Support a professional police licensing law to require education and to enforce discipline for our communities.

This is a call upon our state legislators and state senators to establish a state professional police licensing board.  There are state, municipal, public school, university, port authority, and other types of police.  All police officers are supposed to be professionals, so they should be professionally licensed.  All licensed professionals are required to take continuing education, with a curriculum relevant to current concerns, and all licensed professionals are subject to discipline upon a complaint to the state government.

This is also a call upon our state legislators to enact legislation.  At the federal level, after the 1983 S&L Bank crash, Congress passed legislation to withhold funding from any state that did not establish a state professional licensing board for real estate appraisers.  Now all states have professionally licensed appraisers.  So, if our federal elected officials hear from us that police treatment must no longer be racially biased, just as they heard from moneyed interests in 1983, then they will pass legislation to withhold funding from any state not establishing a state professional licensing board for police officers.

A police officer licensing law should require education and training on:

AWARENESS OF IMPLICIT/COVERT RACIAL BIAS 

CONTROLLING A PERSON FOR ARREST WITHOUT CAUSING INJURY OR HARM (banning choke holds and similar de facto killing procedures)

USING LANGUAGE AND BODY POSTURING TO DEESCALATE 

The current Pennsylvania police officer certification, education, and training legislation, 53 Pa.C.S.A. §2161, et seq., is deficient in such training.

For a personal touch, find your state legislator and state senator at

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/

And call, write, email, visit their local office.  Black Lives Matter!