UCLA Center for Policing Equity to relocate to New York

UCLA’s research center that works with police departments to reduce racial profiling and other issues will relocate to New York following an endowment of $2.5 million.

UCLA psychology professor Phillip Atiba Goff, who helped start the center in 2007, will also move to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York to occupy a professorship and lead the center, according to a press release.

The Center for Policing Equity opened in 2007 following conferences where police department officials and researchers met to discuss race relations and discrimination by police. Since then, the center has brought together officials and researchers to study policing equity issues, such as racial bias and provide suggestions for reforms in police departments across the country, according to the press release.

In 2013, Goff and three other professors also received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create a racial profiling database by collecting racial information on pedestrian and vehicle stops and the use of force by police.

Goff is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University for the 2015-2016 year.

The Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies gave $1.5 million and $1 million, respectively, to the John Jay College of Criminal Injustice to fund the professorship. The center will move to New York by the summer.