Street Performances, Washington Cannibalizing: Silencing Sober Solutions

Representatives of the Status Quo Sustain, Compound Made-In-America Crises

Left-right-multi-level-multi-colored

Gridlock

Endemic Corruption

Traders in Blame

Multipliers of Crises

F

ollow the Money

The police-community relations crisis ballooned as the health crisis was also ballooning and talks to reform turned a light on the stymies of reform.

The National Federation of Police is a major contributor to all party stripes in both houses of congress and in the White House. And as the former, FOP, is intent on blocking any and all reforms concerning the police and that establishment; so are members intent on doing the bidding of their benefactors (their buyers, bosses, and puppeteers); and together their actions stand in opposition to the public interest— what reasonable people would consider the common defense and general welfare, the good of society as a whole.

The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets data shows political action committee (PAC) and individual police contributions to public officials do not discriminate against either wing of America’s tyrannical political party. “Like PAC money,” a June 2020 Open Secrets article reported, “contributions from individual police officers have gone to politicians on both sides of the aisle, representing an array of politics.”

2020 Top recipients

(Year dates entered for the entrenched)

• Donald John Trump Republican New York (incumbent 2016-2020; candidate for US presidency 2020

• Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Democrat Delaware (US Senate 1972- 2009; US vice president 2009-2017; candidate for US presidency 2020)

• Kamala Harris Democrat California (US Senate, former 2020 presidential candidate)

• Bernard Sanders Vermont (US House 1991-2007; US Senate 2006-present, former 2020 presidential candidate)

US House of Representatives top takers of Police Union and Law Enforcement PAC money (Year dates entered for the entrenched: members holding office for more than two terms, or more than eight years)

• William J. Pascrell Jr. Democrat New Jersey (1997-present)

• Steny Hamilton Hoyer Democrat Maryland (1981-present)

• Lee M. Zeldin Republican New York

• Debbie Wasserman Schultz Democrat Florida (2005-present)

• Kathy Castor Democrat Florida (2007-present)

• Julia Brownley Democrat California

• Paul Cook Republican California

• Peter T. King Republican New York (1993 - just lost seat)

• Alfred Lawson Jr. Democrat Florida

• Garret Graves Republican Louisiana

US Senate top takers of Police Union and Law Enforcement PAC money (Year dates entered for the entrenched: members holding office for more than two terms, or more than twelve years)

• Patrick Joseph Leahy Democrat Vermont (1974 – present)

• Amy Klobuchar Democrat Minnesota (2006-present)

• Bill Cassidy Republican Louisiana (US House 2009-2015; US Senate 2014 –present)

• Robert Menendez Democrat New Jersey (US House 1993-2006 resigned to enter US Senate 2006 – present)

• Sherrod Brown Democrat Ohio (US House 1993-2007; US Senate 2006-present)

• John Neely Kennedy Republican Louisiana

• John Cornyn Republican Texas (2002 –present)

• Lindsey O. Graham Republican South Carolina (US House 1995-2003; US Senate 2002-present)

• Tammy Baldwin Democrat Wisconsin (1999-present)

Sheldon Whitehouse Democrat Rhode Island (2006-present)

E

very year in the United States, police reportedly kill “more than 1,000 people. At least one organization is proposing rational solutions. 

“It will take deliberate action by policymakers at every level of government to end police violence,” write the organizers of Campaign Zero. “We are calling on local, state, and federal lawmakers to take immediate action to adopt data-driven policy solutions to end this violence and hold police accountable.”

Some of the solutions presented at their website are these

• End Policing of Minor ‘Broken Windows’ Offenses: consuming alcohol on streets, possessing marijuana, engaging in disorderly conduct, trespassing, loitering, disturbing the peace (including loud music), spitting, jaywalking, bicycling on the sidewalk “do not threaten public safety.”

