SUBJECT: [SUBJECT LINE]

TO: Your State Congress Representatives

BODY:

Dear State Legislator [NAME],

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[PLEASE CHANGE ANY OF THE WRITING TO BETTER FIT YOU, YOUR VOICE, AND YOUR AREA]

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My name is [NAME], and I live in [RESIDENTIAL AREA]. In the wake of the nationwide protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, I have felt compelled to address systemic police violence in this country, starting in my locality. 

Since the 1931 Wickersham Report and 1968 Kerner Commission, the racial bias of American police departments has been a matter of public record. The Kerner report declared more than 50 years ago that “legislative successes… [have not been] reflected in the daily lives of African-Americans facing police misconduct,” and that racism, housing segregation, and economic inequality are major drivers of police brutality. In spite of this, police departments have actively resisted reform. Time after time, they have leveraged the power of police unions and legal structures like qualified immunity in order to prioritize officers’ job security over the safety of communities they have pledged to serve. In other words, police in this nation care more about crafting a system that protects their jobs at all costs than doing their jobs well. It’s high time we seriously reconsidered the role that police have in our society, starting here with our community. 

Police departments take a sizable portion of many city and county budgets, leaving less room for healthcare, education, and other public services. For example, [MAJOR CITY BUDGET STATS]; [MY RESIDENTIAL AREA BUDGET STATS]. We are all living through the same pandemic, and have seen firsthand the danger of not making healthcare a priority (USA accounts for 28% of global coronavirus deaths and only 4.25% of global population). [X PERCENT] of those are from our own state. We also all have seen the same footage of police officers across the country–from New York to Minneapolis to Atlanta to Denver to Los Angeles–repeatedly reacting to non-threatening protesters with violence and almost never being held accountable. Here in our state, [INCIDENT OF POLICE CLASHING WITH PROTESTERS]. I do not want my tax dollars to go towards police beating those who express their first-amendment rights against police brutality. I am willing, however, to pay for systemic overhaul guided by a different vision of a healthy community: one where we are not reliant on the threat of violence to ensure public safety.

Many of the changes needed are at city and county levels, but that does not mean that your office does not have power. You have agency over the state as a whole, and can weigh the scales towards ensuring community health and safety for all those within your state. You have the power to do what all 50 states and several other countries know to be the right thing. I am writing you today to demand action on the part of your office:

[PLEASE ADD ADDITIONAL POLICY OR REMOVE POLICY THAT IS ALREADY IN PLACE]

1. Introduce and/or support legislation allowing the State Attorney General to investigate and mandate structural change in police departments, particularly those with a history of civil rights violations. An example of such a policy can be found in the California civil code, section 52.3, which states that: 

   1. No governmental authority, or agent of governmental authority, or person acting on behalf of governmental authority, shall engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that deprives any person of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States or by the Constitution or laws of California.

   2. The Attorney General may bring a civil action in the name of the people to obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice of conduct specified in subdivision (a), whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a violation of subdivision (a) has occurred.

2. Introduce and/or support legislation that withholds state funding from local police departments and the cities or counties to which they report until they: 

   1. Implement a strict use of force policy, including:

      1. Require officers to first use de-escalation methods before turning to force whenever possible;

      2. Ban all chokeholds and strangleholds;

      3. Require officers to intervene if and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these instances;

      4. Restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles;

      5. Develop a matrix that creates different tiers that correspond with specific levels of force and their respective accepted instances of implementation (also know as a force continuum);

      6. Require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force;

      7. Require officers to give a verbal warning before shooting whenever possible;

      8. Require officers to report each time they both use force, and threaten to use force, including unholstering and/or directing a weapon at someone; and

      9. Require officers to justify not just the decision to use force, but each additional measure of force (i.e. each additional shot, blow, spray, electric shock, etc.).

   2. Implement increased accountability measures, including:

      1. Remove clauses in police union contracts that are inimical to accountability (and, therefore, the ability of the police to perform their job), including but not limited to:

         1. Allow an officer to appeal a termination as a result of civil rights violations;

         2. Disqualify misconduct complaints against an officer after a certain period of time;

         3. Restrict when, how, or where officers can be interrogated after being involved in an incident;

         4. Give officers access to information that is not privy to civilians before their interrogations;

         5. Place the burden of officer misconduct on the taxpayer by giving officers paid leave while under investigation and paying legal fees and the cost of settlements;

         6. Prevent past misconduct information from appearing on an officer’s personnel file;

         7. Limit disciplinary structures and consequences for officers; and

         8. Limit the capacity of civilian and/or media structures to hold the police accountable.

      2. Abolish qualified immunity, which creates a legal culture encouraging abuses on the part of police and denies victims the chance to seek justice. For example bills that would accomplish this goal, see Colorado S.B. 20-217 or the federal Ending Qualified Immunity Act, which enjoys bipartisan support. 

