Urban Peace Institute’s Recommendations for Police Reform, Accountability, and Embracing Community Based Alternatives

UPI seeks to dismantle the economy of mass incarceration and invest in building a community-based public safety and health infrastructure that allows people of color to thrive.  Public leaders across the country are looking for a quick fix, but there is no quick fix. Change is only going to come from a seismic shift in power away from police, police unions, and the justice system towards a transformative investment in community-led safety and health solutions. American policing needs radical restructuring.  Public safety should be redefined by communities that experience over-policing and violence. 

1.       End Over-Policing of Communities of Color

• End and divest funding from law enforcement practices that support systemic racism, use of force, and warrior style policing

• End stop and frisk practices

• End racial and gang profiling

• End use of gang databases and injunctions

• End police in schools

• End police collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

• Decriminalize and de-prioritize enforcement of minor crimes

• End for-profit policing and eliminate fines and fees for low-income people

2.       End Police Violence & Brutality

• End use of adversarial policing and aggressive suppression tactics

• Transform use of force policies

• Require police departments to bear the cost of misconduct; settlements should be paid out of police budgets

3.       Reimagine Policing for Public Trust

• Embrace policing that focuses on community well-being and building public trust as core value in communities of color

• Transform policing approach from warrior-style to guardian-style policing

• Recognize officers for exercising restraint and embracing relationship-based policing

• Change promotional criteria and incentives for officers

• Institutionalize and fund community-based pre-arrest diversion practices

• Require relationship-based policing training for all officers

• Require public agencies and police departments to engage with community-based training organizations and resident leaders

• Require officers responding to school incidents have advanced training to work with youth

• Law enforcement should embrace community-based alternatives to addressing safety for non-criminal offenses

4.       Invest in Community-Based Alternatives to Public Safety

• Divest funding from law enforcement practices that support systemic racism, use of force, and warrior style policing to fund alternative community-based public safety strategies

• Build a comprehensive community-based public safety infrastructure focused on non-law enforcement approaches to neighborhood health and safety

• Review public safety budgets at the state, county, and city level to reprioritize funding to improve community health and safety; redistribute public safety funding responsibilities between city, county, and state

• End the use of police in schools and divest funding to support school mental health counselors, gang intervention and outreach workers, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and public health workers

• Increase public and private investment in gang and street outreach

• Expand the role of gang intervention and outreach workers to respond and de-escalate violence as an alternative to law enforcement

• Increase investment and expand community leadership development to guide public safety initiatives

• Increase investment in and expand the role of community-based mental health responders

• Expand community-led and operated pre-arrest diversion alternatives

• Expand behavioral health and addiction infrastructure with harm reduction approaches

5.       Ensure Community-Led Police Accountability

• Create police commission and civilian complaints offices including community oversight with subpoena power

• Invest in community leadership training to ensure police accountability is driven by communities of color most impacted by over policing

• Ensure expedient officer discipline and prosecution without pay when under investigation of an alleged crime or improper use of force

• Assign independent prosecutors for use of force cases

• Ensure citizens’ rights to record and film police is respected by law enforcement agencies

• Establish policies that allow individuals to review police video and audio footage of their interaction with police without a court order

• Require the use of body cameras and dashboard cameras, and require the expedient release of footage to the public

• Enact consent decrees with strict oversight and accountability (federal and/or state)

• End the application of qualified immunity doctrine to police accused of use of excessive and/or deadly force

• End application of SLAPP motions by government agencies to discourage lawsuits seeking accountability

• Require policing data publication for arrests, diversion, officer-involved shootings with disaggregation by race, age, and zip code

• Ensure data transparency and make data available on officer misconduct, lawsuits, disciplinary actions, etc.

• End police union interference in the oversight and crafting of police accountability

• State legislatures must separate negotiation of contracts on police wages and benefits from law enforcement disciplinary procedures

• State legislators must ensure transparency and public involvement in the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements for law enforcement

• Revise state “Officer Bill of Rights” to ensure it does not interfere with officer accountability

• Increase budget transparency for law enforcement agencies