• End Profiling and ‘Stop-and-Frisk’

• Establish enforceable protections against profiling to prevent police from intervening in civilian lives for no reason other than the ‘suspicion’ of their blackness or other aspects of their identity. This should include: immigration status, age, housing status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, HIV status, race, religion and national origin as protected groups; the right for people to seek court orders to stop police departments from profiling; bans on both intentional profiling and practices that have a disparate impact on protected groups; ban stops for ‘furtive’ movements such as a reaching for waistband or acting nervous; ban stops for being in a high-crime area; ban stops for matching a generalized description of a suspect (i.e., black male ages 15-25); require officers to establish objective justification for making a stop and to report every stop including location, race, gender, whether force was used and whether a firearm was found;    end the use of predictive policing technology, which uses systematically biased data to enhance police profiling of black people and communities; prohibit police departments from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, report, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes; prohibit police departments from transferring an individual to federal immigration authorities for purposes of immigration enforcement; prohibit officers from being placed under the supervision of federal agencies or deputized as special federal officers or special federal deputies.

• Establish Alternative Approaches to Mental Health Crises

Mental health crises should not be excuses for heavy-handed police interventions and are best handled by mental health professionals. Establish and fund Mental Health Response Teams to respond to crisis situations. 

These approaches have been proven to reduce police use of force in these situations by nearly 40 percent and should include: establishing a team of mental health professionals, social workers and/or crisis counselors to send as first responders to calls involving mental health crises, such as the CAHOOTS model implemented in Eugene, Oregon; involvement of this multidisciplinary team in planning, implementation and response to crises; at least 40 hours of crisis intervention training for police officers

What is the model CAHOOTS?

Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS)

Provider of mobile crisis intervention 24/7 in the Eugene-Springfield [Oregon] Metro area … dispatched through the Eugene police-fire-ambulance communications center, and within the Springfield urban growth boundary, dispatched through the Springfield non-emergency number.

Each team consists of a medic (either a nurse or an EMT) and a crisis worker (who has at least several years experience in the mental health field)

Provider of immediate stabilization in case of urgent medical need or psychological crisis, assessment, information, referral, advocacy and (in some cases) transportation to the next step in treatment

Provider of many services such as (but not only) crisis counseling, suicide prevention, assessment and intervention, conflict resolution and mediation, grief and loss.

C

ampaign Zero Policy Solutions continued

Community oversight

Establish an all-civilian oversight structure with discipline power that includes a Police Commission and Civilian Complaints Office

The Police Commission

To determine policy for the police department based on community input and expertise; share policy and policy changes in publicly accessible formats; discipline and dismiss police officers; hold public disciplinary hearings; select the candidates for Police Chief, to be hired by the Mayor; evaluate and fire the Police Chief, if needed; receive full-time, competitive salaries for all members; receive regular training on policing and civil rights; prohibit membership of current, former or family of police officers; select its members from candidates offered by community organizations

The Civilian Complaints Office

To receive, investigate and resolve all civilian complaints against police in 120 days; establish multiple in-person and online ways to submit, view and discuss complaints; be immediately notified and required to send an investigator to the scene of a police shooting or in-custody death; be allowed to interrogate officers less than 48 hours after an incident where deadly force is used; access crime scenes, subpoena witnesses and files with penalties for non-compliance;   make disciplinary and policy recommendations to the Police Chief; compel the Police Chief to explain why he/she has not followed a recommendation; have the Police Commission decide cases where the Police Chief does not follow recommendations; issue public quarterly reports analyzing complaints, demographics of complainants, status and findings of investigations and actions taken as a result; be housed in a separate location from the police department; be funded at an amount no less than 5 percent of the total police department budget; have at least 1 investigator for every 70 police officers or 4 investigators at all times, whichever is greater;   have its director selected from candidates offered by community organizations; not have current, former or family of police officers on staff, including the director https://www.joincampaignzero.org/oversight

Remove Barriers to Reporting Police Misconduct

For all stops by a police officer, require officers to give civilians their name, badge number, reason for the stop and a card with instructions for filing a complaint to the civilian oversight structure. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/oversight

L

imit use of force

Establish standards and reporting of police use of deadly force:

• A. Authorize deadly force only when there is an imminent threat to an officer’s life or the life of another person and such force is strictly unavoidable to protect life as required under International Law. Deadly force should only be authorized after all other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted. (Ex: International Deadly Force Standard; Tennessee Deadly Force Law)

• B. Require that an officer's tactical conduct and decisions leading up to using deadly force be considered in judgments of whether such force was necessary. (Ex: LAPD Use of Force Policy)

• C. Require officers give a verbal warning, when possible, before using deadly force and give people a reasonable amount of time to comply with the warning (Ex: Las Vegas Metro PD Policy)

• D.  Require reporting of police killings and serious injuries of civilians (Ex: The PRIDE Act; Colorado law; CA DOJ OpenJustice database);

• E. Require the names of both the officer(s) involved and victim(s) to be released within 72 hours of a deadly force incident (Ex: Philadelphia PD Policy);

Revise and strengthen local police department use of force policies

Revised police use of force policies should protect human life and rights. Policies should include guidance on reporting, investigation, discipline, and accountability and increase transparency by making the policies available online.