      3. Institute a civilian review board that has the power to enforce their decisions;

      4. Make body and dashboard cameras mandatory, as well as:

         1. Require them to be on and recording at all times; and

         2. Require their footage easily accessible to the civilian review board and any other accountability infrastructure.

      5. Allow public access for the following:

         1. Comprehensive police policy, not including what will endanger undercover police; and

         2. Both raw data and statistical analysis provided quarterly, similar to what the Department of Justice uses to monitor the Baltimore City Police Department, as outlined in United States of America v. Police Department of City of Baltimore Consent Decree, Section VII, Part E, Section XIV, Part K, and Section XIX, Part D.

      6. Promote and make as accessible as possible the civilian complaint process, including but not limited to:

         1. Remove language and disability barriers to submitting a complaint, including publishing instructions on how to submit a complaint in multiple languages, and that said translations are as accessible as English versions;

         2. Remove any language that could be interpreted by any reasonable person as discouraging filing a complaint (i.e. warnings that filing a false complaint might bear legal ramifications) within or in the proximity of complaint literature;

         3. Include in a visible location on the police department’s website clear, easy-to-follow instructions for submitting a complaint and the process after submission, along with a video explaining the process; 

         4. Make immediately visible upon entry into any police department building media explaining the civilian complaint process; and

         5. Include a tracking system for complaints (such as a QR code) such that civilians are able to remain updated on the status of their complaints.

   3. Immediately commence designing a plan to sustainably defund the police and reinvest that money in community health and safety:

      1. Said plan will be designed in conjunction with community members and organizations, specifically from communities disproportionately negatively affected by police;

      2. Said plan will use data and statistics (outlined in Point 1-b-iv-2) to outline milestones and goals;

      3. During the design process, the police department budget will not be increased, and any money needed to fund the reforms requested above must come from within the existing department budget, primarily funds that are used to militarize police; and

      4. Examples for reinvestment include but are not limited to:

         1. Housing preservation and development;

         2. Homeless services;

         3. Education;

         4. Healthcare;

         5. Youth and community development;

         6. Addiction counseling;

         7. Mental health first responders;

         8. Violence intervention programs;

         9. Unarmed traffic enforcers; and

         10. [EXAMPLE OTHER PUBLIC SERVICES, PREFERABLY SPECIFIC TO YOUR COMMUNITY]

   4. Design plans for Point 1-c that are sustainable, data-driven, and include frequent accountability checks with the state government;

   5. Adhere to their plans described in Point 1-c once published. 

3. Introduce and/or support legislation that effectively undoes previous laws that have histories of being used disproportionately against marginalized communities, including but not limited to:

   1. Decriminalizing low-risk drugs like marijuana, and freeing all those imprisoned for nonviolent possession offences; and

   2. Decriminalizing sleeping in public spaces and otherwise effectively undoing laws that criminalize homelessness.

4. Introduce or support legislation that supports that a detainee cannot consent to sexual contact in custody, thereby making any sexual act between an officer and a detainee a criminal sexual offense.

For clarification: all reforms listed in Point 2-a, 2-b are to be instituted immediately.  In line with our ultimate commitment to defunding the police and reinvesting in community-oriented methods of improving public safety, there should be no increases to police budgets in order to enact these reforms. Their sole purpose is reducing the ability of the police department to continue to be a heavily oppressive force for so many community members while the city/county moves to sustainably defund the police and invest in the community (Point 2-c). In creating this legislation, I also ask that you implement time constraints or other measures to ensure that everything is done in a timely manner, and there is no delaying or stalling. Further, it may be best to create a board or otherwise dedicated group to monitor local police departments from now until their defunding, and leverage state funding to ensure that they are actively working towards and achieving reductions in disparities among demographic groups (especially those with a history of being subject to police mistreatment), instances of use of physical force and threatening to use physical force, community complaints, and lawsuits. (Please refer to the data collection outlined in Point 2-b-iv-2.) I, the taxpayer, am not willing to let my dollars go towards paying settlements for police violations of civil liberties.

I ask that you listen to the public and the pain that some of our communities are in. How does assigning a public official–one who actively views killing someone as a possible and acceptable outcome of their job–to be the most visible ambassador of public services and taxpayer dollars create anything close to a safe and healthy community? Would that role not be better served by someone who views their community members as people, not potential criminals?

This is a systemic problem, and you were elected to be part of the solution. This movement will bring about an unprecedented wave of attention to local and state politics, which is you. Do not be limited by lack of precedent or imagination in your mission to serve your community.
 

Sincerely,

[NAME]

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