• Abolish laws that allow Police officers to have sex with detainees
    Anna Chambers is an 18 year old girl who was smoking weed in a car in Brooklyn last year with two of her guy friends. The officers smelled the weed, arrested only Anna, and let the two boys go. They then took her in the back of the police van, handcuffed, and took turns raping her. The officers in court said they were “seduced” and the act was “consensual”, an excuse that (horrifyingly) often works because this law is in place, and because the judiciary system places way too much trust in law enforcement officers. In 32 states, police officers have the legal right to engage in sexual acts with people in custody. Rape is technically still illegal, but the power dynamic that is present in the case of police officer and prisoner/detainee makes consensual sex impossible. Especially when the justice system is predisposed to giving police officers extreme and unethical amounts of immunity when it comes to committing acts such as murder and rape. If a 17 year old classmate cannot legally have sex with their 18 year old classmate because of the questionability of the validity of that 17 year old's consent, WHY can police officers have sex with prisoners? This is not a one-off event! This Law needs to change. “In the six-year period from 2009 to 2014, about 550 police officers had lost their badges for rape, sodomy and other types of sexual assault; and a further 440 for possession of child pornography and other sex crimes; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens, sexting juveniles, or having consensual but prohibited sex while on duty. That number was “unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked”, wrote the AP. ‘Not all states take such action’.”
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    Created by Emily Hime
  • Defunding BGPD
    During our council meeting on 6/22/2020, many concerned residents commented that the city council needs to reconsider their proposed budget for The Bell Gardens Police Department. However, individuals who oppose the defunding of BGPD created a petition that was not representative of our community’s needs and concerns. Their petition received a mere twenty signatures. A problem expressed via their petition was that the Police Explorers program would be heavily impacted. However, this program receives only four-thousand dollars (to pay salaries for police officers) of the BGPD’s 15 million dollar budget. The program depends on extensive fundraisers, NOT the police budget. If funds were reasonably invested, we would be able to fund many community programs that offer a space for youth development. This petition is meant to demonstrate to the city council that many Bell Gardens residents do not support a budget that allocates 53% of our funds to BGPD. Many residents believe that we should divest (incrementally remove funding from the police budget) in our police department and invest into other resources in our community. This petition will record Bell Gardens’ community members responses to our proposed city budget and alternatives to funding.
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    Created by Estephanie Garcia
  • Defund FPD and reinvest in Black communities
    We, residents of Fremont, recognize that we are in a moment of uprising in support of the decades-long struggle for Black liberation. A clear mandate has emerged from your constituents: defund the police. Policing in this city, like policing everywhere in America, is an institution that descends directly from chattel slavery. It cannot be reformed, any more than the institution of slavery could be reformed, and any such call betrays a grave complicity with the suppression of Black liberation. Fremont residents are committed to enacting the changes to our systems to ensure that our city ceases to uphold institutions of white supremacy and violence, and moves toward care, safety, and liberation for all. We recognize that the end of policing is here. The people of Fremont are ready to meet this moment, and we call on our elected officials to take action to bring the change we need to see. None of us are free until all of us are free.
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    Created by Defund FPD Picture
  • Justice for Robert Fuller’s Lynching
    Robert Fuller was found lynched on Monday, June 8th. A passerby noticed a man, later identified as Robert L. Fuller, hanging from a tree in Palmdale, California. Palmdale city described it as "an alleged death by suicide." Fire department personnel who responded to the scene determined he was dead on arrival. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department issued a statement. “That they are fully cooperative in investigation process.” What we do know is; where Robert Fuller was hung there happened to be no surveillance cameras in the area! It is our hope his death isn’t racially driven but until then we will treat it as such! We want to bring justice to Robert Fuller and his family! Also call DA Matthew Ditzhazy at: 661-267-5108. Demanding justice!
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    Created by Kandace Shaw Picture
  • Diverse Appointments to the NJ Police Training Commission
    The violence black people experience at the hands of police, and the racial disparity in incarceration rates in NJ is cruel, intolerably high, and must end. Inclusion of African Americans on the PTC allows representation for the most adversely affected community to help shape Police training and policy statewide. It provides African Americans with influence over creating and implementing changes to end systemic racism in policing, which leads to violence, including death, and over representation in prison and jail populations.
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    Created by Rev. H William Rutherford
  • Tell D.C Leaders: We Demand Police-Free Schools!
