Tell Your Local Officials How to End Police Violence

A sample letter to send off today

Campaign Zero graphic representing 8 strategies for ending police violence

Police departments, sheriff's offices, state troopers and highway patrol offices are administered at the municipal, county, or state level. Making detailed changes locally is often a swifter process than trying to change things at a national level. Goals like #prisonabolition and #policeabolition can’t be achieved overnight. If you want to work toward ending police violence, try starting locally.

To have an impact locally, let your elected officials know your thoughts. Below is a draft email or letter to elected officials with a number of alternatives laid out. Feel free to copy, share, change, ignore, or adapt for another type of audience. And check out www.joincampaignzero.org for more ideas!

Dear [Your Town or County or State] Elected Officials [find them here]

My name is [insert name]. I am a resident of [State/City] and I am emailing today because we must end police violence. I’m asking you to put our community’s resources into the things our community needs most, like [health care, climate change preparation, violence prevention, affordable housing, resources for youth, clean air and water, and substance abuse treatment.]

Law enforcement should be disbanded through a thoughtful process that develops alternatives to policing. [Your Town or County or State] have long histories of racist violence committed by those in authority, as well as violence against low-income people, LGBTQ people, and women. Law enforcement has proved, over and over again, that it cannot be trusted to protect us, and, moreover, that it does not want to protect us. Its only function is to enforce the status quo through threats and violence. Our community deserves better.

We need more public service alternatives for our citizens, not the vicious and outdated current system of policing, arrests, punishment, and violence. Below are some alternatives I ask you to discuss and support as we work toward the elimination of armed and dangerous police. Many of these alternatives are taken from www.joincampaignzero.org/solutions ,

1. End “broken windows” policing by prohibiting [insert name of your law enforcement organizations] from making arrests for minor…