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This City Stopped Sending Police to Every 911 Call

Christie Thompson

July 24, 2020 |

The Marshall Project |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Olympia, Washington

Since April 2019, Olympia’s Crisis Response Unit has sent civilian first-responders instead of police officers to hundreds of “quality of life” calls such as a mental health crisis or problems related to addiction or homelessness. Providing services while doing outreach on the streets, following up on previous calls, or dispatched by 911 operators or police, these responders connect people with the services they need to be safe and healthy, freeing police to handle more serious calls and avoiding police interactions that can lead to violence or needless jail stays.

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Your Zoom Interrogation Is About To Start

Eli Hager

July 20, 2020 |

The Marshall Project |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Traditional police interrogation tactics that emphasize invading someone’s personal space to increase anxiety, read body language, and prompt confessions have had to undergo changes during the pandemic, some of which offer new advantages. While police say they lose some needed leverage to do their jobs when interviews are conducted through masks, outdoors in public, or via teleconferencing screens, the workarounds encourage taping of all interviews and more transparency when the public can observe how police work.

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The hidden hand that uses money to reform troubled police departments

Kit Ramgopal Brenda Breslauer

July 19, 2020 |

NBC News |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Smaller cities that cannot afford costly payouts for civil settlements in police misconduct cases rely on liability insurance, which can act as a regulator when insurers demand reforms up to and including disbanding troubled departments. While police killings have decreased in large cities over the past six years, they have increased in the suburban and rural areas served by the vast majority of police departments. “Loss prevention” measures that require policy and personnel changes have been proven to work, but insurance that fails to police the police can also shield cities from accountability.

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How a Coalition of New York Activists Revealed Police-Department Secrets

Tom Robbins

July 17, 2020 |

The New Yorker |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New York

When New York legislators abolished a state law that had long shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from public scrutiny, they were not just responding to recent protests but also to activism over many years by reform advocates and families of victims of police violence. Long-running legal challenges had failed to pry the records loose. But activists – opposed by police unions and their allies – had used public testimony, publicity, and their families’ stories to lay the groundwork for changes that then came quickly after George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests of police brutality.

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What Philly can learn about smarter policing from Volusia County, Florida

Jessica Blatt Press

July 15, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Daytona Beach, Florida

Since he took over the Volusia County, Florida, Sheriff's Office in 2016, Philadelphia police veteran Mike Chitwood changed many of his department's personnel and put the entire 1,000-employee department through de-escalation training. By 2019, the reforms were credited with cutting deputies' use of force in half, all while crime dropped by 40% and arrests by 30%. A core piece of the training, inspired by Scottish police, is the Police Executive Research Forum's ICAT program, which emphasizes critical thinking and communication skills over the threat of deadly force.

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Community peacemakers in Chicago offer a proven alternative to policing

Loretta Graceffo

July 14, 2020 |

Waging Nonviolence |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Nonviolence Chicago uses street-outreach workers to mediate disputes and connect residents of violence-prone neighborhoods to needed services. Its work, amounting to tens of thousands of contacts per year with people involved in violence, has contributed to efforts that reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings in the Austin neighborhood by nearly half from 2016 to 2019. By replacing the police with former gang members and others with street credibility, and working with both victims and shooters, Nonviolence Chicago wins the trust of residents.

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Bankruptcy forced this California city to defund police. Here's how it changed public safety

Anita Chabria

July 13, 2020 |

Los Angeles Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Stockton, California

Since filing for bankruptcy in 2012, at a time of high unemployment, spiking homicide rates, and deep alienation of the public from its police, Stockton, California has served as an experiment in involuntarily defunding of a police department. The city’s police chief championed a rethinking of policing’s role, seeking community partnerships with a police force whose ranks had been reduced to one of the lowest per-capita in the U.S. Serious problems remain, but public trust is up, crime is down, and homicides are solved at a much higher rate than in most cities.

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Could This City Hold the Key to the Future of Policing in America?

Joseph Goldstein Kevin Armstrong

July 12, 2020 |

The New York Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Camden, New Jersey

Although driven by financial desperation and a desire to break a union, Camden, New Jersey’s decision to dismantle its police department and form a new one focused more on limiting its use of force has paid off in better community relations and arguably a role in reducing the city’s violence. Its approach is in high demand by other cities facing the same problems Camden confronted. At the same time, the reconstituted police force is faulted by critics for relying on intrusive surveillance and making racially disparate arrests for minor offenses.

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As protests against police brutality go global, these Latina moms fight in memory of their sons

Esmeralda Bermudez

July 07, 2020 |

Los Angeles Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Los Angeles County, California

Mothers of young Latino men killed by sheriff’s deputies in East Los Angeles have struggled to pry information from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but along the way they have formed a network of support groups helping fellow survivors cope with their grief and trauma. The loosely organized groups, populated mainly by women who hardly consider themselves activists, respond to the scenes of police shootings and engage with the mothers of victims in the weeks and months afterward. They have formed a sort of accountability watchdog brigade for a department that resists oversight.

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They envisioned a world without police. Inside Seattle's CHOP zone, protesters struggled to make it real

Elle Reeve Samantha Guff

July 06, 2020 |

CNN |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

The police-free zone that emerged during Seattle's protests in June 2020 was meant to demonstrate how safety could be provided by the community itself. But the six-square-block area, called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), devolved into chaos and deadly violence thanks in part to the inability of organizers and their security team to keep armed people from committing violence. When fistfights turned into multiple shootings, and an ambulance crew could not reach a shooting victim, who died, police finally moved in and cleared the area.

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