Police are still killing people at the same rate as before

The nonprofit think tank launched the independent task force in November, and it released five priorities for police reform last week: national training standards, a federal decertification registry, duty-to-intervene and mandatory reporting policies, trauma-informed policing and increased data collection and transparency.

“Data equals accountability,” La Vigne said. “Every agency should make public their use of force incidents. Every single agency.”

The CCJ task force’s priorities call for national training standards, a federal decertification registry, duty-to-intervene and mandatory reporting policies, trauma-informed policing and increased data collection and transparency.

Maurice Mitchell, a strategist with the Movement for Black Lives and national director of the Working Families Party, described the cyclical nature of police killings of unarmed people of color like this: public outrage, a mass movement then government response. The problem he laid out is that government officials tend to focus on symptoms and process, instead of root causes and outcomes.

A national registry of police misconduct, ending qualified immunity, establishing commissions and even Justice Department consent decrees are all reactive policy measures that occur after harm has already been done, he said.

“All these things are not bad, but what we hit the streets for were very clear outcomes, and what we spoke about were the root causes,” Mitchell said. “We need to interrupt this cycle where Black folks and advocates and others are demanding very, very clear outcomes, which is a very simple outcome: We live in a society where our government doesn’t kill us. We believe it’s the actual number and density of interactions that people have with police officers that lead to these instances.”