The policies and actions of the police are instrumental in deciding who gets stopped, searched, arrested, and funneled into the criminal legal system; indeed, the United States' overincarceration crisis begins at the front end of the system. Meanwhile, often under the guise of our failed drug war, abuse of civil asset forfeiture is rampant, while federal grant programs enable the increasing militarization of local police departments.
In Nebraska, the ACLU has successfully worked to create mandatory training required by law enforcement and has worked with specific departments on anti-bias trainings. The ACLU analyzes practices of individual law enforcement agencies such as their use of Tasers, complaint procedures and racial profiling practices and launched a smart phone app, Mobile Justice, which empowers communities to report on police misconduct.
In the past few years, the ACLU of Nebraska has released several reports on police practices in Nebraska.
