BLM Begins "Campaign Zero"

Black Lives Matter (BLM), the activist group that campaigns against police brutality and racial injustice, have just come out with their plan to help fix the issues that plague police forces up and down the country.

Their plan – “Campaign Zero” – focuses on 10 points where they would like the law to change. They believe that these changes will help stop racial profiling and lessen the dangers everyday citizens face when dealing with the police.

1. End “broken windows” policing, which aggressively polices minor crimes in an attempt to stop larger ones.
“Broken windows” policing is the idea that vigorously enforcing small crimes (like vandalism) will prevent larger crimes from happening. This law has allowed police to increase “stop and frisks”, which BLM claims enables racial stereotyping. They argue that Black men and women are unfairly targeted by police using this law as an excuse, and that this policy ultimately led to the death of Eric Garner (remember the guy that was choked to death after he was caught selling loose cigarettes). This is their first point in their plan, and probably the most controversial.

2. Use community oversight for misconduct rather than having the police department decide what consequences officers should face.
Rather than the police deciding how an officer is punished after they’ve committed a crime (like when an officer who caused a death is ‘punished’ by being put on paid leave for six months), they want an independent group to review all cases and dole out the punishments. Since, you know, the police department might be a tad on biased.

3. Make standards for reporting police use of deadly force.
A lot of reports of police using deadly force aren’t released to the public. This skews the statistics when it comes down to who died by police hands and it leaves the public in the dark about how the police operate. BLM want to standardize the reporting methods and make the whole process more transparent.

4. Independently investigate and prosecute police misconduct.
Much like point two, BLM doesn’t want the police investigating crimes committed by the police since it’s proven to be a recipe for trouble. Instead, they want an independently run government body to investigate whether or not an officer has violated the law. The short version: if a cop shoots someone, someone other than the cops should look into the case to see if that shooting was lawful.

5. Have the racial makeup of police departments reflect the communities they serve.
This one is simple enough to ask for, harder to carry out in practice. BLM want the police force to be racially representative of the areas they protect. If a community is 50% Black, 30% Hispanic, and 20% White, they want to see a police force that reflects those demographics. Hypothetically, for every two White officers they’d hire, they’d also hire five Black officers and three Hispanic officers.

6. Require officers to wear body cameras.
This policy has already been implemented in several different police forces across the country – and with great success in some cases. However, the debate starts when it comes down to when and why an officer can turn the camera off. For example, you wouldn’t want people watching you when you went for a piss, would you?

7. Provide more training for police officers.
More training is never a bad thing. Many supporters of BLM believe that a lot of the issues between police officers and citizens have been instigated by rookie cops that are a little too eager to prove themselves in the field, and they feel a little extra training could help that out.

8. End for-profit policing practices.
This is a biggie. As of now, the police can legally take any money or property that they “believe” is in some way linked to a crime, and they can use that money and property as they see fit, even if you’re never convicted of that crime. It’s called Civil Forfeiture and the police in many areas have used this “right” to fund their own agencies and precincts. This is a major issue, and many people from different walks of life see it as legalized robbery. For more information check out John Oliver’s take on it, as he explains it far more eloquently than I ever could.

9. End the police use of military equipment.
BLM argues that the police should be working with the community to provide peaceful resolutions to society’s issues and that the use of military equipment shows an intent to abuse their power over citizens. It drives home the Us vs Them mentality. Big guns and body armour = scared citizens. Open dialogue and transparency = happy citizens.

10. Implement police union contracts that hold officers accountable for misconduct.
So, police unions have a history of protecting police (shocking, I know). Police officers accused of misconduct are no exception, but other members are oftendiscouraged by their unions to speak out against those accused. This can delay convictions and stop valuable information or evidence from coming to light which prevents real justice. While the police need unions to protect their rights, BLM argue that the unions should play their part in weeding out the bad apples. If not, the abuse of power will continue because the bad officers know they can get away with it.

Looks like those "terrorist" have some pretty extreme demands /s

Some of it isnt to bad I think..

Independent investigations, more training, end the for profit prisons, require body cameras I can agree on... the rest is either a pipe dream or insane...

eta: mistook the for profit and imediatly thought of prisons... but yes Civil asset forfeiture needs to go the way of the dodo.

I agree with all ten of those points. I ESPECIALLY agree with getting rid of civil forfeiture laws. Those things should be unconstitutional.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

Sounds pretty good to me, though I'm sure we'll be told why this is anti-white propaganda soon enough....

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

There's nothing unreasonable about that platform, other than maybe the whole diversity hire thing.

Also community enforcement only works when you have people who know what they are talking about. Bunch of folks with pitchforks do a really bad job of looking at evidence objectively.

But that's probably the sanest thing I've seen come from them.

~Tenth

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

I think it all sounds good though, number 3 seems a little unnecessary to me. If all of these changes were implemented and you had white cops in a black neighborhood behaving and treating people with dignity then eventually the cops skin color won't (shouldn't) matter.