    The same police that are killing Black people in the streets and that continue to harass Black youth in the community, are the same police that are in our schools. We cannot continue to put our youth in harms way! We demand POLICE FREE SCHOOLS! We demand an end to the school-to-prison pipeline. It is simple: Black youth in D.C have been screaming "Love Us. Don't Harm Us"- divest from police in our schools and invest in the social-emotional health and well-being of youth! D.C is the MOST POLICED jurisdiction in America and Metropolitan Police Department's largest contract is with D.C. Public Schools. MPD currently receives $25 million to police and criminalize our youth! This increases the likelihood that adolescent behavior or responses to trauma will not be met with support but further harm. 74% of Black youth will not get the support they need. Instead: - Nearly 100% of all school expulsions are of Black youth, nearly 100% of school based arrest are of youth of color - D.C. police are also responsible for harassing and handcuffing Black youth as young as 9 years old. - 60% of girls arrested in D.C are under the age of 15. - Black girls in D.C are 30 times more likely to be arrested than white youth of any gender identity. - Often girls are disciplined and referred to police for their responses to sexual violence. This creates an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for girls, and compounds the trauma that survivors of gender base violence experience. Always, but especially now, our Black youth need love, not harm! We need to ensure that our young people have what they need to learn, that our young people have increased access to mental health professionals to address the heightened trauma caused by COVID -19 and, rampant police violence and racism. We need your support to protect Black and Brown youth from further harm and to preserve their right to live and thrive!
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    Created by Samantha Davis Picture
  • After the smoke clears... Arrest Juan DelaCruz for the senseless murder of Pamela Turner
    Because I too suffer with mental health issues and have been beaten by the police and plenty of counterparts on many horrific occasions, because of me failing to take my medication and becoming manic; so this could have been me, but only for the Grace of God. Her story resonates with me through and through, and come to find out, there's many others who've met a terrible demise like Pamela, due to police officers not being properly trained to deal with the mentally ill.
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    Created by Paulette Williams Picture
  • Tell Atlanta to Move $18 Million from Cuffs to Care!
    In a time of public health crisis and a $40 million budget deficit, it is unconscionable for the City of Atlanta to spend $18 million to lock people in cages for jaywalking and disorderly conduct. We can, in no way, allow for this jail - and potential hotspot - to exist any longer in our community, wasting desperately needed resources, criminalizing people for being poor, and making us all less safe.
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  • Let Anthony Go Home
    A judge determined that Anthony Swain was eligible for release, but set his bond at $650,000, an amount that no one but the very wealthiest would be able to afford. As a result, Anthony has suffered in jail for four years, waiting for a trial that never comes. He is a paraplegic man with a rare degenerative disease that affects his respiratory and immune system. Without proper medical treatment, the disease can be deadly. On top of that, Anthony was recently diagnosed with COVID19 and is now in isolation, dealing with incredible cruelty. The jail cannot care for him. Let Anthony Swain go home. Anthony is a 43-year-old Black man who is wheelchair-bound and has been paralyzed from the waist down for most of his life. In February of 2016, Anthony was arrested on drug charges. Before he was locked up, Anthony was a staple in his community. On any given weekend, he could be found at his church with his tight-knit family or doing fish fries to feed people in his neighborhood. Since he has been incarcerated, Anthony's condition has deteriorated. He was diagnosed with cystic myelomalacia in 2019, which causes respiratory problems and a weakened immune system. So when coronavirus hit Florida, Anthony knew he was especially at risk. He contacted Dream Defenders to file a lawsuit to secure the immediate release of medically vulnerable people like himself and wrote an op-ed to bring attention to the despicable conditions he has been forced to endure. Anthony believed that if he wasn't released immediately, he would catch the virus at the jail. He was correct. On Mother's Day, he could not breathe. He was taken to the hospital, where he tested positive for coronavirus. He was taken from the hospital back to the jail, where he is now in isolation in a tiny cell that can't accommodate his disability. Since he’s been in isolation, he’s been eaten by ants that have infested his cell, has open wounds all over his body from bedsores, and been unable to even clean himself. This is no way for a person to recover. In addition to immediate concerns about his health and well-being, Anthony is also at risk for long-term repercussions including blood clots, stroke, heart disease, neurocognitive disorders, and so much more. Anthony has been forced to endure utter cruelty for too long. An unaffordable bond shouldn't strip someone of their right to live a safe, healthy life.
