In their choice of a police chief and through other local initiatives, mayors can make major strides in improving the way their constituents interact with police and the criminal justice system. By Collier Meyerson — “It angers me how we keep going down the same path expecting a different result. We believe over-incarceration and over-policing leads to less crime, yet we have more crime,” Chokwe Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson,…
By Ronald E Hampton — Critics of community policing say that the idea of a friendly beat officer acting as some magic bullet solution for serious crimes such as murders,…
By Ronald E Hampton — Many African-Americans today believe that law and order is not being kept in their communities. The average African-American citizen is terribly dissatisfied with the police…
The 27-year-old activist whose father’s killing sparked a national outcry did not die at the hands of police like him. But her death is still an outrage that speaks to…
By Herbert Dyer, Jr. — The viral video of a white, middle-class University of Utah Hospital Head Nurse, one Alex Wubbels, being manhandled and thrown into the back of a police car…
By Phillip Smith, www.alternet.org Last month, the Drug Policy Alliance released a report noting that marijuana arrests under New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continue to be marked by…
Since neither drug users nor dealers consider themselves crime victims, deepening the drug war must rely on coercive tactics that erode public trust. By Dean A. Dabney, The Conversation The…
The harm that biased marijuana enforcement has on Black, Latino, and low-income communities is real. By Cat Packer, Drug Policy Alliance I went into law school thinking that I wanted…
Earlier this year, activists launched a campaign called Freedom Cities to protect and uplift all people of color. (And, no, it doesn’t include more police.) By Zenobia Jeffries, Yes! Magazine…
Paul Butler talks about breaking the “chokehold” on African American men By Sam Fullwood III Early on, in his recently published book, Chokehold [Policing Black Men], Paul Butler states, “[c]ops…
As debate raged around health care and Russia-gate last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions quietly held a “national summit” of law enforcement representatives to discuss the future of policing. Vice…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump turns Will Rogers famed maxim that he never met a man he didn’t like on its head every time when…