Sharing graphic videos of police brutality may raise awareness, but also cause harm and obfuscate the real effort needed to create change.
Discussions on the hazards of policing misrepresent reality yet are used to protect the police. A closer look into policing and the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. challenges the claim that police are "under attack."
No-Knock warrants allow police to legally break into people's homes unannounced, often resulting in fatal outcomes like the deaths of Amir Locke and Breonna Taylor.
Vigilantes and law enforcement groups have long worked together to create and protect the racial order in the United States.
Support organizations addressing community conflict, and minimizing state-sanctioned violence in the process.
Due to ableist and racist standards, the mere existence of Black disabled people increases their incidence of violent treatment and death.
Seeking convictions for violence, while understandable, legitimizes a system that disproportionately harms communities of color.
For many marginalized communities in America, being patriotic means ignoring a history of violence and oppression that continues to this day.
Conversations around police reforms sometimes highlight specific illegitimate acts by police officers. But law enforcement ignoring the law en masse raises deeper questions about the legitimacy of an institution with a long history of racism and brutality.
Citizen is a privately-owned “public safety” app that reports neighborhood crime to residents. It has 5 million active users, more App Store downloads than Twitter (Forbes), and is backed by venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, which is also investing in heavyweights like Cisco, Instagram, and YouTube (Sequoia). It’s a rebrand of an app called Vigilante, which actually encouraged users to go after suspected criminals (Tech Crunch). After the Pacific Palisades fire last month, Citizen sent the full name and photo of a suspected arsonist to 860,000 users. Citizen put a $30,000 bounty on this man, who was unhoused (Oaklandside), and, as in its days as Vigilante, encouraged its users to “get out there and bring this guy to justice” (Vox). As it turns out, he was innocent.
