It is not possible to reform the police.
By: Acre, Action Center On Race, The Economy
Tags: Police, Racial Justice, BlackLivesMatter, Police Brutality, Capitalism

Dear Movement —

It is not possible to reform the police.

We are in a moment of crisis and met with the opportunity for transformation. The brutal police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many other Black lives have sparked an uprising against racist police violence. At the heart of these uprisings have been calls to arrest, prosecute, defund, and abolish the police. As organizers and organizations with large platforms, and bases of individuals and their families locally and nationally, we have a responsibility to put forth and support the most transformative solutions we can imagine.

It is with this conviction that we raise our concerns with the proposed protocols proposed by Campaign Zero in “8 Can’t Wait”, a set of eight protocols recommended to reduce police violence by 72%. As members of a growing movement that aims to radically rethink the very idea of policing, we believe it is critical for our movement to engage in comradely debates on the best ways to do this. It should not be considered radical or out of reach to have a world where we can live freely without being killed by the state. This historic moment is calling on us to end police violence, not simply reduce it by a percentage as “8 Can’t Wait” has suggested.

When we imagine what safety means, police and prisons are not in our vision. We think of our families, our neighborhoods, schools, housing, food, and the breath of fresh air that comes with having control over our lives and having our needs met. Under our current failing system, public safety is equated with police and prisons, despite the centuries of racist violence and trauma that these institutions have brought into our lives and sustained. While these issues have primarily impacted Black, Afrolatinx, non-Black Latinx, Indigenous, Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities, and poor communities, the issues of policing and prisons impact us all because it is a sustaining force of racial capitalism.

Organizers around the U.S. are demanding that their local city administrations defund and disband the police. We support that demand and see it as a step towards the abolition of police. We stand against narrowly focused reformist demands that seek to use this moment for solutions that only get us a part of the way towards this goal. Demands and recommendations such as better police training to de-escalate and avoid shooting, better reporting post-incident, and stronger use of force policies have not proven to eliminate police killings or hold police accountable for their violence after the fact.

As the “8 Can’t Wait” campaign graphics show, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, for example, four or more of the eight recommended protocols are already in place, yet these cities continue to report high rates of racist and violent police misconduct. After Mike Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 many of us demanded body cameras and were supportive of that response to police violence. We quickly saw that body cameras did not make a difference and could not make a difference if the broader narrative around public safety was still supportive of policing.

As we enter this new phase of the Black Lives Matter Movement, we need demands that advance our struggle and move us closer to abolition, not ones that can be used by the state to give cover to the violence inherent in the system of policing. Even as we watch uprisings across the country, police continue to kill people across the country. We do not want the police to “exhaust all other means before shooting” because those means are also violent and deadly. We want the police disarmed like many other countries already have. We cannot in good conscience endorse a platform that would allow 28% of police violence to continue.

Transforming and, ultimately, abolishing policing today means we need to go beyond the policies that are already in place and failing. Transformative means we need to activate a radical imagination for a world beyond what we’ve seen in the past and continue to see today. A world where police end the war on Black people. A world where communities are in control of our lives, our health, our needs, and our futures.

Police violence is a tangible result of the insidious nature of racial capitalism. Law enforcement is used to control communities of color and poor people in order to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the wealthy elites and those in power. Any demand made against policing in the U.S., and around the globe, must shift power out of the hands of the wealthy and the muscle of law enforcement — that includes federal, state, and local law enforcement, ICE, and private police — and into the hands of the historically oppressed. The issue is systemic and we will continue to push a systemic solution. Abolishing the police is our goal. Defunding, disarming, and disbanding are the means. No police violence is acceptable, and we stand firmly committed to defunding and abolishing the police.

Signed,

Organizations

The Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)

UBUNTU Research and Evaluation

Gangland Political Party (GPP)

Alliance for Educational Justice

Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)

Freedom, Inc.

Equity and Transformation (EAT)

Freedom, Inc.

Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism

Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC)

Black Visions Collective

Black Lives Matter Louisville

Southerners On New Ground

MPower Change

BYP100

Black Lives Matter Inland Empire

The BlackOUT Collective

Resource Generation

Revolve Impact

Liberation House

Essie Justice Group

Frontline Wellness Network

Revolve Impact

JusticeLA

La Defensa

Partners for Dignity & Rights

Flint Rising

Poder In Action

Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project (BLMP)

ZEAL

Public Health Justice Collective

Resist. Reimagine. Rebuild. (R3 Coalition)

Fair World Project

Fund for Democratic Communities

TESA Collective

Law for Black Lives

Dignity & Power NOW

MPD150

Individuals

Maurice BP-Weeks

Alyxandra Goodwin

Tracey Corder

Akua G.

Brianna Gibson

Shawn Sebastian

Anshantia Oso

Tara Raghuveer

Ben Ishibashi

Dmitri Holtzman

Maurice Mitchell

Cherrell Brown

Divya Sundaram

Phillip Agnew

Montague Simmons

Dr. Monique Liston

Shavonda Sisson

Jonathan Stith

Andrea Ritchie

Erin Heaney

Jasson Perez

Richard Wallace

James Hayes

Leslie Mac

Christina Novaton

Daniel Aldana Cohen

Angela Lang

Keisha Robinson

Rick Banks

Renata Pumarol

Cazembe Jackson

Kandace Montgomery

Charlene A. Carruthers

Sister Alison McCrary, SFCC, Esq.

Kelcey Duggan

Saqib Bhatti

Lauren Mateo

Leigh Friedman

Chanelle Helm

Chris Love

Philip McHarris

Mary Hooks

Nafisah Ula

Lena K. Gardner

Lauren Jacobs

Katrina L. Rogers

Denzel Caldwell

Kifah Shah

Paige Ingram

Lau Barrios

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Yana Ludwig

Tyger Caygill-Walsh

Lauren Jacobs

Della Duncan

Sarah Treuhaft

Ameca Reali

Broderick Dunlap

Chinyere Tutashinda

Yahya Alazrak

Jonathan Lykes

Liz Sutton

Gina Clayton-Johnson

Ivette Alé

Eunisses Hernandez

Kelly Baker

Peter Sabonis

Lena K. Gardner

Nayyirah Shariff

Christine Mitchell

Viridiana Hernandez

Rachel Berkowitz

Helen Forsythe

Mike de la Rocha

Joshua Sankara

Amber Akemi Piatt

Jessica Quiason

Jae Hyun Shim

Amy Tran

Amy Livingston

Anna Canning

Arianna Nason

Marnie Thompson

Kyra Brown

Peter VanKoughnett

Luke Amphlett

Ricardo Levins Morales

Lex Steppling

Tony Williams

Molly Glasgow

Addison Turner

Reema Ahmad

Mariana M.

Kim Flores

Erika Thi Patterson

8 Can’t Wait Critique and Abolition Study Resources

1. 8 to Abolition — http://8toabolition.com

2. 8 can’t wait is based on faulty data science — https://medium.com/@8cantwait.faulty/8cantwait-is-based-on-faulty-data-science-a4e0b85fae40

3. Critical Resistance — https://twitter.com/c_resistance/status/1268712313634209794?s=21

4. Jenny J Lee (crediting other abolitionists) — https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_-_vgDukS/?igshid=1a1t1gssmta9m

5. Petition to recall 8 Can’t Wait: https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/recall-8cantwait

6. Dignity and Power Now Statement — https://twitter.com/powerdignity/status/1268735286646726656?s=21

7. Youth Justice Coalition (in LA) — https://twitter.com/youthjusticela/status/1269082828358074368?s=21

8. LA CAN Network (statement and sign on letter) — https://cangress.org

9. Movement 4 Black Lives — https://medium.com/@m4blcomms/defunding-police-what-it-takes-to-end-police-violence-bb164a70e89b

10. BYP100 Demands