Resources

Since 2006, the nation’s largest police departments have fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the public’s trust, from cheating on overtime to unjustified shootings. But The Washington Post has found that departments have been forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required by union contracts.

Most states neglect ordering police to learn de-escalation tactics to avoid shootings. In 34 states, training decisions are left to local agencies. Most, though, conduct no, or very little, de-escalation training. Chiefs cite cost, lack of staff, and a belief that the training isn’t needed.

Some police departments are embracing tactics designed to reduce the use of force – and prevent shootings. Rather than rushing in aggressively, officers back off, wait out people in crisis and use words instead of weapons. It’s a technique called de-escalation. But this training isn’t required in most states. Reveal teams up with APM Reports and finds that most police spend a lot more time training to shoot their guns than learning how to avoid firing them.

This is a first-of-its-kind portal that augments the work of the Policing Reform Campaign and provides publicly available data on federal grants awarded to over 150 local law enforcement agencies across the nation. The database provides demographic data for those jurisdictions and, where available, information on police misconduct complaints filed by individuals, consent decrees, and settlement amounts. Communities can use this information to support demands for accountability for law enforcement agencies believed to be engaged in discriminatory or otherwise unlawful conduct.

Over the course of 2019, Local Progress engaged local elected officials and community leaders in a range of communities to evaluate their localities’ policing practices using the Reform/Transform toolkit. Those evaluations have produced the first results of the Reform/Transform toolkit in 12 cities: Chicago, Dallas, Durham, Louisville, Madison, Minneapolis, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.

Although members of law enforcement do not serve as treatment providers for any other illness, they have become “road runners,” responding to mental health emergencies and traveling long distances to shuttle people with mental illness from one facility to another. This report is the first-ever national survey of sheriffs’ offices and police departments on these issues, and it provides a unique glimpse into the burdens they must shoulder as well as the fiscal and societal implications of the current situation. The survey responses represent 355 sheriffs’ offices and police departments in the United States.

This report comprehensively documents how US-Israel law enforcement trainings solidify partnerships between the U.S. and Israeli governments to exchange methods of state violence and control, including mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent. Produced by Researching the American Israeli Alliance (RAIA) in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the report is the result of dozens of FOIAs yielding hundreds of documents, exclusive interviews with American and Israeli personnel, and exhaustive academic and media research in English, Arabic and Hebrew. Accompanying the report, RAIA released the Palestine is Here Database, a search engine mapping Israeli trainings of US law enforcement across American cities and towns.

This document highlights important recommendations and examples and is based on the experiences of law enforcement officers who have benefited from the “harm reduction” approach. It is important to note that there is no “one size fits all” solution. Changes to law are of course a major factor in changing law enforcement practice with regard to drugs. But even without legislative changes, there are a number of tactics and strategies that law enforcement departments and officers can more readily apply and implement directly themselves.

A report that surveyed 12 local community organizations in Portland, Oregon about the harms of policing and their visions for building real community care and resources.