This use of force policy should require officers to: 

• restrict officers from using deadly force unless all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted (Ex: Philadelphia PD Policy); 

• use minimum amount of force to apprehend a subject, with specific guidelines for the types of force and tools authorized for a given level of resistance (Ex: Seattle PD Policy); 

• utilize de-escalation tactics (verbalization; creating distance, time and space; tactical repositioning, etc.) whenever possible instead of using force (Ex: Seattle PD Policy); 

• carry a less-lethal weapon (Ex: Seattle PD Policy); 

• ban using force on a person for talking back or as punishment for running away (Ex: Cleveland PD Policy); 

• ban chokeholds, strangleholds (i.e. carotid restraints), hog-tying and transporting people face down in a vehicle (Ex: NYPD Policy); 

• intervene to stop other officers who are using excessive force and report them to a supervisor (Ex: Las Vegas Metro PD Policy) https://www.joincampaignzero.org/force

End traffic-related police killings and dangerous high-speed police chases

Prohibit police officers from: shooting at moving vehicles (Ex: Denver PD Policy); moving in front of moving vehicles (Ex: Denver PD Policy); high-speed chases of people who have not and are not about to commit a violent felony (Ex: Milwaukee PD Policy);

M

onitor how police use force and proactively hold officers accountable for excessive force:

• A. Report all uses of force to a database with information on related injuries and demographics of the victims. (Ex: Seattle PD Policy; Indianapolis Metropolitan PD reporting website); 

• B. Establish an early intervention system to correct officers who use excessive force (these systems have been shown to reduce the average number of complaints against officers in a police department by more than 50 percent. This system should: report officers who receive two or more complaints in the past month; report officers who have two or more use of force incidents or complaints in the past quarter; require officers to attend re-training and be monitored by an immediate supervisor after their first quarterly report and terminate an officer following multiple reports;

• C. Require police departments to notify the state when an officer is found to have willfully violated department policy or the law, committed official misconduct, or resigned while under investigation for these offenses. Maintain this information in a database accessible to the public (Ex: Illinois Law) and prohibit these officers from serving as police officers, teachers or other governmental employees (Ex: Connecticut Law). https://www.joincampaignzero.org/force

Independent investigations and prosecutions

Use federal funds to encourage independent investigations and prosecutions

Pass legislation such as the Police Training and Independent Review Act of 2015 or use of existing federal funds to encourage external, independent investigations and prosecution of police killings (see Action Items 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 of the President’s Task Force Report).

Establish a permanent Special Prosecutor's Office at the State level for cases of police violence

The Special Prosecutor’s Office should be: required and authorized to prosecute all cases of where police kill or seriously injure a civilian, in-custody deaths and cases where a civilian alleges criminal misconduct against a police officer; equipped with an office and resources to conduct thorough investigations; required to have its Chief Prosecutor chosen from a list of candidates offered by community organizations.

Require independent investigations of all cases where police kill or seriously injure civilians

The independent investigators should be: required and authorized to prosecute all cases of where police kill or seriously injure a civilian, in-custody deaths and cases where a civilian alleges criminal misconduct against a police officer; required to investigate all cases where police kill chosen at random from a list of the largest ten agencies in the state; required to report their findings to the public. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/investigations

C

ommunity Representation

Increase the number of police officers who reflect the communities they serve

•  Require police departments to develop and publicly report a strategy and timeline for achieving a representative proportion of police officers who are women and people of color through outreach, recruitment and changes to departmental practices (Ex: Connecticut Law)

• Use community feedback to inform police department policies and practices

• Require a regular survey (Ex: Milwaukee survey) to be fielded to the community to gauge their experiences and perceptions of the police and use this information to inform: police department policies and practices; police officer evaluations; police officer pay incentives https://www.joincampaignzero.org/representation

Police should reflect and be responsive to the cultural, racial and gender diversity of the communities they are supposed to serve. Moreover, research shows police departments with more black officers are less likely to kill black people.

