The police kill over 1000 people on average every year.  Over 100 of these killings are of unarmed people. Half of these murders are of people with disabilities. Black people are murdered at three times the rate of white people. Latinos are killed at almost twice the rate of white people. The LGBTQIA community is as many as 4 times as likely to be victimized by the police.  And no group is killed by police more disproportionately by law enforcement than Native Americans.  Those at the intersections of these groups are even more frequently targeted for excessive and deadly force.  

Attempts to protect these communities from local law enforcement has led to the passage of a number of federal laws; however, these laws have suffered from their own weaknesses as well as erosion from generations of political counter-maneuvers. Every weakness provides a trapdoor that allows law enforcement officers to brutalize and kill members of the community without facing consequences. Until all of these trapdoors are sealed shut, law enforcement will continue to escape legal consequences. The No Officer Left Behind (NOLB) campaign seeks to end police brutality by passing federal legislation that will:

1. Modernize and Reorganize the Force - The model of law enforcement that is being applied today has changed little since the 1830s when it was developed and when southern law enforcement agencies were known as slave patrols. The time has long passed for the modernization of the force. Local law enforcement must be reorganized to divide and disarm the force in order to structurally decrease the likelihood than an encounter with law enforcement will turn into the unnecessary killing of another community member. The force should be divided into unarmed, non-lethally armed and fully armed groups that respond to non-violent, low level violence and lethally violent calls.

2. Close All Legal Loopholes in Federal Protections - Federal legislation has been passed in efforts to protect minority groups from being targeted and brutalized by the police. These pieces of legislation are weak for many of the same reasons. They have been additionally rendered ineffective by generations of counter-legislation. The No Officer Left Behind campaign seeks to close the legal loopholes in 18 USC 242, 42 USC 1983, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA). It also strives to overturn Harlow vs Fitzgerald, Tennessee vs Garner and Graham vs Connor.

3. Increase Authority of Community Review Boards (CRBs) - Community involvement and oversight is central to equitable police accountability measures. This campaign seeks legislation to fund and politically strengthen CRB's in all locations law enforcement and police precincts are present.  

4. Update Requirements to Operate - Currently there are very weak and dysfunctional processes by which law enforcement organizations are accredited. These weaknesses in federal accreditation standards open the door to pattern and practice abuses by law enforcement.  

5. Dissolve the 1033 Program in order to Demilitarize the force entirely.

6. Establish Alternative Emergency Contact Numbers nationwide for people to call as an alternative to law enforcement. These contacts will be administrated and run by community experts to respond to the needs of the community.  These needs include by are not limited to non-violent offences, crimes of poverty, and mental health crises.  

7. Standardize accreditation requirements, monitoring systems and data collection processes in order to ensure law enforcement practices are up to date, up to standards, functioning equitably and performing efficiently.

8. Ban Internal Investigations, remove all obstacles to Filing a Report, and Eliminate Police Unions as well as efforts to block federal Law Enforcement Officers' Bills of Rights legislation and Modernize Data Collection in both policy and in practice.  This work requires the passage of federal legislation that can legislate and enforce all of these reforms.   Please support the effort to pass new piece of civil rights legislation that is designed to end police brutality as a system and across the nation. Please support the passage of the No Officer Left Behind Act.

Visit the Strategic Institute of Intersectional Policy for more detailed information on No Officer Left Behind.