Nikki Grant Speaks on Ending Police Violence at Transitional Justice Series
Does prosecuting individual police bring us closer to a society where police violence is a thing of history?
On Monday, February 28th, Amistad Law Project Policy Director Nikki Grant joined the Transitional Justice in the USA Series convened by the Center for International Law and Policy (CILP) to grapple with this question. The panel titled ' Does Criminal Punishment of Police Contribute or Distract From Societal Reckonings with Racism?' fostered a vibrant dialogue centered on the utility of prosecuting police as a tactic in movements to end racist policing.
Watch the video below and check out the discussion.
Prosecuting individual police can be an important way that we respond to community demands for accountability and highlight what is wrong with the system of race and class based policing in America. However, to end police violence we need to reduce the political power of the police themselves. We will do this by creating alternatives to policing, reducing the size of police forces and the scope of policing in American society. Amistad Law Project's campaign to create mobile crisis units to respond to mental health emergencies and take responding to such emergencies out of the hands of armed police is one such effort in this broader strategy.
Hosted by the inimitable Rachel Lopez of Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law this panel brought together experts on international law, movement strategists and academics including:
Roxanna Altholz- Clinical Professor of Law and Co-Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic, Berkeley Law School
Nikki Grant- Policy Director and Co-Founder, Amistad Law Project
Darryl Heller - Director of the IU South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center and Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Indiana University South Bend
Helen Mack Chang - President and Founder, Myrna Mack Foundation
We are thankful to Professor Rachel Lopez, the Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, the International Human Rights Section of the Association of American Law Schools, the Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law and everyone who made this important event possible.
