On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down in the street, Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, killing him.

The uprisings ignited by this violent injustice brought millions of Americans together to demand justice for victims and an end to the police violence and impunity that devastates families and irrevocably traumatizes communities across the country. 

The long, dark history of police brutality must be addressed.

There are several pieces of legislation working their way through Congress that would pave inroads in addressing some of the worst problems with law enforcement and the criminal justice system in America:

• Enable individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights, by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement
• Prohibit federal police officers from using chokeholds or other carotid holds (which led to the deaths of George Floyd and Eric Garner), and require state and local law enforcement agencies that receive federal funding to adopt the same prohibition
• Restrict the transfer of military equipment to local police
• Change the threshold for the permissible use of force by federal law enforcement officers from “reasonableness” to only when “necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury”
• Mandate de-escalation practices for federal officers, establishing deadly force as a last resort, and condition federal funding to state and local law enforcement agencies on the adoption of the same policy
• Require federal, state, and local law enforcement to adopt practices to combat racial, religious and discriminatory profiling

Tell your Representatives that these measures must be included in any final legislative package to ensure genuine change. 

We stand closer than ever to major reforms of policing and the criminal justice system – but we’re not there yet.

We cannot let this moment pass without meaningful action. We must hold police accountable for violence. Add your voice to the fight today, sign the petition!