Hillary Clinton granted Black Lives Matter several minutes of her time recently where she instructed its representatives to come up with a plan to accompany their rhetoric. She said awareness about inequality was not enough, they needed to figure out “what [they] want done about it.”
While activists associating with Black Lives Matter do not have any nationally recognized leadership, prominent individuals involved in the movement have developed an extensive platform called Campaign Zero addressing the problems they see with police killings, and other violence they see as being perpetrated by police in minority communities.
The tone of the campaign follows:
We can live in a world where the police don’t kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions, and ensuring accountability.
Included in the campaign are 10 specific proposals or areas of concern:
- End Broken Window Policing
- Community Oversight
- Limit Use of Force
- Independently Investigate & Prosecute
- Community Representation
- Body Cams/Film the Police
- Training
- End For-Profit Policing
- Demilitarization
- Fair Police Union Contracts
While some ideas seem fair (from End For-Profit Policing: seizing property of civilians (i.e. civil forfeiture) unless they are convicted of a crime and the state establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture), others ignore rules already in place (from Body Cams/Film the Police: Ban police officers from taking cell phones or other recording devices without a person’s consent or warrant and give people the right to sue police departments if they take or destroy these devices ), and many are counterproductive to peaceful communities. Under End Broken Window Policing, which has been credited with reduction in crime (citing the same Wikipedia article that Campaign Zero does), Campaign Zero wants to eliminate police action for or de-prioritize the following offenses:
Consumption of Alcohol on Streets
Marijuana Possession
Disorderly Conduct
Trespassing
Loitering
Disturbing the Peace (including Loud Music)
Spitting
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