/97960458784.

Conversations on Race and Policing, also known as CoRP, began in the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis, Minn., police officers. A video of the incident posted on social media led to widespread protests, the firing of four police officers, the arrest and conviction of one officer on a second-degree murder and related charges, the other three on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder – and a spotlight worldwide on race and policing.

The series has featured scholars, journalists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, activists, artists, educators, administrators and others from throughout the nation who shared their experience and expertise on issues related to race and policing.

More than 40 forums have taken place, and video recordings of the sessions are posted online on the Conversations on Race and Policing Lecture Series Archive.

The series is organized by CSUSB students Marlo Brooks, Zoralynn Oglesby, Evelyn Jimenez, Jade McDonald, Jaime Castro and Connie Cornejo; Mary Texeira, CSUSB professor of sociology; Jeremy Murray, CSUSB associate professor of history; Robie Madrigal, public affairs/communication specialist for the CSUSB John M. Pfau Library; and community member Stan Futch, president of the Westside Action Group. 

More conversations are scheduled for the fall semester and include:

• •  Tuesday, Oct. 5, at 1 p.m.: Dr. Daniel Widener (UC San Diego), “An Art for Both My Peoples: Visual Cultures of Black/Brown Unity”; 
  • Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 1 p.m.: Dr. Angela Hattery (University of Delaware) and Dr. Earl Smith (George Mason University), “Policing Black Bodies”; and
  • Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 1 p.m.: Dr. Joseph Darda (Texas Christian University), “The Whiteness of Blue Lives: Race in American Policing.”

For more information, contact Robie Madrigal at rmadriga@csusb.edu or Jeremy Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.

Also visit the Conversations on Race and Policing webpage.