How the ACLU would improve the police

American Civil Liberties Union - Current police budgets are enormous, totaling more than $115 billion per year, collectively. Spending on police and the criminal legal system has dramatically outpaced expenditures in community-based services that help people build stable, safe communities. We have an obligation to change this paradigm and support efforts in Black and Brown communities to develop and build community-controlled institutions and interventions that have been proven to improve public safety and health more effectively than oppressive, terrifying, ineffectual, and deadly modern policing.

There are few instances that warrant the deadly use of force we have witnessed in recent years. Certainly not “knee-to-neck” restraint for an allegedly counterfeit bill. Or a chokehold for selling loose cigarettes. Nor a fatal shooting for jaywalking. Or failing to comply with orders to put your hands above your head.

It’s time to prohibit the use of lethal force unless it is absolutely necessary. The “necessary” standard that was just enacted in California, offers an example that we hope to build off in other states and federally by adding an exhaustion of alternatives requirement. 

It’s time to embrace alternatives like civilian-led crisis intervention teams composed of highly trained professionals, including nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers, to respond to incidents with people who are in mental health crises.
 
It’s time to put more counselors and more teachers — not police — into our schools.
 
It’s time to stop criminalizing families experiencing homelessness.

Reducing funding to police departments and reinvesting those funds into Black and Brown communities are necessary steps to prevent further harm and to restore the promise of our Constitution for all people.
 
The ACLU will work to support Black- and Brown-led community organizations to implement a three-part formula to bring an end to our country’s long nightmare with police violence:

• Prohibiting police from enforcing a range of non-serious offenses, including issuing fines and making arrests for non-dangerous behaviors, thus eliminating many of the unnecessary interactions between the police and community members that have led to so much violence and so many deaths;
  
• Reinvesting savings from the current policing budgets into alternatives to policing that will keep local communities safe and help them thrive;
  
• Implementing enforceable legal constraints so that there will be only rare instances in which police officers can use force against community members.