A presentation by the chief of Seattle’s Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) Department, Amy Barden, will kick off the 2025 spring semester’s Conversations on Race and Policing.

Barden’s talk, free and open to the public, will take place at noon Wednesday, Feb. 19, on Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/csusb-race-and-policing-2025. 

The CARE Department is the third branch of public safety in Seattle, alongside the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle Fire Department. It was established in October 2023, and, in addition to operating the city’s 911 center, is responsible for the Community Crisis Responder Team.

Crisis responders, who are behavioral health professionals with backgrounds in social work and crisis intervention, assist police officers on calls “involving persons experiencing crisis or behavioral health challenges (non-violent Person Down, Welfare Check and other 9-1-1 calls as requested), to streamline the process of connecting said persons to the appropriate service providers, while freeing up police officers and fire fighters to respond to higher priority calls,” according to its website.

A PBS article reported that the CARE Department “was born out of the 2020 protests against police violence. It is modeled on other cities’ experiments with sending unarmed civilian responders alongside or instead of uniformed police to answer calls about mental or behavioral health crises. The idea is that people in crisis are often better served by social workers than by police officers who are not trained in behavioral health and whose interactions with people in crisis can lead to fatal shootings.”

The Conversations on Race and Policing program began after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and its aftermath. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, triggering extensive protests, demands for systemic reform in policing, and profound dialogues on race and racism. This also led to the inception of Cal State San Bernardino’s Conversations on Race and Policing, abbreviated as CoRP.

In subsequent court cases, three other former Minneapolis police officers implicated in Floyd’s death were given prison sentences.

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

Upcoming programs, which take place at noon on Wednesdays (unless otherwise noted) include:

  • Feb. 26, Paloma Villegas, CSUSB assistant professor of sociology, and Dylan Rodríguez, UC Riverside professor of Black Study & Media and Cultural Studies. Both are experts in a wide range of topics related to race, ethnicity, migration, colonialism, law enforcement and the intersections of these and other themes.
  • March 5, Madeleine Hamlin, Colgate University assistant professor of geography, whose work focuses on housing, policing, race, class, and punishment in U.S. cities. She is currently working on a book project, under contract with University of Chicago Press, “Policing the Project: Crime, Carcerality, and Chicago Public Housing.”
  • March 12, Keeonna Harris, CSUSB alumna and author of “Mainline Mama: A Memoir,” which recounts her experience as a “mainline mama, a parent facing the impossible task of raising a child — while still growing up herself — with an incarcerated partner."
  • March 13 (Thursday), Cat Brooks, activist, performer, organizer, and radio host of KPFK’s “Law & Disorder.”
  • March 19, Eric Avila, UCLA professor of history, who studies the intersections of racial identity, urban space, and cultural representation in twentieth century America.
  • March 26, Madeline Stenersen, St. Louis University assistant professor of psychology, and Cassandra Young, University of Denver assistant professor of gender and women’s studies.

The series organizers currently include CSUSB faculty, staff, alumni, and community members, as well as collaborators from other institutions: Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, psychology), Stan Futch (president, Westside Action Group), German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College adjunct faculty and CSUSB alumnus), and Mary Texeira (CSUSB sociology).

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

Also visit the Conversations on Race and Policing webpage.