POLICE REFORM

The Cause

Partnering communities and police departments to rethink public safety and renew trust in policing practices

Safety is a civil and human right without which people cannot thrive and democracy cannot function. But our nation’s approach to public safety — and whom it protects — is at odds with our shared values of fairness, equity, and justice. From early slave patrols to the modern-day criminalization of people of color, policing has sowed deep distrust of law enforcement across our nation. That history is alive today, borne out in disparities in practices ranging from stops and searches to arrests and use of force.

The outpourings of grief and generational pain we’ve seen in recent years are a response not only to unjust policing of Black people — they are a cry for public officials to take action and achieve a new paradigm for policing.

What’s next? Elected leaders should publicly commit to make changes and end police violence. But any process to transform public safety and ensure our communities thrive is going to take more. To ensure that progress moves in the right direction, state and local leaders and communities must work toward a vision of public safety that holds police accountable and invests in communities.

A New Era is Possible

The Content

To ensure that police officers serve and protect people in all communities, we launched the New Era of Public Safety initiative, which offers groundbreaking tools to increase trust, fairness, justice, and mutual respect between police departments and the communities they serve. The core deliverables were an exhaustive report and companion toolkit that offered community-centered policy solutions to equip communities and police departments with best practices and recommendations for adopting 21st century policing models, including tools for advocacy.

Contributions included:

Kneel Against Injustice – Timed with the NFL Kickoff Game and earnestly tapping into the prevailing emotions of the moment, we created a video that was widely shared by the leading civil rights and justice reform organizations and their communities.
New Era launch event & collateral materials – We gathered the who’s who of the police reform movement, which even included progressive police chiefs from major US cities who – alongside activists – also seek reform and an end to police violence. Our beautifully-designed handbook and toolkit gained traction with policymakers and thought leaders so that when America needed a path forward during the George Floyd summer of 2020, many experts looked to our expertise to help lead the way.
Website & sample social content – Seizing the moment of public outcry and confusion, our team produced a steady drumbeat of content to help shape the narrative and drive change.
Accountable Now – Every day, police use force across the country but we have no way to track it. So we launched a collaborative project dedicated to collecting data on police behavior and making it public for all to see. It’s not just numbers. It’s people. They deserve accountability.