February 26, 2021
Next week, the US House of Representatives will vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, legislation that will enact a number of common-sense and long-overdue reforms in policing. Safe Horizon, the nation’s largest non-profit victim assistance organization, strongly supports this legislation and we urge the House & Senate to pass the bill as soon as possible.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act will
- Make it easier for victims of police violence and misconduct to recover damages in a civil lawsuit against individual police officers;
- Lower the standard for the prosecution of police officers for misconduct;
- Ban police chokeholds by federal agents, classify chokeholds as civil rights violations, and pressure state and local law enforcement to impose local bans;
- Restrict use of no-knock warrants by banning them in federal drug cases and incentivizing states to do the same;
- Require that officers employ de-escalation techniques before using deadly force as last resort;
- Change use of force justification from “reasonable” to “necessary;”
- Create a national database to record police misconduct by individual officers;
- Limit the transfer of military equipment to state and local law enforcement;
- Limit the use of facial recognition technology; Mandate anti-bias trainings for officers and require law enforcement agencies to explicitly prohibit racial, religious, or other discriminatory profiling; and
- Reinvest in communities and establish grants for CBOs to reimagine public safety.
Very simply, we cannot aspire to live in a society free of violence if we do not advocate for sensible, common-sense police reform. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many other Black men and women compel us to use our voice and our influence in government to call for meaningful change to build the violence-free society to which we aspire.
Throughout our history, we have worked with and alongside the NYPD on behalf of our clients. Through these partnerships, we have seen police officers take steps to keep victims safe and hold those who cause harm accountable through criminal justice measures. We have advocated for policy and practice changes to make these systems more responsive to our clients. And we have prided ourselves on bringing greater respect, compassion, and self-determination to survivors in the criminal justice process through our client-centered approach to advocacy. Because of our partnership with the NYPD, Safe Horizon is able to engage and support tens of thousands of crime victims each year.
Yet the reality is that our law enforcement partners have also caused harm, and we have not done all we could to stop that harm, or even name it for what it all too often is – racism. Black and brown people, especially men and transgender women, are far more likely to be killed by the police and experience violence at the hands of police officers. And they face bias and inequity in every aspect of the criminal justice system. We didn’t just learn this because of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Our clients and staff have been telling us about these realities for years. Our reluctance in the past to emphatically condemn racist and abusive behavior by law enforcement signaled our tolerance for it and was inconsistent with our mission and values as an anti-violence organization.
Safe Horizon’s mission is to provide support, prevent violence, and promote justice for victims of crime and abuse, their families, and communities. We believe that confronting racist and abusive behavior in policing is necessary to fulfilling our mission because systemic racism denies justice, and is rooted in violence.