Resources

This text is adapted from “So You Wanna Be a Cop?”, a pamphlet published by the War Resisters League.

Would you wear a uniform that evokes fear & distrust in your neighbors?
Would you risk your mental well-being, affecting you & your loved ones?
Would you be comfortable with helping send someone to prison for years because of a petty parole violation or non-violent offence?
Would you participate in actions that split apart families?
Are there other ways you can build safety, beyond policing, in your community?
YOU DESERVE THE TRUTH
Recruiters have a seductive pitch, tapping into our real needs for stable employment & strong desire for safer communities. Maybe you’ve already heard it: “Become a police officer today! It’s an honest, secure career devoted to protecting minorities & building partnerships with community. We need people like you to improve our police force and bring justice in & outside the department.”

Building on decades of counter-military recruitment activism and resource-making, WRL presents this ground-breaking counter-police recruitment resource. Similar to military recruiter lies, police recruiters and branding use strategies to recruit young people, targeting youth of color and poor youth in the promotion of law enforcement careers.

So You Wanna Be A Cop questions recruiter lies, debunking them with the truths of policing and police careers, and encourages visions of young people pursuing careers and lives that build actual community safety, not carceral, racist and classist versions of safety.

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.

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!

This guide is intended to briefly outline your rights when it comes to interacting with law enforcement officers and share some examples of the reality that law enforcement officers often disregard peoples’ rights. This guide is designed for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, but a lot of the information will be helpful to others. This guide is not intended to replace your life experience, common sense, or ability to determine what makes you safest in any particular situation. You know best how to keep yourself safe, so trust your instincts. If you know you will have to interact with law enforcement, it is best to have trusted friends and family accompany you or be prepared to provide you support. We keep us safe.

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.

A racial disparity is defined as a persistent difference in outcomes between racial groups. This project is designed to provide data on these outcomes for American society, and to highlight areas of progress and regress in closing disparities in critical life outcomes. We currently only have data for Black and White Americans, but we hope to expand this project and include data for more races in future iterations. This dashboard allows users to track changes within the United States from 1970 to 2020 across 15 different important variables, including incarceration rates, life expectancy, and more.

This webpage is a centralized hub for resources related to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) from organizations across British Columbia, as well as key national and international research. Use the dropdown menu to search for specific criminalization and GBV resources.

A searchable database of police, sheriffs, and other public safety agencies’ contracts.