Police violence is a pervasive issue across the country that has led to harassment, injuries, and deaths. Racial discrimination and excessive force disproportionately impact communities of color, which often have an outsized police presence. And although investigations have repeatedly exposed patterns of racism and unconstitutional policing within law enforcement departments, they are rarely held accountable.

Victims who survive unconstitutional policing encounters must contend with a criminal legal system that, due to its own racial biases, wrongfully convicts them or forces them to plead out to fabricated resisting arrest charges—often preventing them from exercising their constitutional right to hold police accountable for their misconduct.

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The ACLU of Louisiana’s Justice Lab aims to combat these injustices. The statewide program, which has already filed more than 50 cases on behalf of individuals challenging police violence, recognizes the systemic and discriminatory nature of police brutality and seeks to put an end to it through litigation and storytelling. It also fulfills an urgent need, as Louisiana law bars civil rights challenges after one year following the incident, and the Supreme Court case Heck v. Humphrey makes it very difficult for people to bring a civil rights challenge seeking money damages for constitutional violations that resulted in their conviction. The Justice Lab represents people who often face significant legal hurdles to accountability, including the use of fabricated legal charges intended to beget their silence.

Here, Anthony Monroe, a Justice Lab client who has experienced police violence firsthand and filed his case after the traditional one-year bar passed, and Alanah Odoms, the ACLU of Louisiana’s executive director, share their insight, experiences, and how they’re fighting back.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Monroe was leaving work after the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. He passed a slow-moving diesel truck without speeding, and noticed a Louisiana State Trooper parked on the side of the road. The state trooper began following Mr. Monroe, but he was confident he had nothing to worry about because he had done nothing wrong. Then the trooper turned his car’s lights on and pulled him over.

“He got out of his vehicle, had one hand on a flashlight and another hand on his gun. And I’m thinking something about this is not right.

“When I stepped out of my vehicle, that’s when the process started. He grabbed both of my hands, pulling me toward him, and made it look like I was resisting arrest. Another trooper showed up, and they threw me on the ground, [started] jumping on my back and pounding on me, with my hands behind my back.

“They keep pressing down, and I’m screaming ‘Oh my god, I can’t breathe.’ This isn’t supposed to be happening to me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“He’d been trained to do this. He never de-escalated the situation. He kept making the situation get worse and worse and worse … And after they brutalized me, then I got charged with resisting arrest.

“If you’ve been victimized like this and brutally beaten and attacked, it takes 28 to 34 months for you to get your mind right, because the first year, you’re still having nightmares, you’re waking up with sweats, you’re not being able to sleep, you’re getting up and down.

“And the justice that I’ve gotten so far has been good with the ACLU, but not with the Louisiana state troopers. The system is geared to make money off of people.

“The law should be blind, but it’s not. You shouldn’t have the freedom to abuse people like that in the United States, no matter where you live.

“I hope the law changes after they see what I’ve been through, and what has happened to me…We should be able to live in peace, every day.”

“The ACLU justice lab is a systemic, comprehensive approach to addressing police violence. We want to hold police accountable — and the departments that employ them — so that they can change their policy and conduct. We have filed 50 cases in three years, in every federal jurisdiction in Louisiana.

“This is something that we at the ACLU have decided to take up as a decades-long commitment because we don’t think there’s a silver bullet. There’s not one case that you can file. There’s not one piece of legislation that you can pass that’s going to change this.

“Police violence is an outgrowth — and it’s not just in the South. I think it’s important to state the problems that are endemic to policing, which are white supremacy and toxic masculinity. That’s why we know it’s going to take a sustained approach. It’s going to take a lot of resources, a lot of really smart, dedicated people pushing in the same direction and shifting this narrative.

“What I want folks to know is that we actually have an opportunity to do a lot better by people if we actually change policy. We want something better for our children and for their children, just like our ancestors wanted better for us.”

Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted Culpeper County, Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins for allegedly taking cash bribes and large campaign donations in exchange for appointing people “auxiliary deputy sheriffs” and allowing them to carry concealed firearms without a permit. Another sheriff, Chuck Jenkins (no relation) of Frederick County, Maryland, was also recently indicted for an alleged scheme that involved machine gun trafficking in exchange for political support in his re-election campaign.

These two sheriffs have more than just their names and reputed scandals in common: they both work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Despite the criminal charges and a record of civil rights violations, the Biden administration has chosen to continue partnering with the two sheriffs through an immigration enforcement program known as 287(g), which permits state and local law enforcement agencies across the country to exercise federal authorities that are usually reserved to ICE agents.

(Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office)

The program sounds technical, but its effect is devastatingly simple: Millions of our neighbors live in fear that if they interact with local law enforcement — even just seeking protection in urgent situations such as domestic violence — they’ll be turned over to ICE and deported from their families and the places they call home.

The two sheriffs are far from the only controversial law enforcement officials in the program. A 2022 ACLU report found that 65 percent of the Biden administration’s 287(g) partners have records of racial profiling and other civil rights violations, while 59 percent have records of pushing anti-immigrant hate.

Some of these sheriffs have expressed their anti-immigrant beliefs as a core part of their jobs. In an interview in which he touted the 287(g) program and appeared in uniform, Jenkins (of Maryland) described immigration to the U.S. as “chemical warfare against the United States,” because “the entire world hates this country, everybody around the world hates America, what we stand for, what we’re all about, the fabric of our society.” He bragged about creating a “virtual fence” around his county through immigration enforcement — falsely contending that neighboring counties without the program are “overwhelmed by illegals, a lot of criminals.”

