Resources

Mapping Police Violence collected data on over 1,100 killings by police in 2021. We compiled this information from media reports, obituaries, public records, and databases like Fatal Encounters and the WashingtonPost. Despite the federal government’s efforts to create a national database on this issue, their Use of Force Data Collection program is expected to shut down this year because fewer than 60% of the nation’s law enforcement reported data to the program. As such, this report represents the most comprehensive public accounting of deadly police violence in 2021. Our analysis suggests the majority of killings by police in 2021 could have been prevented and that specific policies and practices might prevent police killings in the future.

Systemic racism in police contact is an important driver of health inequities among the U.S. urban population. Hyper-policing and police violence in marginalized communities have risen to the top of the national policy agenda, particularly since protests in 2020. How did pandemic conditions impact policing? This report assesses neighborhood racial disparities in arrests after COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Boston, Charleston, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco census tracts (January 2019-August 2020).

In the week following stay orders, overall arrest rates were 66% (95% CI: 51-77%) lower on average. Although arrest rates steadily increased thereafter, most tracts did not reach pre-pandemic arrest levels. However, despite declines in nearly all census tracts, the magnitude of racial inequities in arrests remained unchanged. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, arrest rates declined significantly in areas with higher Black populations, but absolute rates in Black neighborhoods remain higher than pre-pandemic arrest rates in White neighborhoods. These findings support urban policy reforms that reconsider police capacity and presence, particularly as a mechanism for enforcing public health ordinances and reducing racial disparities.

Solutions to Violence profiles 18 groups forging new paths to safety and healing that do not rely on the police or incarceration. The report uplifts restorative justice practitioners, community advocates, and other local leaders who are doing the day-to-day work needed to build stronger and healthier communities, help people heal, and hold those who cause harm responsible for their actions.

Los Angeles, America’s second largest city, has a horrible secret. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – the fourth largest police department in the country – harbors dozens of criminal gangs within its ranks. These gangs have been involved in assaults, the creation of false evidence, and even murder. Now, with the help of the brave journalist Cerise Castle, the story can be told.

This article explains how the inequities embedded within the legal system serve to undermine social movements, magnify harms, and exploit the work of Black, Indigenous, and other activists of color in the process. The authors contribute to the growing collection of scholarship that questions the illusion of impartiality of our legal systems, theory, or praxis, and builds on activists’ work toward a society with equitable distribution of resources and equal access to wellness and joy.

As the nation grapples with defining the proper roles and limits of police generally, and particularly in Black, Brown, and other communities that have borne disproportionate harms from police (as well as from many other institutions), we propose an approach that we believe would be both realistic and effective: adopting the goals, metrics, and lenses of public health. By replacing current performance metrics with public health metrics and flawed conceptions with ones that are based upon evidence, and by demanding agility and accountability in changing practices and policies when they are shown to cause harm, we can improve the health, safety, and well-being of communities across the United States. This article sketches out the way forward and provides some illustrative examples.

Sitting at the intersection of criminalization and capitalism, the use of emerging surveillance technology has become increasingly popular among police departments in the United States over the last few decades. While public knowledge is still catching up to the full extent of the tools that police use, we are quickly understanding more about this technology each day. Adopted for use as police “reforms,” sophisticated electronics and tech capabilities do not address the unchecked power and ballooning budgets of local police departments. Instead, they open the door for law enforcement to monitor communities while private companies profit from sales and contracts. As the movement to defund the police becomes impossible to ignore, replacing police officers with police cameras is called progress.

Living in a “surveillance state,” however, is not a foregone conclusion. Organizers across the country are pushing back against intrusive and problematic surveillance technologies by providing program models and model legislation to disrupt 21st Century Policing and ensure awareness and meaningful interventions. This report presents an overview of ongoing trends in police surveillance and the funding streams that have made and continue to make these trends possible. It also highlights ongoing advocacy efforts and provides recommendations for pushing back against the use of such technology by law enforcement.

A fact sheet about the recently enacted American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which provides $1.9 trillion in economic relief through direct payments, expanded child tax credits and unemployment benefits, small business loans, and aid to local and state governments. This fact sheet goes over details of the ARPA payments, gives recommendations for how this money should be used to support communities, and gives an example table of cities and amount of aid they are estimated to receive.

Internal NYPD documents shed new light on the Strategic Response Group, or SRG, the heavily militarized police unit behind the crackdown on George Floyd protesters. This detailed report explores the background and function of the SRG, shares the SRG guidebook, explains its role in the 2020 protests, and ends with a look at accountability efforts.