Acevedo on Reclaiming Black Dignity

John Acevedo (Alabama Law) has posted Reclaiming Black Dignity (Texas Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

 

As American society seeks to institute police reforms in the wake of the protests following George Floyd’s murder, it must include communities that have been victimized by police in those reform processes. When police discriminate against individuals from a particular community, they enact a dignity taking on that community and accrue the taken dignity to themselves. For reform to be meaningful dignity must be taken from the police and restored to the communities it was taken from. This can be achieved by excluding the police and their unions from the reform process; creating elected civilian review boards with the power to fire; and removing an assortment of police privileges.