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.”
read moreSeeking convictions for violence, while understandable, legitimizes a system that disproportionately harms communities of color.
read moreNo-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.
read moreFor many marginalized communities in America, being patriotic means ignoring a history of violence and oppression that continues to this day.
read moreVigilantes and law enforcement groups have long worked together to create and protect the racial order in the United States.
read moreConversations 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.
read moreSupport organizations addressing community conflict, and minimizing state-sanctioned violence in the process.
read moreCitizen 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.
read moreIf you’ve participated or watched protests unfold in cities across the country this past year, you may have noticed that law enforcement looked more like members of our military than neighborhood police. And that’s intentional, as, over the past decades, the U.S. has made it easier for law enforcement to access surplus military equipment for everyday use.
read moreLaw and Order. CSI. Hawaii-Five-Oh. American Sniper. TV shows and movies about law enforcement and the police permeate the screens of Americans across the country. Media portrayals about police officers, detectives, judges, crime fighters, and more firmly implemented into the cultural lexicon. Just because they are on TV does not mean that these shows exclusively exist for entertainment. Many shows actively depict criminal justice without showcasing the many ways it harms the lives of communities of color. These shows often work to bolster law enforcement in the eyes of white supremacy while simultaneously reducing compassion for the disproportionately Black victims of its system.
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