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Clean Slate is a good policy that will make our communities safer, will create new economic opportunity and growth, and will help redress the long and enduring legacy of racial injustice in our criminal justice system.

As part of our 2020 newsletter, we look back at the police accountability law passed this summer, and toward the unfinished business of building a future where our communities are able to invest in the to invest in the things that make them strong and safe instead of over-spending on policing.

Connecticut is the Land of Steady Habits, and many government officials here mistake the habit of letting police do whatever they want for a requirement, even when it is not. The Hamden Police Commission's response to residents is the latest example.

Tasers are powerful electric shock weapons, and they can be lethal. For years, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut (ACLU-CT) has called for Connecticut to ensure that police only use Tasers fairly, justly, and wisely. In 2014, the ACLU-CT helped to pass the first law in the nation requiring police to provide information about how and when they use Tasers. As a result of that law, in 2016, Connecticut released the first statewide report in the country regarding police Taser use. That report shows troubling racial disparities in how police used Tasers, and that an inordinate number of police Taser incidents involved people who were experiencing mental health crises or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. According to ACLU-CT research, at least 18 people have died after being tased by police in Connecticut. Of those 18 people, at least 12 were Black or Latino.