I don't like BLM for their racist views. That being said, this is a pretty good list. This is what they should have focused on and presented rather than so much of the anti-white stuff. They would have had a lot more allies.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

# 1:

Will never happen. Revenue stream from fines for minor offenses and people having records for minor offenses is much more important to the state than 'just' policing. The jails are full of people with minor drug offenses, for instance.

Thats a revenue stream for the Privatized Industrial Prison Complex. The sooner a person has a lengthy record for minor offenses the easier it is to sentence them to longer prison terms, increasing prison profits in the long run.

You want to slow down the 'broken windows' and profiling, stop prisons for profit.

Lots of luck. That taxpayer money is slated for conquering foreign lands.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
Some of it isnt to bad I think..

Independent investigations, more training, end the for profit prisons, require body cameras I can agree on... the rest is either a pipe dream or insane...

eta: mistook the for profit and imediatly thought of prisons... but yes Civil asset forfeiture needs to go the way of the dodo.

I would have to agree with you. Some of these ideas are very good. It's a good start for dialogue. Flesh out some details on some of these ideas to iron out the rough edges.

a reply to: intrptr

Well considering one of the issues is how we just throw people of color into prisons for longer times and for less harsh crimes, I imagine that would be something they would wanna look into.

Didn't the Justice Department say they were doing some review of all the policies? Then again, it would have to come from the states.

~Tenth.

On body cams the shooting the other day of that guy that was said to have a gun and raising it in his hand? The body cam and other footage is hidden from view by the police as they carry out their own investigation.

I remember the whole body cam issue coming to the forefront in the Michael Brown case. If they had footage of Brown rushing the officer then that would support their story.

Thing is okay they begin to adopt the use of body cams and hide that evidence too, (or claim they fell off) like in that other shooting.

The only thing that will suffice is independent public monitoring and recording of live feed from dash cams and body cams.

Hell, they monitor us live from every telephone pole in the nation...

So an important thing to note... while there may be some disagreement over the list... most people (so far) seem to think here is some common ground that all races can agree on moving forward.

The rhetoric should be dropped in favor of finding common ground and enacting change all can get behind.

Or I may have drank to much doing the Loretta lynch drinking game...

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Didn't the Justice Department say they were doing some review of all the policies? Then again, it would have to come from the states.

Private corporations run the prison system, not the government. That would be like trying to get the "Federal Reserve" to change its policy. The "Fed" is run by private banks, not the government.

to me, its not individuals that are corrupt within certain policing agencies, but the agencies themselves. watching the oj simpson special on ESPN kinds of opened my eyes to how an entire force can become corrupt.
a small town where i live named Cheektowaga ( seneca indian for 'land of the crabapple' ) is a known corrupt agency.
i worked in the ghetto in buffalo ny. i had to drive home at 1230-1 am each night and was constantly harassed by these cops. a white kid coming out of the hood at 1 in the morning was suspicious, i get it. they would ask me to get out of my car and they wanted to search it, i denied them and one time they even brought a dog in, and found nothing.
they would tell me my license plate light is out. it never was. i would ask is it an offense or illegal. they would tell me no, but they were told to pull over anyone that had a light out to inform them its an insurance risk. after about the 10th time i got pulled over i flipped. i had a friend who worked with the cheektowaga pd and was told out of 112 officers, not a one was black.
i made many friends that were black working in the area i did. i would often invite them over for bbqs, or just to slam a couple drinks. they were all too afraid to come because i lived in depew which was forced them to drive through cheektowaga. a study done shows western new york is one of the most racist areas in the US>
wivb.com...

i think it should be necessary to reflect the police force with what the demographics are. a black officer arresting a black man and vice versa, just seems better.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

I don't see anything in there about having blacks commit less violent crime.

If they would just do that-there would be no need for any of those demands.

Also,they murder more of their own kind than anyone else-if their lives matter so much then they should stop killing each other.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

Seems all pretty reasonable...in fact it's really good...

Outside of the impracticality of the ethnic quota (it would also be discriminatory, which is counter productive), I find all 10 of these points legitimate and would be for the better good of all American citizens, no matter your ethnicity.

The for profit prison system needs to be abolished. Imprisoning people should not be a business venture.

I am not a supporter of BLM because as someone who nearly fell victim to inner city gun violence prior to getting out of "the hood", I find their silence on the black murder rate in inner cities to be not only appalling, but traitorous.

But this platform? I support 100%. This is good stuff.

a reply to: Picklesneeze

yes, I agree I would like to see BLM also address the murder rate in our inner cities.

and with 84% of whites being murdered by other whites, you may need to look in the mirror.

Community oversight is code for taking over local government.

We already have community oversight, it is called local elections. They want to bum rush city hall and create their own militant city states.

That is what this whole get rid of the cops charade is all about.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

On the surface it's sounds somewhat reasonable, however implementation requires going over a lot of hurdles and jumping through a lot of hoops that politicians and lawmakers just won't want to put in the effort for, even if they should. This "reasonable" effort would have been good at the start without all the racist crap from the beginning. It reminds me of some of the party girls and sluts I knew that suddenly got religion and pretended they were chaste because it suited their agenda at the time. But with the right provocation they were right back to being sluts again lol.

Cheers - Dave