Resources

In recent years, videos capturing the fatal shootings of unarmed men of color by police officers have swept media outlets and public discourse. Facilitated by cellphone video and social media and spurred by a new generation of Black Lives Matter activists, public awareness of excessive force incidents has gained new momentum and shined a light on broader concerns about racial disparities within our criminal justice system. This report highlights states’ efforts to provide access to officer disciplinary records (through “sunshine legislation”) and the obstacles that police unions pose when trying to pass and enforce these laws.

Reuters examined police union contracts across the country and found a pattern of protections afforded officers: Many contracts erase disciplinary records or allow police to forfeit sick leave for suspensions. Meantime, residents face hurdles in pursuing complaints.

A report that details the historical and current context around policing and racism, as well as a proposition for community control as a tool for reform and the details behind implementing such a policy.

The proliferation in local police departments’ use of surveillance technology, which in most places has occurred without any community input or control, presents significant threats to civil rights and civil liberties that disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities. The nationwide “Community Control Over Police Surveillance” effort is looking to change that through legislation mandating that local communities are given a meaningful opportunity to review and participate in all decisions about if and how surveillance technologies are acquired and used locally.

Communities in metropolitan areas across the United States are facing a mix of three problems: concentrated poverty; high levels of crime, violence, and victimization; and high rates of incarceration with an unusually large criminal justice presence. What might justice look like if the people most affected by crime and poverty had a much greater say in what safety means to them and how their government delivers it?

The occurrence of sexual harassment in policing is a national problem. Indicative of the significance of this problem are the increasing numbers of sexual harassment complaints filed by female officers against their male counterparts. Less apparent is whether the harassing officers are disciplined for these acts. This article sheds light on the subject by providing an analysis of the disciplinary measures taken by the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission against law enforcement officers found guilty of sexual harassment. This article describes the role and responsibilities of the Commission, the regulatory body charged with disciplining law enforcement officers in Florida. The article concludes that, despite evidence of the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in Florida law enforcement agencies, the numbers of sexual harassment cases in which the Commission accepts jurisdiction are minimal and the discipline imposed is often insubstantial.

This work originates from a set of accounts given by female police officers to determine how they construct their identity and their image of themselves in relation to their gender, as they talk about their roles as police, and the broader roles of men and women in society. Despite policewomen’s fight for equality in policing, women not only differentiated themselves from their male counterparts, but also described “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) and “doing police work” collaboratively. Women actively resisted and adopted stereotypical norms of femininity and policing, broadening their opportunities for work in the male dominated occupation while reinforcing their traditional conception of gender difference.

A report that describes the statutes and regulations in 44 states that license and revoke licenses of law enforcement officers for misconduct. There is great variation among the states on what conduct can lead to revocation, e.g., some states require conviction of a crime whereas others permit revocation administratively, after a hearing. There are also differences on what types of officers are subject to having their licenses removed, e.g., in some states, only peace officers, in others, correctional officers are also covered.

A report on data from 71 urban cities across the United States that begins to probe the high rates of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Due to limited resources and poor data collection by cities, many of the cases identified in this report are likely an undercount of victims in urban areas.