B

ody Cams/ Film The Police

Require the use of body cameras—in addition to dashboard cameras— and establish policies governing their use to: 

• record all interactions with subjects who have not requested to be kept anonymous; 
• notify subjects that they have the option to remain anonymous and stop recording/storing footage if they choose this option; 
• allow civilians to review footage of themselves or their relatives and request this be released to the public and stored for at least two years; 
• require body and dash cam footage to be stored externally and ensure district attorneys and civilian oversight structures have access to the footage; 
• require police departments, whenever they want to deny a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for body or dash cam footage, to prove in court that the footage constitutes a legitimate FOIA exemption (Ex: Illinois House Bill 4355); 
• permanently delete footage after 6 months if this footage hasn’t been specifically requested to be stored; 
• include a disciplinary matrix clearly defining consequences for officers who fail to adhere to the agency's body camera policy; 
• consider whether cameras or mandated footage are tampered with or unavailable as a negative evidentiary factor in administrative and criminal proceedings; 
• prevent officers from reviewing footage of an incident before completing initial reports, statements or interviews about an incident; 
• prohibit footage from being used in tandem with facial recognition software, as fillers in photo arrays, or to create a database or pool of mug shots. (Ex: Baltimore PD Body Cam Policy); update privacy laws to protect civilians from having video or audio recordings released publicly that do not contain potential evidence in a use-of-force incident, discharge of a weapon or death. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/film-the-police

While they are not a cure-all, body cameras and cell phone video have illuminated cases of police violence and have shown to be important tools for holding officers accountable.

Nearly every case where a police officer was charged with a crime for killing a civilian in 2015 relied on video evidence showing the officer’s actions.

Right to Record Police

Ban police officers from taking cell phones or other recording devices without a person’s consent or warrant and give people the right to sue police departments if they take or destroy these devices. (Ex: Colorado Law) https://www.joincampaignzero.org/film-the-police

T

raining

Invest in Rigorous and Sustained Training

Require officers to undergo training—including scenario-based training—on the following topics on at least a quarterly basis and involve the community—including youth of color—in their design and implementation:

• Implicit bias; Procedural justice; Relationship-based policing; 
• Community interaction; Crisis intervention, mediation, conflict resolution, and rumor control; 
• Appropriate engagement with youth; 
• Appropriate engagement with LGBTQ, transgender and gender nonconforming individuals;
• Appropriate engagement with individuals who are English language learners; 
• Appropriate engagement with individuals from different religious affiliations;
• Appropriate engagement with individuals who are differently able; 
• De-escalation and minimizing the use of force; intentionally consider ‘unconscious’ or ‘implicit’ racial bias.

Require current and prospective police officers to undergo mandatory implicit racial bias testing, including testing for bias in shoot/don't shoot decision-making, and develop a clear policy for considering an officer's level of racial bias in: law enforcement certification; the hiring process;   performance evaluations; decisions about whether an officer should be deployed to communities of color. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/train

 

The current training regime for police officers fails to effectively teach them how to interact with our communities in a way that protects and preserves life. For example, police recruits spend 58 hours learning how to shoot firearms and only 8 hours learning how to de-escalate situations. An intensive training regime is needed to help police officers learn the behaviors and skills to interact appropriately with communities.

E

nd for-profit policing

• End police department quotas for tickets and arrests
• Ban police departments from using ticket or arrest quotas to evaluate the performance of police officers
• Limit fines and fees for low-income people

Pass policies requiring local governments to: 

• ban issuing fines or arrest warrants for civilians who fail to appear in court for a traffic citation (Ex: Ferguson Policy); 

• ban generating more than 10% of total municipal revenue from fines and fees (Ex: Missouri law); allow judges discretion to waive fines and fees for low-income people or initiate payment plans (Ex: Pennsylvania law); 

• prohibit courts from ordering individuals on parole or probation to pay supervision fees and other correctional fees.

