Resources

An interactive map documenting efforts to build cop city training complexes around the US, including a spreadsheet with relevant information. As of February 17, 2024, the spreadsheet provides information on any project related to the assessment, planning, approval, construction, or opening of a renovation or expansion of a Public Safety, Police Training, Academy, or Department in any state.

Police Fraternal Organizations (PFOs), often incorrectly referred to as police unions, are organized political groups of cops who advocate on behalf of the police. They include a number of national groups with chapters across the country, including the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the International Union of Police Associations(IUPA), The International Brotherhood of Police (IBP) and the National Association of Police Organizations Employees (NAPOE).

Explore this five-page introduction to PFOs — what they are, why we should care about PFOs, how they specifically harm Black women and girls of color, and systemic responses we can use to combat them.

Police Fraternal Associations (also referred to as police “unions”) represent a powerful political force that stands in the way of progress on virtually every front of social justice movements — they vociferously oppose and block efforts to meet, prevent, and respond to crises with care instead of criminalization, vehemently defend the violence of policing and punishment, viciously target anyone who challenges their power, and command deference from politicians and policymakers by claiming to be the exclusive arbiters of public safety.

This playbook is for community members, workers, activists, organizers and targets of police violence to use when fighting back against police fraternal organizations. In it, we summarize information, strategies, and tactics to challenge and diminish the power of police fraternal organizations and remove the obstacles they place on our paths to safer, more just and liberatory communities.

Most local governments spend more on policing and incarcerating local residents than on proactive investments in residents’ well-being. Access to safe and affordable housing, health care, public transportation, and other community services like libraries and parks are essential to residents’ overall quality of life. Yet many communities invest less in these vital activities than in surveilling, arresting, and jailing residents.

This dashboard examines the 2022 budgets of 20 locales across the country. In most of these places, residents pay taxes to and are governed by both a city and county government. Therefore, the dashboard analyzes both the city and county budgets to give a fuller picture of local spending on police, sheriffs, detention, housing, health, and more.

Do investors anticipate that demands for racial equity will impact companies? We explore this question in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—the largest racially motivated protest movement in U.S. history—and its effect on the U.S. policing industry using a novel dataset on publicly traded firms contracting with the police. It is unclear whether the BLM uprisings were likely to increase or decrease market valuations of firms contracting heavily with police because of the increased interest in reforming the police, fears over rising crime, and pushes to “defund the police”. We find, in contrast to the predictions of economics experts we surveyed, that in the three weeks following incidents triggering BLM uprisings, policing firms experienced a stock price increase of seven percentage points relative to the stock prices of nonpolicing firms in similar industries. In particular, firms producing surveillance technology and police accountability tools experienced higher returns following BLM activism–related events. Furthermore, policing firms’ fundamentals, such as sales, improved after the murder of George Floyd, suggesting that policing firms’ future performances bore out investors’ positive expectations following incidents triggering BLM uprisings. Our research shows how—despite BLM’s calls to reduce investment in policing and explore alternative public safety approaches—the financial market has translated high-profile violence against Black civilians and calls for systemic change into shareholder gains and additional revenues for police suppliers.

The Atlanta community is clear – they do NOT want #CopCity. Working people in Atlanta need the same things as working peoples across the country – investment in good jobs, healthcare, education and the environment. Instead, the Atlanta Police Foundation has pushed an enormous facility equipped with shooting ranges, Blackhawk helicopters and mock urban warfare training grounds. This all indicates preparation for actions against working people, not for us. Furthermore, actions taken against the brave protestors to date have included brutal pushback, threats of RICO charges and sadly even murder. The Labor Movement is all too familiar with violent repression of just fights, and it’s important to stand fervently against it’s acceptance.

The Labor movement must take a stand for working people and communities in Atlanta that have clearly said in no uncertain terms they DO NOT WANT #CopCity to be funded or built!

Poor people in the United States are a primary target for policing, especially those forced to live on the streets. But just how many people who are unhoused are caught up in the thousands of arrests made in cities each year? How many are criminalized for behaviors that stem directly from their extreme poverty? We combed through years of data from a variety of sources to answer these questions for the city of Atlanta.

Thirty years after the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, lawmakers are still spreading anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, but, instead of taking responsibility for the resulting violence, they sold this story of the need for more police, more criminalization.

And once again, instead of answering our community’s clear demands for housing, direct financial assistance, and access to healthcare, President Biden signed yet another hate crimes bill into law. Same old story, same old false promise. And it’s time we say no to this false promise and demand more.

To interrogate the impact of hate crime legislations, TLC conducted interviews with community members and consulted an advisory board of experienced organizers addressing policing, sex work, ableism, anti-Blackness, and more. The following messages and materials were created through such research.

In this report, we find that the militarized portion of this budget is by far its largest single component. And yet the same legislators demanding billions in discretionary savings have vowed to exempt that militarized spending from any cuts. Instead, they’ve targeted the much smaller portion that funds human and community needs for even deeper cuts.

This report shows just how over-militarized our federal discretionary spending already is. We argue that this militarized spending has done far more harm than good, while our consistent under-investment in human needs has made us much less safe. Finally, we make recommendations for getting our national priorities right in the future.