Police Reform

Police pretextual stops, in which traffic police pull people over as an excuse to search them, should no longer be allowed.

Last month, Glamour magazine featured “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay on the cover of its “Women of the Year” issue. On Nov. 8, an avalanche of A-list celebrities — including “SVU” co-stars Christopher Meloni and Ice-T, actress Melissa McCarthy, and #MeToo co-founder Tarana Burke — honored Hargitay at the Women of the Year Awards which was held at the Rainbow Room, a ballroom that serves as one of the epicenters of New York City high-society.

Citing years of police brutality and racial disparities in arrests, activists are pushing candidates to embrace reforms ahead of next week’s Democratic primaries.

While Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey faces scrutiny over policing and racial equity issues, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has helped his city achieve progressive milestones, say lawmakers and advocates.

The state representative will almost certainly be the city’s first Black mayor, and his victory follows a year of nationwide social upheaval over police and racial justice issues.

Incumbent Bill Peduto’s policing record is under scrutiny after protests last summer. He is facing what may be his most competitive race yet.

Cities across the country must rethink the role of law enforcement, as police continue to brutalize and kill Black men and women during traffic stops, advocates say.

Nezhad, a community organizer, is seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey on a platform of transforming public safety without police, providing housing for all, and addressing poverty through direct economic support.

Cities across the country have begun exploring traffic enforcement without police. This bill proposes doing so statewide.

Community members and advocates question why Mayor Jim Kenney and the City Council continue to fund the police department at record levels, despite the department’s low murder solve rate.

A new report de-anonymizes hundreds of officers in the city and shows more than 1,800 cops have had complaints filed about them.

There may be one reason for local progressives to support Walsh for the U.S. secretary of labor: He’ll leave town.

Two moped riders were left dead or injured after recent police pursuits in Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island.

Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them.

Current law mandated that the city have at least 1,971 full-time police officers.

Hollins’s ‘very personal’ decision to run was sparked in part by the Trump administration ‘catching everything on fire.’ Now she wants to advocate for subsidized child care, police reform, and more.

In the face of a pandemic and police violence, elected leaders have failed to keep us safe and to champion the voices of marginalized communities like mine. Now it is time to determine our own future.

The 17-year-old, who his lawyers say was pushed off a fence by a police officer, survived the fall but suffered serious injuries.

Now is the time to act. If we have learned anything since George Floyd’s death, it is that we cannot keep waiting for change.

Removing police union influence from the prosecutor’s office is a critical first step towards building a system that is safe, just, and fair for all.

A June report from the county’s independent judicial arm urges local government to reallocate law enforcement resources to social services.

Qualified immunity is just one obstacle of many that incarcerated people face when seeking to hold correctional officers accountable for misconduct.

Police should no longer occupy all of our vital support systems in our communities.

In the 1990s, Davis was a policing superstar, hailed as the best crime solver the Crescent City had ever seen. But a dispute over a paid detail at a festival turned into a major federal case against her, brought by a prosecutor involved whose conduct in other cases was called ‘grotesque.’

In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers, journalists, and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines—like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine—so that everyone can understand them. Wherever possible, we try to utilize the stories of […]

The city’s clearance rate for murder, whose victims are disproportionately Black, has hovered around 40 percent for the last several years.

The Department of Justice is leaving researchers, policymakers, and advocates in the dark about deaths in police custody, prisons, and jails.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has hampered the process of installing a police oversight council, activists say, despite making it a major part of her public safety platform during her mayoral run.

Protesters and activists have categorically changed the national conversation about public safety. Now they have to figure out how to change public policy.

The cuts will defund a controversial gang policing unit and end the city’s policing partnership with TriMet, the regional transit agency.

A lawyer with the state attorney general’s office omitted key evidence in a meeting with the family of Ricky Ball, who Canyon Boykin shot and killed in 2015.

Yes, we must radically transform policing in America. But we cannot stop there. We must transform the pervasive systems of economic and carceral injustice that are choking our common life.

The New Jersey department received slavish media praise after it was disbanded and reoriented toward community policing. But behind the reformist mask was an embrace of surveillance and broken windows policing.

Breonna Taylor was killed nearly three months ago during a no-knock raid. All 26 members of the Metro Council have signed on as co-sponsors to “Breonna’s Law,” which would ban them.

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has asked for the budget increase amid ongoing local and national reports of police violence against protesters.

Coroners and police departments have cited the condition in cases across the country, often clearing officers of wrongdoing when people die in their custody. In Floyd’s case, experts say, the diagnosis is irrelevant to his death.

The move follows the police killing of George Floyd and more than a week of uprisings, where hundreds of thousands of people around the world have protested against police violence, and abusive police responses to the protests.

Under the HEROES Act, the Community Oriented Policing Services program would receive $300 million to fund the hiring of more police. Democratic and Republican leaders alike remain committed to the ideology of increased funding, even under the guise of reform.

A Philadelphia police union’s recent attack on Players Coalition co-founder Malcolm Jenkins matches rhetorical tactics that officers’ groups are using in the face of outspoken support for criminal justice reforms.

Lexipol, a private for-profit company, has quietly become one of the most powerful voices in law enforcement policymaking in the country.