Tracie L. Keesee, PhD

Cofounder and Director of Research Partnerships Tracie L. Keesee, PhD, is the Co-Founder of the Center for Policing Equity. She is also Project Director of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, a Department of Justice project led by the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College. The initiative is designed to improve relationships and increase trust between minority communities and the criminal justice system, as well advance the public and scholarly understandings of the issues contributing to those relationships.

Dr. Keesee is a 25 year police veteran. She retired as a captain of the Denver Police Department, where her final assignment was as deputy director of Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC), the State of Colorado’s fusion center.

Dr. Keesee is also the co-founder and director of research partnerships for the Center for Policing Equity, which promotes police transparency and accountability by facilitating innovative research collaborations between law enforcement agencies and empirical social scientists, and seeks to improve issues of equity–particularly racial and gender equity–in policing both within law enforcement agencies and between agencies and the communities they serve.

Dr. Keesee holds a BA in Political Science from Metropolitan State College, academic certifications in Public Policy and Public Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver, an MA in Criminal Justice from the University of Colorado at Denver, and a PhD from the University of Denver in Intercultural Communications. She is a graduate of the 203rd class of the FBI National Academy. Dr. Keesee has published several articles across a variety of collected anthologies and peer-reviewed scientific journals.