Legislative Advocacy

Our advocacy work focuses on supporting coalitions and community organizations working to prevent law enforcement violence and ensure accountability when police harm the public. We provide testimony as well as our evaluation and analysis of policy proposals. 

We work for policies that will reimagine public safety and build a future free of police violence, and we fight against policies that will expand police overreach and the expansion of the carceral system.

We believe communities are the experts on what policies will keep them safe from police violence and advocate for a broad array of issues, including:

Policy Priorities

Ending Qualified Immunity 

For too long, qualified immunity has prevented victims of police brutality and misconduct from pursuing justice in civil court. Under this legal doctrine, officers are shielded from being held liable unless the officer’s action has already been “clearly established” as a constitutional violation by a prior case with identical facts in that court’s jurisdiction, even in cases of intentional, malicious misconduct, injury, or death.

Removing Police From Traffic Enforcement

From Daunte Wright to Philando Castile and Sandra Bland, many of the highly publicized police-civilian encounters that have resulted in the death of the civilian began as traffic stops for minor violations. These violations pose no risk to public safety, but the police response to these violations does. 

Removing Police From Crisis Intervention

Too often, when armed officers respond to calls for help for someone experiencing a mental health crisis, what begins as a medical situation quickly escalates to a deadly tragedy. Residents in crisis need the help of trained personnel, medics and crisis workers with mental health training and experience, not armed police, who lack the training and expertise to safely and appropriately act as first responders to 911 calls seeking psychiatric assistance. 

Expanding Transparency in Police Misconduct Records

Police misconduct records provide the public with crucial information for evaluating the efficacy and ethics of the officers and departments who have sworn to protect them. Where these records are kept secret, police violence goes unchecked, accountability is undermined, and reform is stalled.

Banning Deadly Force Tactics

The lack of direction provided to officers on when to use force and what techniques are appropriate has resulted in tragic and unwarranted deaths, injuries, and trauma. Categorically dangerous policing practices, from chokeholds to prone restraints and  the use of canine units, vehicles, do not make police more effective, but they do substantially heighten the risk of harm or death for individuals who come into contact with the police.

Confronting Extremism and White Supremacy in Policing

Though the prevalence of hate group affiliations in their ranks has been well-documented for years, police departments have failed to factor this immense danger to public safety into their recruitment and hiring or set grounds for discipline and termination. Left unchecked, these officers will continue to use their badge to harm communities that are already overpoliced and marginalized: people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities.

Holding ICE Accountable

Federal immigration officers carrying out the administration’s mass deportation agenda are violating people’s constitutional rights at unprecedented rates. From expanding the ability of civilians to sue the federal government for damages caused by federal officers to requiring federal officers to clearly identify themselves and limiting state and local police compliance with ICE, there exist numerous avenues for holding ICE accountable.