background

Police officers and the minority members of the community often have very different views and opinions on how police officers interact with the community members of various backgrounds.  In particular, African American members of the community have expressed a distrust of police officers and have been very vocal with complaints of excessive force and racial profiling.

While civil and criminal courts have often ruled in favor of the officer, in many cases, members of the community have expressed strong opinions that these are examples of a broken justice system and they feel racism is the root cause of officer bias, and systemic in all police departments. On the flip-side, police officers deny racism as a factor in discourtesy or use-of-force incidents and point to court rulings in the officer’s favor, as justification for their actions in these controversial incidents. When incidents that appear to be clearly unjustifiable are ruled justifiable, citizens have come to question all officer use-of-force incidents and they tend to believe any allegation of misconduct by officers.

This is clearly a step in the wrong direction.  As a whole, police departments have been using the same tactics to address the mistrust issue and it is now at a boiling point.  Police departments often mandate sensitivity training for their officers, in efforts to teach them to be more sensitive to members of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This lecture method of training has proven to be ineffective in getting officers to truly understand the perspective of the citizens they serve and officers do not get the opportunity to fairly express the police perspective of an incident. These classes amount to little more than an obligatory passage of time, being lectured, where any dissenting opinion is minimal or nonexistent.

A bridge must be built where honest, civil dialogue flows between officers and citizens.

The human… workshop is that bridge with a very unique approach.  In the “training session”, officers and community members learn side-by-side.
human… is about seeing and hearing both sides of the equation in a civil learning environment.

Click here to request a local workshop.

a letter from the founder

Dear Fellow human,

Welcome and thank you for participating in the human… workshop.  Your participation is a choice and you chose to make yourself and your community a better place.  

This workshop shop is different than others.  It is about being real about the current state of affairs and real about our feelings. You will be challenged in ways that will, at times, make you feel uncomfortable.  We are in a time when we must address some uncomfortable topics to come to understanding and common ground. 

Today provides you with that opportunity to sit down, learn, teach and share with someone who may not necessarily see things as you do. Here we provide a safe environment to share in civil dialogue and expression. And at the end, we hope to have moved forward together. You will notice, the title of this class is "human…" which is always written in lowercase.  This is a visual reminder of humility for all.

Sincerely,

Sergeant Christopher Curtis (Ret.)
Founder

about the founder