The Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District, Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti, implemented mandatory "unconscious bias" training for police officers following the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020. The program, run in conjunction with Penn State Scranton, was led by a Penn State professor with a history of singling out white students over their "privilege."
In November 2020, Cognetti touted "steps we have taken and are planning to address racial bias in city government, increase accountability, and build trust between the police department and the community." One such step was Penn State BLUE, a "pilot program with the Scranton Police Department" that Cognetti said would "coach officers about how bias, including unconscious bias, impacts law enforcement." Penn State celebrated the program's completion in a December 2021 press release, which included a statement from Cognetti vowing to "continue the dialogue and training." It also named the program's instructor, Penn State sociology professor Samuel Richards.
Richards "instructs the largest race and cultural relations course in the United States, with nearly 800 students attending each semester," according to Penn State, and he's known to livestream the classes on YouTube. In 2021, the same year Richards trained Scranton's police force, he drew attention for singling out white students during those classes.
In one instance, Roberts asked two white students for their thoughts on the statement, "To be less white is to be less oppressive, be less arrogant, be less certain, be less defensive, be less ignorant, be more humble, listen, believe, break with party, break with white solidarity." The first student responded positively, saying, "I think, you know, it's more or less just recognizing the advantages you have in life, whatever that may be, and not thinking yourself superior because of that," an answer Richards called "awesome." The second student said he hadn't oppressed anyone, to which Richards responded, "You're breathing. Have you left your house today?" When the student said yes, Richards replied, "Okay, so you may have oppressed somebody." Richards was also criticized at the time for a 2019 lecture in which he pointed to "an average white guy in class" and said the student "has a benefit of having white skin."
Years later, Cognetti is running against Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan in a district President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2024. She has presented herself as a centrist Democrat focused on bringing "reform, transparency, and government accountability" to "a Washington controlled by special interests and self-serving politicians who put the people last." She refers to herself as "Paige Against the Machine," a callback to her first mayoral campaign in which she ran as an independent over a disagreement with the local Democratic Party's primary system. She also touts her work "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" in government.
As mayor of Scranton, however, Cognetti embraced pricey diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In addition to the Penn State program, Cognetti required Scranton cops to complete "bias in policing" training run by a group called Fair and Impartial Policing LLC, a 2021 report from the Scranton-based Times-Tribune shows. That company's training brochures state that "implicit bias might lead the line officer to automatically perceive crime in the making when she observes two young Hispanic males driving in an all-Caucasian neighborhood" or that it "may manifest among agency command staff who decide (without crime-relevant evidence) that the forthcoming gathering of African American college students bodes trouble, whereas the forthcoming gathering of Caucasian undergraduates does not."
In 2021, meanwhile, Cognetti's administration commissioned a $75,000 "equity" plan that would place DEI "at the core of every decision" in Scranton's government, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The organization that won the contract, the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, released a plan calling for the city to "organize … racial equity teams" in each department within the city government, conduct "Implicit Bias and Microaggression training," and install a "focus on equity in stewarding public funds, equity programming, procurement, and City financial processes."
Cognetti's proposed 2023 budget also included the creation of a DEI coordinator position inside the city's Department of Economic and Community Development, an idea the city council rejected. She released a five-year housing plan in 2025 that focused on "the need for race-conscious housing policy and targeted interventions to reduce disparities and ensure equitable access to safe, affordable housing."
Cognetti also spoke about her dream of a world with unarmed police during a virtual town hall in 2020. "I would love to get to a world where—a country where we don't have, or police don't have firearms and where we don't have firearms, that citizens aren't carrying them either," she said. "I've lived in Japan for a couple years. There are no guns there and it's lovely. We don't have to worry about some of these things because there are no guns there. That would be something that would be a great reality for us to live in."
One year later, in 2021, Cognetti's Scranton city budget included a proposal for an "over 50% reduction in guns & ammunition" for law enforcement, as Cognetti touted at the time. The city council later approved amendments including one that allocated more than $23,000 for "Special Operations Ammunition." Cognetti refused to sign the amended budget but did not veto it, either, allowing it to become law after 10 days.
A Cognetti campaign spokeswoman said "violent crime has gone down and Scranton has invested millions of dollars in the city's police department" under Cognetti. She did not address the "implicit bias" trainings.
"Mayor Cognetti has expanded the police force and put new cops on the beat, added 51 new police vehicles equipped with smart technology to enhance officer safety and target criminals, and deployed hundreds of citywide cameras to make our streets safer," the spokeswoman told the Free Beacon. "In Congress, Paige will continue to stand with our brave law enforcement officers and fight for more funding for local police across Northeastern Pennsylvania."
