Summary of slides by: Mojisola Ayodele, Darrah Blackwell, and Liza Kalinina: https://ataglancee.org/2020/07/20/how-to-protest-safely/

On May 25, 2020 a 46-year-old black man named George Floyed died in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Derek Chauvin, a white officer, knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 9 minutes. When the paramedics arrived, Chauvin still kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for another minute. In this process, Floyd was murdered. Floyd’s death sparked outrage across the country and the world. Chauvin was originally charged with third degree murder, but due to an immense amount of displeasement on he was charged with second-degree murder. The 3 other officers are now charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. 

America and the world are angered with the unjust killings of black men and women. All 50 states and many countries have been protesting to spark change. “No Justice, No Peace”, “I can’t breathe”, and “Say his name” are being yelled. Sadly the response from the police has not been 100% positive. The protests are occurring to fight against police’s abuse of power, and at the protests, police are still misusing their power, using tear-gas which is illegal in war, and rubber bullets which are metal wrapped around a small lining of rubber. Multiple individuals have gotten surgeries as a result of the excessive force used by police. Lots of good have come out of these protests though.

End profiling and stop frisking

Establish enforceable protections against profiling to prevent police from intervening in civilian lives for no reason other than the “suspicion” of their blackness or other aspects of their identity. This should include:

• immigration status, age, housing status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, HIV status, race, religion and national origin as protected groups
• the right for people to seek court orders to stop police departments from profiling
• bans on both intentional profiling and practices that have a disparate impact on protected groups
• ban stops for “furtive” movements such as a reaching for waistband or acting nervous,  for being in a high-crime area, and for matching a generalized description of a suspect (i.e. black male ages 15-25)
• require officers to establish objective justification for making a stop and to report every stop including location, race, gender, whether force was used and whether a firearm was found.
• end the use of predictive policing technology, which uses systematically biased data to enhance police profiling of black people and communities
• prohibit police departments from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, report, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes.
• prohibit police departments from transferring an individual to federal immigration authorities for purposes of immigration enforcement and being placed under the supervision of federal agencies or deputized as special federal officers or special federal deputies.

Establish standards and reporting of police use of deadly force

• Authorize deadly force only when there is an imminent threat to an officer’s life or the life of another person and such force is strictly unavoidable to protect life as required under International Law. 
• Require that an officer’s tactical conduct and decisions leading up to using deadly force be considered in judgements of whether such force was necessary and reporting of police killings and serious injuries of civilians
• Require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before using deadly force and give people a reasonable amount of time to comply with the warning
• Require the names of the officer(s) involved and victim(s) to be released within 72 hours of a deadly force incident 

by Serena Lathi