Urban League Launch Center on Police Reform with $1M Gift

The Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio (Cincinatti, OH) will use a million dollar grant to monitor police reforms and investigate claims of police misconduct outside of Cincinnati's city limits. The money will establish the Center for Social Justice at the Urban League, with work expected to launch in mid- to late July.

The grant comes from J. Phillip and Gail Holloman, and is the largest private gift to the Urban League chapter in its 72-year history. J. Phillip Holloman is the board chair and says social justice has been lacking in and around Cincinnati, and the grant will allow police monitoring to spread outside Cincinnati.

"African Americans live in, work in, drive through these municipalities on a regular basis," he says. "The center will endeavor to assess and determine if African Americans are disproportionately profiled, stopped and detained by police in these cities. Biased policing can escalate from racial profiling to the use of deadly force."

Holloman says the center aims to eliminate racially biased policing from the culture of these police departments.

Urban League President and CEO Eddie Koen says working with departments and unions is the ideal. "One of the things people talk about is the incredible work that was done around the (Cincinnati) Collaborative Agreement. The accelerant to that was a lawsuit," he says. "Legal action is very necessary in many cases to accelerate the deep social change that we need."

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