Prevent police from taking the money or property of innocent people. Prohibit police from:

• seizing property of civilians (i.e. civil forfeiture) unless they are convicted of a crime and the state establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture; 
• keeping any property that has legally been forfeited (instead, this property should go to a general fund); 
• participating in the federal Equitable Sharing program that allows police to engage in civil asset forfeiture

Require police departments to bear the cost of misconduct: Require the cost of misconduct settlements to be paid out of the police department budget instead of the City’s general fund. 

Restrict police departments from receiving more money from the general fund when they go over-budget on lawsuit payments. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/end-policing-for-profit

Police should be working to keep people safe, not contributing to a system that profits from stopping, searching, ticketing, arresting and incarcerating people.

D

emilitarization

• End the Federal Government’s 1033 Program Providing Military Weaponry to Local Police Departments

• End the supply of federal military weaponry to local police departments under the 1033 program. (Ex: Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act)

• Establish Local Restrictions to Prevent Police Departments from Purchasing or Using Military Weaponry

Restrict police departments from: 

• using federal grant money to purchase military equipment (Ex: Montana law); 

• deploying armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft, drones, Stingray surveillance equipment, camouflage uniforms, and grenade launchers; using SWAT teams unless there is an emergency situation or imminent threat to life and high-ranking officers have given approval (Ex: Cincinnati PD Policy);

• conducting no-knock raids (Ex: Oregon law bans all no-knock raids); 

• accessing federal grant money or purchasing military equipment if the department has been recently found to demonstrate a ‘pattern or practice’ of discriminatory policing; 
• in addition to these restrictions, wherever possible agencies should seek to return to the federal government the military equipment that has already been received (Ex: San Jose). https://www.joincampaignzero.org/demilitarization

The events in Ferguson have introduced the nation to the ways that local police departments can misuse military weaponry to intimidate and repress communities. In 2014, militarized SWAT teams killed at least 38 people and studies show that more militarized police departments are significantly more likely to kill civilians.

F

air police contracts

 Remove barriers to effective misconduct investigations and civilian oversight

Remove contract provisions, local policies, and provisions in state Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights laws that: 

• allow officers to wait 48 hours or more before being interrogated after an incident; prevent investigators from pursuing other cases of misconduct revealed during an investigation; 

• prevent an officer’s name or picture from being released to the public; 

• prohibit civilians from having the power to discipline, subpoena or interrogate police officers; 

• state that the Police Chief has the sole authority to discipline police officers; 

• enable officers to appeal a disciplinary decision to a hearing board of other police officers; 

• enable officers to use the contract grievance process to have an outside arbitrator reverse disciplinary decisions and reinstate officers who have committed misconduct; 

• prevent an officer from being investigated for an incident that happened 100 or more days prior; allow an officer to choose not to take a lie detector test without being punished, require the civilian who is accusing that officer of misconduct to pass a lie detector first, or prevent the officer's test results from being considered as evidence of misconduct.

Keep officers’ disciplinary history accessible to police departments and the public

Remove contract provisions, local and state policies, and provisions in state Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights laws that allow police officers to: 

• expunge or destroy records of past misconduct (both sustained and unsustained) from their disciplinary file; 

• prevent their disciplinary records from being released to the public via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request

Ensure financial accountability for officers and police departments that kill or seriously injure civilians

Remove contract provisions, local policies, and provisions in state Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights laws that: 

• require officers to be given paid administrative leave or paid desk-duty during an investigation following a police shooting or other use of deadly force; 

• prevent officers from receiving unpaid suspensions as discipline for misconduct or allow officers to use vacation or discretionary time to pay themselves while on suspension; 

• allow officers to receive paid leave or paid desk-duty after being charged with a felony offense. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/contracts

Police unions have used their influence to establish unfair protections for police officers in their contracts with local, state and federal government and in statewide Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights. These provisions create one set of rules for police and another for civilians, and make it difficult for Police Chiefs or civilian oversight structures to punish police officers who are unfit to serve.