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  • #FreeOurYouth in Philly now!
    As states across the country take steps to stop the spread of COVID-19--closing schools, canceling events, and shifting to supporting children in their homes and communities--one group of young people is being left behind: the nearly 50,000 youth in custody in the United States. It took staff killing a youth to close down Wordsworth Academy, and decades of child abuse to lead to an investigative news piece that would close down Glen Mills. Institutional violence persists toward Philadelphia children in detention across the state, and a growing consensus prevails, including in Philadelphia, that we do not want any children in cages. Yet, amidst an unprecedented global pandemic, minimal numbers of youth have been released from the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center. Over 100 youth still sit in this building, many pre-trial or on technical probation violations. Many more Philly youth are stuck in placement facilities across the state, many of them beyond discharge dates that have come and gone. And 19 children are locked in the city’s adult jails on State Road, all detained pretrial with no court date in sight. Mass release has been done in less urgent times. As YASP organizer Will Bentley reminds us, we send children to adult jail before we allow them to vote. We call on First Judicial District and Family Court leadership - Judges Fox, Tucker, Dugan, Murphy, Gordon, Cooperman, Rebstock, Irvine, and Hearing Officer Wahl - District Attorney Krasner; and Mayor Kenney - to act now to save the lives of the most vulnerable children of this city and allow them to come home to their families, which is smart on public safety and public health. We also demand that the upwards of $400/day that is spent to house youth in JJSC - which opened the same year that dozens of Philadelphia Public Schools closed - as well as funds used to hold young people in adult jails and juvenile placements, be redirected to public schools, community organizations, and job programs that serve our youth.
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    Created by Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project
  • Demand that Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx Decarcerate to Respond to COVID-19
    As of April 14, 2020, more than 300 people incarcerated in CCJ have tested positive for COVID-19 and 3 people have lost their lives. The rate of infection has climbed as high as 62 out of every 1,000 people incarcerated in the jail, and there are no doubt many more people who have COVID-19 but who have not been tested. Cook County Jail has been identified by the New York Times as the “top hot spot” in the nation’s pandemic. People incarcerated in jail are one of the populations most vulnerable to coronavirus and COVID-19, and their protection warrants special emergency action. Jails and prisons are known to quickly spread contagious diseases. Incarcerated people have an inherently limited ability to fight the spread of infectious disease since they are confined in close quarters and unable to avoid contact with people who may have been exposed. Cook County Jail is a death trap, and leaving people incarcerated there during this pandemic will result in the needless illness, suffering, and deaths of people in the jail’s custody, staff working inside the jail, and others in the community as our shared health care system becomes overwhelmed. As a candidate who campaigned on a progressive platform, it is State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx’s responsibility to take bold action now. If State’s Attorney Foxx continues the present course, more people will inevitably and unnecessarily lose their lives.
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    Created by Matthew McLoughlin Picture
  • California's COVID-19 Budget Must Support Decarceration!
    As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across California, people caged inside prisons and jails remain at the mercy of our elected officials. Last week, the California Senate formed the Budget Subcommittee on COVID-19 to address the budget needs of this crisis and will be holding their first hearing this Thursday April 16th at 2pm. The budget that California creates over the next few weeks will determine who lives and who dies. In Los Angeles alone there have been 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the jail population, 33 cases among staff, and one custody staff on life support. With over 700 prisoners quarantined in Los Angeles and many remaining to be tested, incarcerated people and their families fear that there are many more cases yet to be reported. Los Angeles, along with many counties across the state, are taking steps to reduce the jail population in order to slow down the continued spread of the virus. The jail population in LA is at the lowest levels since 1990 - dropping from over 17,000 prisoners to 12,800, largely due to the continued advocacy of groups like JusticeLA. Now is the time for the State to do its part and help fund jail and prison decarceration efforts by providing funds for: -- emergency housing for houseless people, -- transitional housing for people being released from jails and prisons, -- permanent housing for houseless people and people being released from jails and prisons, -- community-based treatment for people with mental health, behavioral health and biomedical needs transitioning out of incarceration, -- pretrial and post release services, -- post-conviction review and resentencing, -- alternatives to incarceration to support the release of additional people from jails and prisons, and -- free phone calls for families reaching their loved ones behind bars.
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    Created by Dignity and Power Now