America has allowed police brutality to exist as an accepted practice for far too long, and we are now truly seeing the unfair effects it has had on the people of this country, especially minorities, over many generations. Nobody should have to live in fear of law enforcement, as it is their job to protect us. Listed below is the framework for specific guidelines and laws that need to be implemented immediately to ensure that all Americans are treated equally under the law.

This is a bi-partisan issue, as every American ought to be opposed to the civil-rights violations that have taken place at the hands of police brutality. As a result, we are calling for bi-partisan action from House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, and President Trump to enact these common-sense, non-partisan laws that would protect the American people from police brutality:

• Require all officers to wear body cameras and microphones whenever they are on duty, with no exceptions. This will ensure that every action committed by every officer across the country is recorded in order to hold them accountable for their actions. This will also assist in allowing those who are detained/arrested by an officer to have the evidence they need if they want to file a formal complaint against the officer. This is because the body camera and microphone will provide hard evidence as to what actually occurred, which will either back up the claims being made by the citizen/US resident against the officer or vindicate the officer of wrongdoing. 
• Require all officers to state the reason that the citizen/US resident they have detained is under arrest immediately at the scene. This will help the citizen/US resident if they wish to file a formal complaint, as they will have been provided with a specific charge to legally challenge. It will also cause officers to be less likely to make arrests without a valid reason. This provision can be carried out similar to the way that officers recite Miranda Rights, and can be enforced by regularly checking the body cameras and microphones of officers to make sure that they are fulfilling this legal requirement when making arrests.
• Expand the ability for citizens/US residents who have been arrested/detained by an officer to file a formal complaint against them. Create a strict time requirement that each complaint must be reviewed by and enforce it through annual government inspections of local police departments/records. Have police departments then submit each complaint to one of the following groups: 
  - A government-approved civil rights group
  - Government-approved neutral arbitrators (people with backgrounds as lawyers could fill this role) 
  - A judge
  Have this person/group make a determination on whether the complaint was warranted or if the officer did in fact correctly apply the law, and determine if and how the officer should be disciplined depending on the ruling and their past history of offenses.
• Narrow the legal scope of the “probable cause” term necessary for an officer to detain someone, arrest someone, or remove them from their vehicle, and further specify its meaning. Too many officers are allowed to apprehend people based on their own paranoia/suspicion when they shouldn’t have the legal standing to do so.
• Increase the current discipline level for officers who are found to have made an arrest without probable cause or who are found to have done something warranting a complaint. Too many officers with valid complaints against them have received little to no discipline over the years. Enact this provision by having the federal government implement a uniform, structured system of discipline for a wide array of offenses that could hypothetically be committed by an officer. Increase the severity of the discipline based on factors such as the severity of unfair treatment, the severity of the offense the citizen/US resident was wrongfully accused of, or based on the amount/severity of past infringements made by the officer. This increase in discipline severity could be used as a deterrent to keep officers from abusing their positions.
• Run rigorous background checks of every officer upon their hiring to make sure that they do not have any past ties to hate organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, etc. Preventing individuals from these groups from becoming officers would have a huge impact on correcting systemic racism and preventing bigoted ideologies from overrunning police departments.
• Ban stop and frisk in all forms. The practice of randomly detaining, questioning, and at times searching civilians on the street for weapons and other contraband without probable cause is entirely unwarranted and unconstitutional, as it violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution which bans unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause.
• Eliminate and ban monthly ticket quotas within police departments for the number of tickets each officer must write. These quotas are in place to ensure that police departments can generate a certain amount of revenue, and they incentivize officers to pull people over, causing officers to often write out unfair and unwarranted citations, especially towards members of the African American community.
• Have the federal government create a uniform system of guidelines on how officers should handle a wide array of both minor and serious offenses/reasonable suspicions. The harshness of the enforcement should depend on the specificity of the offense/reasonable suspicion so that minor offenses/suspicions would only warrant minor reactions from officers and major offenses/suspicions would then allow the officers to carry out stricter enforcement of the law. Creating a uniform and mandatory system of enforcement would ensure that every citizen in America is treated equally under the law by officers. It would strive to make sure that each citizen would only be treated on the basis of their presumed offense and not on the basis of race, gender, orientation, religion, etc.
• Set up Junior Police Academies in communities with large minority populations in order to de-stigmatize law enforcement and encourage minorities to join the police force in an effort to combat systemic racism. These Junior Police Academies could be largely run by POC officers, allowing young children in these communities to see people similar to them in positions of power. Provide a pathway for members of the Junior Police Academies to eventually receive training and work their way into the police force.
• Require that every officer in the nation take mandatory de-escalation courses during their training (or currently, if their formal training has already been completed and they have not taken such a course in the past) so that they can specialize in diffusing tense situations, avoid violence, and avoid misunderstandings with those who they detain/arrest.
• Require that every officer in the nation take mandatory ethics courses during their training (or currently, if their formal training has already been completed and they have not taken such a course in the past) so that they can sympathize with the communities they vow to protect, treat citizens/US residents civilly and humanely, and treat people equally regardless of race, gender, orientation, religion, etc.
• Mandate that an officer cannot obtain sexual consent from someone who is in custody, with no exceptions. This would seek to prevent any and all sexual assault to those in custody, as they would be legally unable to give consent due to the unfair position they would find themselves in with the officer holding all of the power over them. Therefore, any sexual advances made by an officer onto someone in custody would not be protected under the law. Officers would no longer be able to claim that sexual activity which took place with someone in custody was consensual, eliminating the loophole which allows officers to force the citizen/US resident they have detained/arrested into doing whatever they desire due to the current power dynamic.
• Create guidelines that make it clear that police officers may not use excessive force to shut down peaceful protests unless events such as rioting, looting, violence instigated by the protestors, or significant curfew violations occur. If any officer is found to have instigated unwarranted violence at a peaceful protest, terminate their employment immediately and bring them up on criminal charges. Ban the firing of rubber bullets from within 50 meters of civilians and discipline officers who resort to firing rubber bullets at protestors from within 50 meters.
• Create a system for officers to be able to file an ethics complaint within their own department. This would allow an officer to report a fellow officer if they notice that their fellow officer has done something potentially racist, prejudiced, brutal, or committed any other action that is an unwarranted danger to civilians. The claims made in the ethics complaint could be kept confidential and then be verified or denied based on body camera and microphone footage.