 Check the Police

P

olice Union Contract Project

Police Union Contracts Block Accountability by 

• disqualifying misconduct complaints that are submitted too many days after an incident occurs or if an investigation takes too long to complete; 

• preventing police officers from being interrogated immediately after being involved in an incident or otherwise restricting how, when, or where they can be interrogated; giving officers access to information that civilians do not get prior to being interrogated; 
• requiring cities to pay costs related to police misconduct including by giving officers paid leave while under investigation, paying legal fees, and/or the cost of settlements; 
• preventing information on past misconduct investigations from being recorded or retained in an officer's personnel file; 
• limiting disciplinary consequences for officers or limiting the capacity of civilian oversight structures and/or the media to hold police accountable https://www.checkthepolice.org/#project

The “Mapping Police Violence” website reports “99 percent of killings by police from 2013-2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.” https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

The site’s maps show known police killings

• 2013: 1,106 killings
• 2014: 1,050 killings
• 2015: 1,103 killings
• 2016: 1,071 killings
• 2017: 1,093 killings
• 2018: 1,142 killings
• 2019: 1,098 killings

Data does not include “killings by vigilantes or security guards who are not off-duty police officers”; .95 percent of the killings in their database “occurred while a police officer was acting in a law enforcement capacity.” 

P

erhaps when the dust settles, the American people, as a people, all for one and one for all, will begin to shovel out the entrenched, the corrupt and compromised, on Washington’s Capitol Hill, Pennsylvania Avenue, and allied revolving door influencers on K-Street, DuPont Circle, and the coast to coast allies on Wall Street, in deep-pocketed police union halls, and on Ivy League-think-tank Alley. 

Perhaps the American people will together as a people and begin removing the deliberately, arrogantly ignorant holders of public office and those whose minds have been long set on destroying public service and dangerously dividing the American people; their human and constitutional rights, and their will and duty as the body politic.

The quality and depth of change that must come will not come raging in streets or preaching from pulpits; but rather, it will come quietly among neighbors acting fearlessly neighborly.

Sources

OpenSecrets “Amid calls for police reform, new dataset shows where police money has flowed in Congress” Grace Haley and Ian Karbal, June 5, 2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/06/police-reform-new-dataset-shows-where-police-money-has-flowed-in-congress/

https://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/

Mapping Police Violence

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/aboutthedata

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Current Affairs News articles

Guardian “Movement to defund police gains ‘unprecedented’ support across US.” Sam Levin in Los Angeles June 4, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/04/defund-the-police-us-george-floyd-budgets

Guardian “What does ‘defund the police’ mean? The rallying cry sweeping the US – explained” Sam Levin in Los Angeles June 6, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/defunding-the-police-us-what-does-it-mean

Police in the United States of America “kill more people in days than many countries do in years.” And yet “America’s powerful police unions have long resisted even minor reforms and accountability measures, and are predictably arguing, without evidence, that budget cuts at any scale will make cities less safe.

Defunding advocates, however, have pointed out that the highly militarized response to peaceful demonstrations and the aggressive and at times violent ways officers are handling protesters has only provided further evidence that police cause harm (when there is no public safety threat in the first place).

Community groups advocating defunding of police departments “have put forward differing strategies: (a) opposing police budget increases, (b) advocating mass reductions, or (c) fighting for full defunding as a step toward abolishing police forces.

Some initiatives are tied to the fight to close prisons. All are pushing for a reinvestment of those dollars in services.

“In most cities, spending on police is significantly greater than spending on services and other departments. The COVID-19 economic crisis has led cities and states to make drastic budget cuts to education, youth programs, arts and culture, parks, libraries, housing services and more. But police budgets have grown or gone largely untouched.”

Does defunding police mean increasing violence and crime?

Abolition groups argue that … the vast majority of police work has nothing to do with responding to or preventing violence, and that police have a terrible track record of solving murders or handling rape and domestic violence. In 2014 and 2015, New York officers staged a “slowdown” to protest the mayor, arguing that if they did less police work, the city would be less safe. But the opposite turned out to be true.

When the officers took a break from “broken windows policing”, meaning targeting low-level offenses, there was a drop in crime. Researchers posited that aggressive policing on the streets for petty matters can ultimately cause social disruption and lead to more crime.

Policing that punishes poverty, such as hefty traffic tickets and debts, can also create conditions where crime is more likely.

When New York ended “stop and frisk”, crime did not rise.

Campaign ZERO

Developed with contributions from activists, protesters and researchers across the United States

Its data-informed platform presents comprehensive solutions to end police violence in America. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/about

Mapping Police Violence

 A research collaborative collecting comprehensive data on police killings nationwide to quantify the impact of police violence in communities

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/planning-team

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