To start off the week, Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro released a comprehensive plan to overhaul policing in the United States. The plan’s main goal? To prevent shootings of unarmed people of color.
This is Castro’s third policy proposal so far since announcing his candidacy and the plan has three goals overall:
- End “over-aggressive policing” that disproportionately targets racial minorities
- Do more to hold cops accountable when they do shoot unarmed people
- Bridge the often deep divide between communities and law enforcement
“How many of these videos do we have to watch to understand that even though we have some great police officers, this is not a case of bad apples?” Castro said on Saturday in San Francisco. “The system is broken. The system is broken. The system is broken.”
Castro said his proposal would end “over-aggressive policing” by limiting the use of deadly force to when “there is an imminent threat to the life of another person, and all other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted.”
The plan also includes body cameras, anti-bias training and legislation to prohibit racist “stop and frisk” policies that target low-income people and non-white people.
On top of that, Castro wants to go one step further. Castro would create a public national database of officers who have been decertified and collect better data on police stops, bolstering existing reporting programs. He also would push for legislation that would lower the threshold at which cops can face prosecution for misconduct.
Finally, police would be facing real accountability for injuring and killing unarmed people of color.
Castro was the U.S. Housing Secretary under President Barack Obama and served as mayor of San Antonio, Texas.
