How can you stop police brutality

How officers' masculine self-image makes them more likely to use force against black men. How female officers are less likely to use excessive force. Evaluating residency requirements as a strategy to improve racial diversity of police departments. How black representation on the police force reduces police killings of black people.

While they are not a cure-all, body cameras and cell phone video have illuminated cases of police violence and have shown to be important tools for holding officers accountable. Nearly every case where a police officer was charged with a crime for killing a civilian in relied on video evidence showing the officer's actions.

Ex: Baltimore PD Body Cam Policy update privacy laws to protect civilians from having video or audio recordings released publicly that do not contain potential evidence in a use-of-force incident, misconduct incident, discharge of a weapon or death. The Right to Record Police Ban police officers from taking cell phones or other recording devices without a person's consent or warrant and give people the right to sue police departments if they take or destroy these devices.

How to implement body cams in a way that promotes accountability and protects privacy. Considerations for implementing body cams. Study finds body cams don't reduce use of force, but also don't increase criminalization of communities. Data showing when and how often body cam video gets released. How body cams impacted use of force in San Diego. The dangers of body cams being misused as a tool for surveillance.

Why body cams need the right policies to be effective. Considerations for making body cam footage accessible. Why police shouldn't get to review body camera footage before they report. How body cameras only reduce use of force with good policies. The current training regime for police officers fails to effectively teach them how to interact with our communities in a way that protects and preserves life. For example, police recruits spend 58 hours learning how to shoot firearms and only 8 hours learning how to de-escalate situations.

An intensive training regime is needed to help police officers learn the behaviors and skills to interact appropriately with communities. Rather, existing training programs should be replaced with programs that de-emphasize firearms and use of force and that empower communities to design and implement new training paradigms for first responders including, but not limited to, the following topics: Procedural justice Relationship-based policing Crisis intervention, mediation, and conflict resolution Appropriate engagement with youth Appropriate engagement with LGBTQ, transgender and gender nonconforming individuals Appropriate engagement with individuals who are english language learners Appropriate engagement with individuals from different religious affiliations Appropriate engagement with individuals who are differently abled De-escalation and minimizing the use of force.

Experiment shows officers trained in Procedural Justice less likely to make arrests or use force. Study finds Procedural Justice training reduces police use of force and complaints. Study: Mental Health Training did not reduce police violence. How racial bias informs police officers' decisions to shoot. Characteristics of officers that predict violence against black people. The problem with how police are trained. How the way police are currently trainined is ineffective.

How police training in the US falls short compared to other countries. How procedural justice and fairness training impact perceptions of police. Recommendations for Improving Police Training. End For-Profit Policing. Police should be working to keep people safe, not contributing to a system that profits from stopping, searching, ticketing, arresting and incarcerating people. End police department quotas for tickets and arrests Ban police departments from using ticket or arrest quotas to evaluate the performance of police officers Ex: Illinois law.

Prevent police from taking the money or property of innocent people Prohibit police from: seizing property of civilians i. Require police departments to bear the cost of misconduct Require the cost of misconduct settlements to be paid out of the police department budget instead of the City's general fund Restrict police departments from receiving more money from the general fund when they go over-budget on lawsuit payments.

How police and the courts profit from low-income residents in St. Louis County. How profit incentives influence policing in Ferguson. How to reform municipal courts in St. Louis to stop profiting off of low-income, black residents. How to structure fines based on a person's ability to pay.

How police use civil asset forfeiture as a tool to increase revenue. How Philadelphia police seize cash from poor, black people. Analysis of Civil Forfeiture Cash Seizures.

The events in Ferguson have introduced the nation to the ways that local police departments can misuse military weaponry to intimidate and repress communities. In , militarized SWAT teams killed at least 38 people and studies show that more militarized police departments are significantly more likely to kill civilians.

The following policies limit police departments from obtaining or using these weapons on our streets. End the Federal Government's Program Providing Military Weaponry to Local Police Departments End the supply of federal military weaponry to local police departments under the program. Establish Local Restrictions to Prevent Police Departments from Purchasing or Using Military Weaponry Restrict police departments from: using federal grant money to purchase military equipment Ex: Montana law deploying armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft, drones, Stingray surveillance equipment, camouflage uniforms, and grenade launchers using SWAT teams unless there is an emergency situation or imminent threat to life and high-ranking officers have given approval Ex: Cincinnati PD Policy conducting no-knock raids Ex: Oregon law bans all no-knock raids accessing federal grant money or purchasing military equipment if the department has been recently found to demonstrate a "pattern or practice" of discriminatory policing in addition to these restrictions, wherever possible agencies should seek to return to the federal government the military equipment that has already been received Ex: San Jose.

