Murphy signs law requiring implicit bias training
TRENTON » New Jersey’s municipal cops, state troopers and remaining law enforcement officers must receive cultural diversity and implicit bias training beginning next year.
Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday signed legislation finally requiring sworn officers to learn about implicit bias, a form of ignorance defined as the unconscious or subliminal stereotyping of others.
“To build upon on our progress to reshape policing,” Murphy said Thursday in a press statement, “we must address the systemic and implicit biases that too often negatively impact relations between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
The primary sponsors of the legislation, including State Sens. Shirley Turner and Linda Greenstein, celebrated the implications of the new law.
“New Jersey has taken a proactive approach in addressing the racial injustices hampering our country, and this new law is a step in the right direction,” Turner, a Democrat who represents parts of Mercer and Hunterdon counties, said Thursday in a press statement. “It will result, ultimately, in better policing in our diverse communities.”
Greenstein, a Democrat who represents parts of Mercer and Middlesex counties, said New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the nation in terms of race and ethnicity.
“Forty-five percent of our residents are people of color, and this collection of cultures is one of our state’s greatest strengths and attributes,” she said in a statement. “We must continue to strengthen the cultural diversity and implicit bias training so our law enforcement officers are fully equipped to serve our diverse communities.”
This new legislation, formerly known as Assembly Bill No. 3641, requires the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety to develop training course materials and an online tutorial with clear instructions on “understanding implicit bias and employing strategies to eliminate unconscious biases that shape behavior and produce disparate treatment of individuals based on their race, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics.”
After establishing an implicit bias training regimen, DLPS must make those materials available to every state, county and municipal law enforcement department in New Jersey, including campus police forces appointed by institutions of higher education.
The new law takes effect next March and requires law enforcement agencies to provide cultural diversity and implicit bias training once every five years.
“Implicit bias is the automatic association people make between groups of people and stereotypes about those groups,” Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson said Thursday in a joint statement with fellow Assembly members who sponsored Assembly Bill No. 3641. “It has been shown to have significant influence on the outcomes of interactions between police and residents. Implicit bias can be expressed in relation to non-racial factors, including gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation and not only racial incidence.”
Reynolds-Jackson, a Democrat who formerly served on Trenton City Council, suggested cops should always operate with utmost professionalism in all interactions with the community.
“If there is any profession that cannot afford to have or show bias or discrimination in the act of doing their jobs,” she said in her joint statement with Assemblywoman Carol A. Murphy and Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake, “it’s law enforcement.”
The police-involved killing of Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier this year has fueled nationwide anti-racism protests and moved the New Jersey Legislature to consider a variety of police accountability and reform measures.