Criminal Justice Reform
From mass incarceration to police shootings and killings, and all the way to our court system of convicting officers’ wrong doing, there is must needed room for criminal justice reform. Public trust on our police departments have deteriorated over the years, especially with the use of cell phone videos and body cameras. We know that police have always used excessive and deadly force disproportionately against Black and Brown citizens and our unhoused community members. We know that while Black and Latinx Americans comprise just 28% of our population, they are 56% of our incarcerated. Here in the state of California, we also subject our incarcerated to prison labor by having them on the frontlines of climate change fighting deadly wildfires at only $1 in pay per day. This public distrust is valid because many people, including the Native American, African American, Latinx, LGTBQIA+ and the Disabled community, have been unjustly targeted and sometimes end up dead for minor issues like traffic stops, disproportionately to Whites. We are outraged that when officers do get charged with murder or manslaughter, most often than not, they never get convicted.
From the National spotlights of Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, Philando Castile, to the local spotlights of Ezell Ford, Wakiesha Wilson, Jose Mendez and Jesse Romero, it is clear that there must be criminal justice reform.
Demilitarize Police and Increase Accountability
Over the past two decades as the United States wages a War on Drugs that has destroyed Black and Brown communities nationwide, our local police forces have grown more militarized and more deadly. We must repeal the federal “1033” program that allows for the transfer of military grade weapons from the Department of Defense to local police forces free of charge. In fact, the more local police use the military equipment, the more they receive – creating a perverse incentive to terrorize and oppress our communities. From 2006 to 2014, the 1033 Program facilitated the transfer of over 79,000 assault rifles, 600 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs), 205 grenade launchers, roughly 12,000 bayonets, nearly 4,000 combat knives, 50 airplanes, 422 helicopters, 479 bomb detonator robots, and $3.6 million in camouflage gear to local police forces. The initiative has transformed our police into powerful militias.
WE MUST hold police institutions and the labor unions that protect them from prosecution accountable. We need to establish Civilian & Police Review boards in local communities to have a balanced check on police and make sure they are held accountable for any related police incidents resulting in death or bodily harm to individuals, whether by accident or on purpose.
We must increase police training length, especially in terms of conflict resolution tactics. In some European countries, police training can go up to 3 years so that police can have ample time to learn to better understand, communicate with and calm distraught individuals. US police academies provided an average of 19 weeks of classroom instruction. We must also focus on increased training on de-escalation techniques instead of using deadly force.
We must demilitarize our police forces so that they don’t look and act like they are going to war with our own citizens. We must have mandatory community policing requirements of proportional representation where police officers look and act like the people in the communities they are supposed to protect and serve.
We must ensure that mental health patients who call law enforcement for help will be treated as medical patients, not criminals. In addition, we need to invest in medical and mental help programs to deal with those having substance abuse issues. We should be treating them from a health perspective, not a criminal perspective.
End the School-to-Prison Pipeline and Invest in Restorative Justice
We must put an end to the school to prison pipeline. We can invest more in youth jobs and education, not jails and incarceration. This involves ending the War on Drugs that targets people of color disproportionately compared to our White counterparts. In addition, we need to take marijuana off the federal government’s list of outlawed drugs / the DEA’s Schedule 1 drug list where Heroin is on that same list. We must legalize and tax cannabis, while expunging all federal criminal records for non-violent drug offenses. And we must restore full access to civil liberties and social services to help break the cycle of recidivism.
We must rebuild and invest in the economic growth and prosperity of our formerly incarcerated community members, and establish community-led healing efforts grounded in restorative justice. We can invest billions into mental and behavioral health services so that our community members receive treatment as opposed to prison for a chronic health condition.
Ban Private Prisons and Detention Centers
It is time to end the for-profit prisons industry with a direct ban. The prison industrial complex has led to a disproportionate amount of mass incarceration people of color and low-income people. In the United States, we have the world’s highest level of prisoners (over 2 million prisoners) compared to any other country. The private prison industry’s business model revolves around maximizing arrest and prosecution to churn endless profits – not aid in the delivery of justice. Private prisons face little regulation and oversight, and nearly all have inhumane conditions including decrepit water and sanitation facilities, lack of healthcare services, frequent abuse by guards, and conditions that force incarcerated individuals to live in squalor. We must abolish this system of tyranny.
End Mandatory Minimums
We must eliminate mandatory minimums and three strikes laws, which we have seen disproportionately leads to tougher sentencing for Black and Brown people than Whites. According to the Yale Law Journal, Black men were nearly twice as likely to be charged with an offense that carried a mandatory minimum sentence than White men facing similar circumstances. Judges have historically selected longer and tougher sentences for Blacks, even if they have the same criminal history as Whites.
Use of Force
We must evaluate and reform our current laws regarding the “use of lethal force” to ensure that police officers who are in the wrong of unjustly killing people are indicted AND convicted. There is an overwhelming number of police shootings each year that ends up as “justifiable” in the eyes of the law however, when we see cases like that of Walter Scott, who was shot 3 times in the back while running away, or Eric Garner who was choked to death even though his hands were up and there was large presence of police officers around, it begs to question: what must you do to get an indictment or a conviction for police officers? There is too much leeway for law enforcement officers who get away using lethal force. There must be transformative reform.