Resources

An extensive investigation by Cerise Castle into more than five decades of abuse, terror, and murder carried out by gangs within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that employees at law enforcement agencies across the US ran thousands of Clearview AI facial recognition searches — often without the knowledge of the public or even their own departments.

Internal NYPD documents shed new light on the Strategic Response Group, or SRG, the heavily militarized police unit behind the crackdown on George Floyd protesters. This detailed report explores the background and function of the SRG, shares the SRG guidebook, explains its role in the 2020 protests, and ends with a look at accountability efforts.

Police Paliques is a periodic series with which we provide citizens with a brief, accessible and rigorous analysis of a single, very specific aspect of police violence. The first Palique is about the intimidation practice that the Puerto Rico Police has used by using an excessive number of agents to intervene with individuals during curfew interventions in the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis arises from the data collected in our ‘Evidence of Violence’ project, which documents, accounts and denounces violent, excessive or discriminatory interventions by the Puerto Rico Police, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the curfew that has already been extended for 7 months. The second one is about the use of threats to intervene with citizens during the pandemic and the third one is about the Police Bureau’s use of the category “passion crime” to report domestic violence crimes.

The Full Disclosure Project aims to disrupt the culture of secrecy that systematically and pervasively shields law enforcement misconduct by changing police secrecy laws and empowering the defense community to track police misconduct.

An extensive collection of articles, books, podcast, and other resources on abolition.

This research brief reviews existing empirical research on the impacts of decriminalization — and conversely criminalization — of sex work to inform recommendations for policy and practice. The ACLU has a history of supporting the decriminalization of sex work, but as efforts for U.S. legislative reform at the local, state, and federal level grow, examining the potential impacts of proposed policies is critical. Developed in consultation with local affiliates and sex worker organizers, this Brief provides an assessment of the growing evidence base on the potential benefits and harms of the decriminalization of consensual sex work (including buyer-only criminalization and full criminalization) and concludes with specific recommendations for policymakers, law enforcement, advocates, and researchers.

The Oakland Reimagining Public Safety Task Force was created in direct response to significant local demand to redirect monies from the Oakland Police Department to programs, support services and resources that take a holistic view of public safety and focus on addressing the root causes of so-called “crime” rather than relying on militarized policing and a violent, cyclical carceral state. The Defund Coalition is excited about the many recommendations presented that offer a real opportunity to shift, reimagine and evolve the way Oakland thinks about and implements public safety. This report responds to each of the 114 draft recommendations issued by the Task Force. We break down all the recommendations we support, the ones we don’t, and why.

The Abolitionist Law Center has published a report on policing in Pittsburgh, highlighting glaring racial disparities in traffic stops, frisks, warrantless search and seizures, arrests, and use of force by the City’s police force. Despite these disparities, Mayor Bill Peduto has increased the Police Budget 60% since taking office in 2014, from $72 million to $115 million. It now enconpasses nearly one fifth of the City’s entire operating budget. Furthermore, the year-to-year rate of increase of the police budget went up from an average of 0.75% from 2000-2014 to 8.18% from 2015-2020 under Mayor Peduto, even though violent crime levels in Pittsburgh have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s.