YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. Photo credit: Thomas Hawk on Flickr, under Creative Commons license

In the wake of the recent death of George Floyd, a Minnesota-based man, from what was apparently a case of police brutality and an incident that has now led to massive protests across the US, mega video site YouTube has pledged to donate $1 million to the Center for Policing Equity, a non-profit research firm that basically works together with law enforcement agencies across the US to help improve local policing efforts. YouTube made its $1 million donation known in a Sunday tweet but didn’t initially make mention of which organization the donation was headed to. Later on, in a brief YouTube post, the company revealed the donor receptor as the Center for Policing Equity.

We stand in solidarity against racism and violence. When members of our community hurt, we all hurt. We’re pledging $1M in support of efforts to address social injustice.

— YouTube (@YouTube) May 30, 2020

The Center for Policing Equity is a research center that was founded at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) but is now based at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The organization was formally instituted in 2008, with roots originating from collaborative work with some US police departments. The Center for Policing Equity, CPE for short, primarily helps conduct research and gather data that helps law enforcement organizations to better understand and improve their policing activities. The CPE was co-founded by renowned psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff, who serves as its CEO.

YouTube pledging a sizeable sum of money towards police reform seems to take a step further the recent wave of activism that has emerged in the wake of the recent George Floyd death. A $1 million donation for the Center for Policing Equity will likely go a long way towards setting up some police reform initiatives.

YouTube, whose video site is used by hundreds of millions of people, has been long caught up in controversies for seemingly allowing, in some cases, racist and extremist content to stay on its platform. The company has apparently long sought to purge such content from its platform but it seems like a difficult job.