What’s #8CantWait? Movement aims to reform policing, but activists say it won’t work
The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have renewed the push for police reforms, including a campaign that encourages law enforcement to adopt eight “more restrictive use of force policies.”
The #8CantWait initiative is part of Campaign Zero, which launched as part of Black Lives Matter in 2015 in response to the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Organizers say their data-driven plan could reduce police use of force by 72 percent.
“Research shows more restrictive use of force policies can reduce killings by police and save lives,” the campaign says on its website.
Here are the proposed policies of #8CantWait:
▪ Ban chokeholds.
▪ Require officers to use de-escalation techniques.
▪ Require officers to warn suspects before shooting.
▪ Require officers to use all other options before shooting.
▪ Implement a duty to intervene policy, in which officers are required to take action if another officer is using inappropriate force.
▪ Ban officers from shooting at moving vehicles.
▪ Require a “use of force continuum.” This guides the appropriate response of officers in particular situations, according to the National Institute of Justice.
▪ Require officers to report when they use force or threaten to use force.
The campaign also calls for demilitarizing the police, funding community safety efforts and “dramatically” reducing the number of people in jails and prisons, among other things.
Gaining support on social media, the initiative has earned endorsements from the likes of singer Ariana Grande and Oprah Winfrey, according to Vox.
Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson has also pushed for the campaign.
“There are two pockets to this: Reduce the power of the police, and then shift the resources, or shift the role,” McKesson told GQ in a recent interview. “Most of the defund work is about shifting the role, which is incredibly important — but police are still going to be here tomorrow. Shrink the role work is gradual work.
“What we’re saying is if the police are going to exist tomorrow, they should have dramatically less power tomorrow,” he added.
Some cities have already adopted policies highlighted by the campaign. In North Carolina, the Charlotte City Council on Monday unanimously approved a resolution asking police to adopt the #8CantWait reforms, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Some activists have voiced skepticism, however, and criticized the campaign as a co-optation of the work of other grassroots activists who ultimately want to see the abolition of police.
“Many reforms & strategies to fight policing are circulating right now,” Twitter user @C_Resistance wrote. “Some are AMAZING like #DefundPolice; others, like #8cantwait, want to improve policing’s war on us.”
“The #8cantwait campaign is bothersome to me,” activist Imani Barbarin wrote on Twitter. “We should be defunding the police, for one, and none of these initiatives address tactics for interacting with the disability community who are often threatened by police interactions.”
Educator and policy advocate Dwayne Dave Paul called the plan “ridiculous” on Twitter and said it “totally obscures the demands of long-time organizers to strip resources from police.”
In Charlotte, the local Fraternal Order of Police said the city council’s decision to prevent police from buying chemical agents like those used in recent protests was “dangerous,” The Charlotte Observer reported.
“Without their use, this city would be on fire, and injuries would be much greater,” the FOP said of chemical agents. “As rocks and explosives are hurled at them, what measures do the police in Charlotte now have to defend themselves and the preservation of life and property?”
McClatchy News reached out to Campaign Zero for comment on Tuesday, but did not receive an immediate response.
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 10:53 AM with the headline "What’s #8CantWait? Movement aims to reform policing, but activists say it won’t work."