Resources

What military equipment has your local police, sheriff or game warden received from the Pentagon? Click the dropdown on this resource to select your state and start sifting through the newly released data from the U.S. Department of Defense’s 1033 program.

The killing of Black people at the hands of the police is taking place against the backdrop of a pandemic that is taking Black lives at an alarming rate. Our communities continue to be disinvested in and our people continue to be vulnerable to every harm in our society. This is why we call to defund police departments across the country and demand an investment of those resources into the needs of our communities.

We know what is happening in Minneapolis is a product of what has happened to Black people for decades. We are paying attention and we are ready to rise.

Join us for M4BL’s National Call to Action Call, hear from Organizers in Minneapolis and across the country. We will share our demands and ways for folks to take action!

This is a living toolkit of information on police reform, surveillance, immigration and policing, racial profiling, community oversight, and more within the Boston area. It also includes action items and ways to get involved.

This document outlines six broad areas of current political need and opportunity as the US government ramps up the militarization of its response to the coronavirus epidemic. This statement aims to generate further conversation on these points both within and beyond the author organization, as well as to enter the national media conversation on coronavirus response.

This episode details recent reports that the National Guard or US military may be used in a law enforcement capacity and what this says about the failures of the liberal state. With unemployment potentially reaching 30 percent and an urgent, robust social democratic response from the federal government unlikely, a debate about safeguarding against martial order––especially from an administration with a well documented inclination towards abuse of power–-is urgently needed.

This report details the allotment of financial aid to federal, state, and local agencies during the COVID-19 crisis, including money to the CDC to develop surveillance technology and to law enforcement, homeland security, and the military.

This guide provides an overview of the expansion of U.S. wars since 2001 and the systemic secrecy helping shield them from public view. It also includes a section on militarization of the police in the US (pp. 15-16).

In an age of heightened concern about the militarization of local police and surveillance technology, how do local law enforcement agencies obtain cutting edge and potentially intrusive surveillance equipment without elected leaders and the general public realizing it? The answer lies in the process of federal procurement, through which the federal government, often in the name of combatting terrorism, funnels billions of dollars to local law enforcement agencies that can then be used to purchase surveillance equipment. This report is the first to comprehensively consider the intersection of procurement and local surveillance policy making. Using case studies from Seattle, Oakland, and San Diego, it exposes the practice of surveillance policy making by procurement.

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.