Ep 61: Interview with Bob Scales: Advice from the frontlines of RIPPA. Consent Decrees and defending police with data.

Marcus, Adam Sharki, and Brent Stratton sit down with the legendary Bob Scales. Bob Scales is a former King County Deputy Prosecutor and Special Assistant, United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. He worked for 14 years (and three mayors) as a Public Safety Policy Advisor for the city of Seattle. Bob represented the Seattle Police Department during the 2011 DOJ pattern-or-practice investigation and served as the Compliance Coordinator under the federal consent decree. He now serves as the CEO of Police Strategies, where he and his team help law enforcement agencies throughout the country to form strategies that fight bad data and combat those who use it to fit their own narrative. Bob shares his experience with federal and state DOJ consent decrees and the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory (RIPA) Board. This podcast episode provides an important perspective on what you can do (at any rank) to recognize this battlespace, avoid pitfalls and collect better data to avoid a state or federal consent decree.