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SALT LAKE CITY — Former Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has accepted a job at the Center for Policing Equity as the organization's director of law enforcement engagement.
The California-based nonprofit group touts itself as the "nation's leading policing research think tank."
Burbank will be responsible for managing relations with law enforcement partners, leading the group's police review team and extending the reach of the National Justice Database, according to the organization. In 2012, the group started the The National Justice Database to track statistics on police use of force nationwide.
on KSL Radio's "The Doug Wright Show" on Thursday, Burbank said he knew he didn't want to be a police chief again, which is why he was excited for the opportunity to change not just one police organization but the entire law enforcement profession.
"I am working on a national database, National Justice Database, that will take information from police agencies throughout the nation and actually look at the stops they're doing, who's going to jail, and they can actually determine the bias. And more importantly, they can preempt some of the things going on in the nation, and they can predict this is where we might have some problems, let's change some of the problems in this area," he said.
At the top of the list of trends the group hopes to change is racial bias interjected into policing, he said.
"That is at the heart of the bias we see in the criminal justice system as far as incarceration," Burbank said.
In order to get better policing, Burbank said, changes need to be made in the prevention side of law enforcement, not in the response of officers.
"It's not about crimes and arresting people, it's about preventing crime and not having to arrest people," he said.
The Center for Policing Equity "is a research consortium that promotes police transparency and accountability by facilitating innovative research collaborations between law enforcement agencies and empirical social scientists," according to the group's website.
Burbank was forced to resign earlier this year by Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker after 25 years with the department. Becker alleged Burbank did not take critical action in light of sexual harassment claims made by female employees in his department, which were later substantiated.
Burbank sat on the board of the Center for Policing Equity 10 years ago and has maintained a relationship with the group since. He has been in talks with the organizatoin on his new position for several months. Burbank said joining the think tank again would give him a voice on a national level to impact the law enforcement profession.
"Chris brings with him decades of hands-on experience dealing with the systematic and intergenerational problems facing law enforcement nationwide. We could not be happier to welcome him to CPE as we work to ensure justice for officers and the civilians they are sworn to protect," the company in a statement.
Burbank will continue to live in Salt Lake City while working for the California organization.
"I love this community. I'm committed to changing things here locally as well as nationally, so that's why I stayed here," he said.
