Dear Speaker Pelosi, Leader McCarthy, Majority Leader McConnell, and Minority Leader
Schumer:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (The Leadership
Conference), a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 220 national
organizations to promote and protect civil and human rights in the United States and the 386
undersigned organizations, we urge you to take swift and decisive legislative action in
response to ongoing fatal police killings and other violence against Black people across our
country.
Federal statutory reforms are urgently needed on a range of policing issues, including
use of force, police accountability, racial profiling, militarization, data collection, and training.
We also respectfully request a meeting with House and Senate Leadership within the week to
discuss legislative responses to ongoing police killings against Black people.
Abusive police practices coupled with devastating state-sanctioned violence have exacted
systemic brutality and fatality upon Black people since our nation’s founding.
The current
protests across our country are not new. They are in response to a long cycle of lawlessness
against Black people, from our founding to 1968, the year the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was murdered. This cycle includes deadly incidents spanning from Los Angeles in
1992 to Ferguson in 2014. 1
Police have shot and killed more than 1,000 people in the United
States over the past year.2
Moreover, Black people are disproportionately more likely than
white people to be killed by police. For too long, the cycle of police brutality and racism has
been met with cosmetic tinkering instead of substantive structural change. The current public
protests in our cities are a response not only to unjust policing of Black people but are a cry
for action to public officials for structural change, writ large.
In recent weeks, the chronic structural issue of police killings against Black people across our
country has, again, escalated to a boiling point.
The February 23, 2020, death of Ahmaud
Arbery, who was killed by a former police officer in a Brunswick, Georgia suburb, sparked
public outrage and scrutiny. The more recent police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville,
Kentucky on March 13, 2020, Dreasjon “Sean” Reed in Indianapolis, Indiana on May 6, 2020,
George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020, and Tony McDade in Tallahassee,
FL on May 27, 2020 have generated national attention and protest. This spate of cases
highlights entrenched, systemic dysfunction that has long plagued police departments and our
criminal legal system.3 Congress must rectify these structural wrongs through legislation
before another Black life is needlessly lost
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