President Obama: Sign an executive order to help end discriminatory and violent policing
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President Obama: Sign an executive order to help end discriminatory and violent policing
There is an epidemic of racial bias, police violence, and a lack of accountability in our country's police forces.Thousands have been killed. Millions more have been sucked into the criminal justice system by racially-biased practices — stripped of their rights and unable to gain employment because of discrimination.
The federal government could, at the direction of President Obama, significantly change these conditions — but it's not happening yet and won't happen unless we raise our voices.
Please join us in calling on President Obama to crack down on violent and discriminatory policing by issuing an executive order to direct the DOJ to enforce our civil rights laws more aggressively, and to remove unjust barriers to employment targeting the formerly incarcerated.
Here's the letter we'll send on your behalf to President Obama. You can add a personal comment using the box provided.
Dear President Obama,
The national crisis of violent and discriminatory policing, and the damage done to communities by a racially-biased criminal justice system, demands your executive action.
There are plenty of federal laws on the books that, if enforced, could hold officers and police departments accountable when they discriminate, use excessive force, or kill unjustly. Currently, law enforcement and local prosecutors rarely hold their own officers accountable, creating a cycle of unrelenting police misconduct. And the federal government is supposed to intervene. National civil rights laws fought for and achieved by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others allow the federal government to enforce anti-discrimination laws. But year after year, we see more injustice, brutality, and death, with little or no accountability.
And these same racially biased policing practices trap millions of people — disproportionately Black people and other people of color — into the criminal justice system each year, many of them for minor offenses. And when formerly incarcerated people try to re-enter society, they face employment discrimination.
We will not wait any longer for change. As President of the United States, you have both the power and responsibility to help end this national civil and human rights crisis.
I urge you to use an executive order to enforce and expand federal bans on discriminatory and violent policing, and to strengthen current disciplinary mechanisms for law enforcement nationwide; to direct the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate and prosecute police misconduct much more aggressively, and on a much broader scale. I also call on you to push for an end to employment discrimination against formerly incarcerated people, beginning with banning the deeply prejudicial practice of asking job applicants about previous convictions.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]