Resources

A joint letter to Mayor de Blasio from more than 50 advocacy organizations urging him to impose an immediate moratorium on police enforcement of low-level and quality of life offenses; unnecessary summonses and arrests, including fare evasion arrests and drug arrests for marijuana.

This white paper notes the novel law enforcement challenges created by COVID-19 and describes the different approach police must take. Traditional law enforcement practices such as stops, searches, and arrests currently create a substantial risk of infection for police, suspects and community members alike. This paper concludes that until stay-at-home and social distancing orders have been lifted, law enforcement agencies should suspend enforcement measures requiring close proximity or physical contact between law enforcement personnel and members of the public, except in cases where the failure to stop, search, or arrest a suspect creates an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to police officers or others.

The coalition discusses the continuing fight to dismantle Data Driven Policing. This webinar includes the sharing of strategies and tactics to build community power that led to the shutting down of LAPD Predictive Policing programs – LASER and Predpol. Join in the grassroot knowledge exchange to continue building collective power in the journey toward the abolition of policing.

As we work toward dismantling unjust systems, there is opportunity to highlight the intersections of our efforts and identify shared goals. This resource includes a chart of related demands across criminal and immigration issues aimed at reducing the number of people that enter, and releasing as many people as possible from jails and prisons, and detention centers. This is not a complete list, but rather a starting point for us all to consider our demands more broadly.

Noting an increase in discriminatory policing practices during COVID-19, The Leadership Conference Education Fund released principles that provide actionable recommendations for law enforcement agencies across the country to better protect the health and safety of communities and officers during the pandemic and beyond.

Durham Beyond Policing Coalition developed this proposal because the draft budget for the City of Durham for 2019-20 contained a request from the DPD for 72 additional full time (FTE) officers over three years, with the first year’s cost given as $1,729,573 for an initial 25 new officers. After considerable study, we have found the rationale for DPD’s budget request is incomplete and outdated, and we object to the premise that more officers will make the people of Durham safer. This proposal offers what we feel is a more holistic approach to some of the same issues and opportunities.

An article by Stop LAPD Spying and Coalition and Free Radicals on the dangers of PredPol, a predictive policing technology, and its context in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This resource is a living document as part of an ongoing series in response to COVID-19. This crisis is not an isolated moment in time. Policing, capitalism, and public health in the US have always been a crisis, and everything we’re fighting for right now is what we’ve long demanded.

This report examines in detail the experience of working-class immigrant, Black and Brown New Yorkers during this crisis. Based on a survey of 244 primarily Latinx immigrants across New York City, Long Island, and Westchester, one third of whom are undocumented, it provides striking findings related to the pandemic’s toll on community members’ health, income and work, housing insecurity, and education.