Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries

June 2020
​Dear Honorable Hakeem Jeffries,

I live in Brooklyn, New York. I am writing to express my concern with how some of the police are being trained. It is my understanding that some police officers do not know how to interact in certain situations when it has to do with another race. I want to see better mandatory bias training that actually teaches police to not be biased. Bias training is important because it will make more police officers do the same thing for different races during a situation. This will help create less police brutality.

This will also make me have more faith in the police than before. I would trust the police more when I need to call them.  Before the police only spent 8 hours learning how to not escalate bad situations in training, but they had 58 hours to learn how to use guns. That's a large difference. I hope the officials will take more time for bias training and try to find a better way to fix the way of teaching bias training. I urge you to try to go against this issue by signing the Justice in Policing Act of 2020. The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 is an act that will cover police accountability, transparency, training, and justice for victims.

I hope you take action on this problem.
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Sincerely,
Chyla A.
8th Grade Student
Achievement First Apollo Middle School