Police Oversight & Reform

Make the Right Call Campaign

#BLM B-town is helping to help spread awareness about and to address an epidemic of harassment taking the form of unwarranted phone calls to the police concerning black people innocently occupying public spaces. Visit our page to learn about this rapidly growing form of racially motivated harassment and what you can do to prevent it. We will also be creating a call guide that will connect people directly with specific emergency services in crisis situations. Click HERE to learn more

Policing Task Force Info

Black Lives Matter was founded to address racial bias in policing and police brutality against African Americans. Black Lives Matter Bloomington supports a number of programs that encouraging police reform and oversight at the local level. We are building a taskforce to guide policing transformation in Bloomington as well as compile new public records of police encounters that take into account decades of research on intersectionality and policing.

This Task Force is meant to have a public review and rule of law over local law enforcement agencies. Setting policies and procedures for local police.

Some of the key points of our subcommittee meetings in 2018 outlined Bloomington's policing oversight needs, they are:

Community Defense
- Rapid Response Unit from community members, organizations not affiliated with the police or law enforcement agencies.
  - Like BRR Bloomington Rapid Response
  - Highly skilled at de-escalation, harm reduction, medic training and intersectional anti-racism
  - Volunteer run organization
- Medic Training - to train all community members in basic harm reduction, first aid and de-escalation tactics
  - Free or Cheap
- De-escalation trainings -from non police entities for all community members
  - Free or Cheap
3-1-1 Emergency & Non-Emergency Number
- BLM Btown's "Make the Right Call" campaign
  - geared towards educating the community on what services they should call instead of the police
  - geared towards not calling the police when a conversation or mediation could solve things
- Not connected to the Police services
- Connected to hospital or other medical services
- Connected to Harm Reduction Services
- Connected to Social Workers & Social Services in our community
Call Sheets/Online Resource -Listing of all social services, local organizations or agencies working in and around issues of policing, jail and bail reform, harm reduction, social justice & intersectional anti-racism.
Defund the Police -to move resources to the social services, community organizations that are most in need in order to reduce arrests, imprisonment and jail time.
Decriminalize Public Spaces
- Allow people access to public spaces like parks 24/7 for sleeping, hanging out & gathering
- Provide services in those public spaces like restrooms, water & or sleeping facilities

People's Report on the the Lenco BearCat Military Assault

#BLM's People's Report on the City of Bloomington's Purchase of the Lenco BearCat Military Assault.

https://blmbtownvotersguide.weebly.com/the-peoples-report.html

Race and Criminal Justice in Monroe County: A Long Term Perspective

Race and criminal justice in Monroe County have been concerns of the Monroe County Branch of the NAACP and the Racial Justice Task Force of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington for over 20 years. The most recent report reviews 2017 incarceration data in the context of historical data going back to 1997, and makes recommendations that, if adopted, should help identify and potentially reduce areas where Blacks are over-represented in criminal cases pursued or in sentencing outcomes.

#BLM B-town is using this data to formulate our plans and project in an attempt to hold the local police accountable, create reform and invoke oversight.

To see this longitudinal study please see the link below:
http://www.uubloomington.org/race-and-criminal-justice-in-monroe-county-in-a-long-range-persective/

25 Plus Point Plan for "Police Reform" Revised by BLM B-town

Below is a link to the 25 Plus Plan to "Police Reform" as it was revised by BLM Btown in 2016-2017. We have since updated it in 2023 and added more info though it is still of a pre-pandemic pre-George Floyd time it still has merit.

Shaun King initially wrote this plan on Facebook 09-10-16 it outlined necessary steps for so called "police reform". While BLM Btown openly acknowledges the long standing issues Shaun King has had in the BLM national movement we can not deny that the original 25 points had merit BUT we wish to also acknowledge that Shaun King was not the first Black or Brown person to write about these ideas or the last and we did find the need to expand and elaborate on the initial 25 points. We additionally put "police reform" in quotations as we are not in agreement on the term. We believe that IF we implement many of these changes we will NO LONGER have what we refer to as a police or law enforcement.

Click the Link HERE