What is National Faith and Blue Weekend? A Time for Unity, Healing, and Reconciliation for Communities and Law Enforcement Professionals

In March of 2020, I became very concerned about the tone of our country in response to police-community relations. After witnessing tension, division, and violent responses to injustice, I felt that we were going in a dangerous direction.

I approached the United States Department of Justice, who had been working with us for some time, with the idea of creating a movement not focused on the things that divide us but focused on the things that unite us. There is very little we can achieve when we have some people in one corner yelling "our lives matter" and a different group of people in another corner yelling "our lives matter". We have never progressed as a nation when we separate or segregate ourselves from one another.

Faith and Blue was born out of the idea of bringing together all law enforcement across this country to create a movement of unity and collaboration, to change the narrative, and to shift the discussion.

In April of 2020, the COPS office and our organization convened an unprecedented meeting of all the national law enforcement organizations: the IACP, National Sheriffs, Major County Sheriffs, Major City Chiefs, the police unions, FBI, BPO, the affinity groups and law enforcement corps, Hispanic officers, NOBLE, and more.

Every single national law enforcement organization came together and together we created this concept of a national weekend, focused on collaboration and unity, to change the narrative, and to shift the discussion away from the divisions and towards unity, healing, and reconciliation.

No one knew that just two weeks later, George Floyd would be killed in Minneapolis and make the need for the Faith and Blue movement that much greater. Just two years later, Faith and Blue become the largest and most consolidated police community outreach project in American history.

Faith and Blue provides every resource, material, and planning guide necessary at no cost to faith-based and law enforcement leaders. We took the best aspects of successful national community policing projects, added more resources, and put them in the hands of the powerful faith community and our law enforcement professionals. Faith and Blue is now the largest and most consolidated police community outreach project in American history, and we want every agency in the United States to be a part of it for our third year.

Additionally, there is nothing religious or sectarian about National Faith and Blue Weekend, however, there are 350,000 faith-based organizations in this country that are committed to bringing a positive light and influence to the communities they serve. 65 million Americans attend some form of a faith-based service every week. Faith and Blue's goal is to tap into the power, resources, infrastructure, and influence of those faith-based organizations to achieve two goals:

1. Increase familiarity, trust, and understanding between the law enforcement professionals and the residents that live in their neighborhoods.
2. Engage the community in driving down crime.

If there's anything that we need most in America today, it is goodwill ambassadors to extend a hand to law enforcement and to be ambassadors for communities and law enforcement. And these faith-based organizations are an ideal resource for that kind of collaboration.

I hope that you and your local community will get involved in this national initiative to build bridges and break down biases between communities and law enforcement professionals. Join your local community at National Faith and Blue Weekend on October 7-10, 2022. Visit faithandblue.org to register.