The Biden administration can’t control local sheriffs — who are free to disagree with the Biden administration’s immigration policy and have the right to express their views.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

And the federal government should not fund law enforcement by those who violate the civil rights of people in our communities.

We’ve seen again and again that sheriffs who make anti-immigrant statements have condoned or even encouraged illegal racial profiling in the policing of their communities. A glaring example is Alamance County, North Carolina Sheriff Terry Johnson, a current 287(g) participant with a long history of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. A damning Justice Department civil rights investigation found that the sheriff fostered a “culture of discrimination” that permeated the entire agency, and a pattern of discriminatory targeting of Latino people in arrests and detention. This prompted ICE to terminate the 287(g) partnership with the sheriff in 2012. But the Trump administration re-signed the sheriff onto the program — and the Biden administration has so far refused to terminate the agreement.

As a candidate, President Biden pledged to roll back 287(g) agreements initiated under Trump. More than two years into Biden’s term, the 287(g) program has only minorly shrunk from a peak of 152 partnerships under President Trump to 137 partnerships.

Meanwhile, numerous law enforcement leaders have spoken out against the program even while many face political and legal attempts to compel their participation. They include Mecklenburg County, North Carolina’s Sheriff Garry McFadden, who believes 287(g) undermines public safety and the prerogative of local voters. The state legislature in Florida has passed a law attempting to override local prerogatives and force sheriffs to apply to join the 287(g) program, while House Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would require ICE to approve any partnership application — no matter how abusive the sheriff.

Without a Senate-confirmed ICE director, the 287(g) program’s fate largely lies with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He continues to face down impeachment threats by the Republican-controlled House, which may be (wrongly) stalling the ICE reform agenda.

White House interests are at stake. President Biden issued important executive orders that led to a new policy to address racial profiling. But there’s a total mismatch between these White House efforts and its inaction on the 287(g) program, which is a notorious vehicle for racial profiling.

The consequences for our neighbors and loved ones are stark. “I’ve actually had clients who have told me that they didn’t go to the hospital when they had their first child because they were really worried,” said local attorney Adriel Orozco, who co-wrote our complaint on 287(g) partner Alamance County.

It’s long past time for the Biden administration to stop empowering racist sheriffs — and do more to support civil rights and protections in our communities.

While many might assume that racial housing segregation is a thing of the past, predatory practices by landlords keep it alive in communities across the country.

Landlords commonly use “no-evictions” policies that unfairly shut out families from housing for years. These policies broadly exclude applicants with an “eviction” — without distinguishing between eviction filings and judgments or considering individual circumstances. Instead, these policies automatically reject all applicants from housing if they have any connection to an eviction case, even if, for example, the eviction case was dismissed or very old, or the family is now financially stable.

American Civil Liberties Union

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Since our inception in 1968, HOPE Fair Housing (HOPE) has dedicated itself to eliminating housing discrimination in Illinois by standing at the forefront to challenge policies and practices that create barriers to housing choice for residents throughout Cook County and beyond. Blanket bans on people with arrest and conviction records, selective enforcement of crime-free and nuisance-free ordinances, and source of income discrimination all continue to impact Black households in Cook County and across the United States.

Now, we are taking on “no-evictions” policies as a significant barrier to fair housing for all families. With the help of the ACLU, the ACLU of Illinois, and the National Housing Law Project, we filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against one of the largest operators of rental housing in Oak Park, Illinois. We argue that Oak Park Apartments’ “No-Evictions” policy both discriminates against Black renters and Black women renters and perpetuates and reinforces residential segregation.

According to an expert analysis, between September 2010 to March 2023, Black people were approximately 56% of those either served with an eviction case or evicted by the Sheriff’s Office in Cook County though they make up only 33% of all renters. Black women alone accounted for approximately 33% of those who experienced an eviction case despite making up just 22% of all renters. A housing provider that enforces a policy that denies the opportunity to rent to anyone who has an eviction filing or judgment is disproportionately denying housing to Black households and Black women in particular. With evictions in Cook County at the highest rate they have been in years, “No-Evictions” policies will continue to block families from new housing opportunities.

There is no justification for automatically rejecting all housing applicants because they had some connection to an eviction case. While housing providers can choose to complete tenant screenings, applying discriminatory criteria — such as those used by Oak Park Apartments — violates fair housing law. We can no longer ignore the consequences of these policies and the communities they harm.

American Civil Liberties Union

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Oak Park Apartments’ “no-evictions” policy is even more alarming because it perpetuates segregation in Oak Park. For more than 50 years, the village of Oak Park has made deliberate efforts to build and maintain a racially integrated community. Blanket tenant screening policies that deny applicants with “any eviction” the opportunity to rent an apartment are a threat to these efforts and contribute to racial segregation in Cook County.

All communities, and especially those dedicated to promoting integration such as Oak Park, deserve better than landlord policies that deny Black women the human right to housing opportunities. The residents of Oak Park should demand swift policy changes now from any housing provider that may be employing a “no evictions” blanket ban policy.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge has called on the fair housing movement to take action to correct the systems and barriers that are causing harm to our communities. We have responded, and trust that HUD will use its investigative and enforcement authority to eliminate these harmful policies in Oak Park, Cook County, and across the country.