INVEST IN COMMUNITY SAFETY. REDUCE RELIANCE ON POLICE AND PUNISHMENT.

For too long, elected leaders across the country have underinvested in communities, sacrificing essential services while expanding the reach and power of the police. That choice has not made us any safer.

Our nation's overreliance on police and incarceration has created a culture of government surveillance, punishment, and violence that disproportionately harms Black and brown people, people experiencing addiction and mental health issues, and people who are homeless.

It’s time to stop over-criminalizing communities and attempting to arrest our way out of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. Instead, we must invest in essential community services, as well as non-police first responders who are trained in crisis intervention. The safest communities usually have the most resources – not the biggest police presence or the most jails.

The ACLU is calling on local and state leaders to:

• Repeal laws that lead to an unnecessary police response, like those that ban people experiencing homelessness from sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go, lead to traffic stops for minor violations like an expired registration or a broken tail light, criminalize abortion care and gender affirming care, and that direct police to target immigrant communities.
• Fund Alternative Crisis Response (“ACR”) programs that send trained experts, like social workers, to calls involving people who are experiencing mental and behavioral health crises, as well as calls where no crime has been committed and an armed law enforcement response is not needed.
• Adequately fund housing and community services like mental health and addiction treatment, rather than maximizing funding for police.