The origins of police militarization. See the military equipment the federal government has given to police departments. A police officer's perspective on militarization. How police receive military weapons to combat drugs, not terrorism.

Key challenges in reversing police militarization. Best practices and models for demilitarizing police departments. How SWAT raids have increased since the 's. Study shows more militarized police are more likely to kill people. Another study finds police militarization contributes to killings by police. Fair Police Contracts. Police unions have used their influence to establish unfair protections for police officers in their contracts with local, state and federal government and in statewide Law Enforcement Officers' Bills of Rights.

These provisions create one set of rules for police and another for civilians, and make it difficult for Police Chiefs or civilian oversight structures to punish police officers who are unfit to serve. Learn more about how police union contracts help officers avoid accountability here. Keep officers' disciplinary history accessible to police departments and the public Remove contract provisions, local and state policies, and provisions in state Law Enforcement Officers' Bills of Rights laws that allow police officers to: expunge or destroy records of past misconduct both sustained and unsustained from their disciplinary file prevent their disciplinary records from being released to the public via a Freedom of Information Act FOIA request.

Ensure financial accountability for officers and police departments that kill or seriously injure civilians Remove contract provisions, local policies, and provisions in state Law Enforcement Officers' Bills of Rights laws that: require officers to be given paid administrative leave or paid desk-duty during an investigation following a police shooting or other use of deadly force prevent officers from receiving unpaid suspensions as discipline for misconduct or allow officers to use vacation or discretionary time to pay themselves while on suspension allow officers to receive paid leave or paid desk-duty after being charged with a felony offense.

Visit Nixthe6. How police union contracts let arbitrators decide police discipline. The role of police unions in blocking police reform.

How police bills of rights prevent officers from being held accountable for police violence. A history and overview of police officers' bills of rights. The special protections for police officers included in police bills of rights. How police bills of rights impede accountability in 14 states. How Baltimore's police union contract impedes accountability.

How police union contract provisions are not based on scientific evidence. How police unions in Chicago negotiated contracts that shield officers from accountability.

Brian Miller was fired two days after the day window in which termination was supposed to occur. Because of that misstep, an arbitrator said Miller's due process rights had been violated. He was ordered reinstated with full back-pay. Experts have recommended that police departments reform their processes for disciplinary appeals to ensure that officers who engage in misconduct are held fully accountable.

That might entail eliminating arbitrators from the process and instead leaving the decision to democratically elected officials such as city councils.

A study found that police officers who are are partnered with officers who garner complaints about excessive force are more likely to receive such complaints themselves in the future.

Researchers examined more than 8, Chicago police officers named in multiple complaints between and The analysis found that the more officers with histories of excessive force were in a group, the higher the risk that other officers in that group would develop similar track records.

According to Andrew Papachristos, one of the study's co-authors, this link could help predict potential bad behavior by officers and give departments better information about when and how to intervene before violent incidents occur. Officers with a history of abuse have a pretty strong influence on subsequent behavior of other officers. Instituting a means of tracking complaints against officers, and making that data public, could provide further oversight.

Legislation that prohibits officers who are terminated for serious misconduct from being rehired could also make a difference. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center , a nonprofit, at least one in every four people killed by police has a serious mental illness.

Not all officers who respond to an emergency call involving a person with mental illness are trained in crisis management, which may result in mismanaging the situation that ends in police violence. Programs like Eugene, Oregon's Cahoots , which stands for Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Street, can work to alleviate those situations by responding to those calls in lieu of or alongside police officers. Leveraging crisis workers and mental health providers to respond to incidents involving substance abuse, mental health crises, and homelessness, for example, could work to minimize violence.

The Department of Justice-backed interventions recommend stricter policies against use of force, improved officer trainings, and an independent process to review police killings.

Shootings dropped in Philadelphia , San Francisco , and Baltimore. Campaign Zero suggests establishing automatic federal investigations of all police departments with the highest rates of police violence and the most severe racial disparities in America. A common theme at protest scenes across the country has been police officers' use of military-grade equipment against unarmed civilians.

That's largely thanks to a Pentagon program known as , which allows the military to send surplus military equipment to police and sheriff's departments. The program has resulted in local law enforcement agencies being outfitted with equipment like armored vehicles, bayonets, and even grenade launchers.

But research has shown that receiving more military equipment makes police departments more likely to use it. According to a study , researchers found that the act of receiving the equipment "leads to a culture of militarization" within police departments, causing them to "rely more on violence to solve problems. Though former President Barack Obama reined in the program in and barred certain types of equipment from being sent to police departments, President Donald Trump reversed the action in Los Angeles, CA Renaissance Center.

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