Raheem partners with Slack to end police violence against Black people
Raheem—the independent online service for reporting police—has partnered with Slack — the leading channel-based messaging platform — to fund a new engineering position on our team and have already collaborated with more than one hundred Slack volunteers to expand our capacity to get healing and justice for people experiencing police terror.
Raheem recognizes police terror as the consequence of decades of unrelenting state-sanctioned violence — as defined by the University of Chicago’s Global Human Rights Clinic — levied especially against Black people by often militarized police forces, resulting in high rates of Black death, and extreme fear within the Black psyche. Raheem Founder & Executive Director Brandon D. Anderson writes about the impact of police terror after losing his life partner to police violence during a routine traffic stop.
Since 2017, thousands of people in more than 200 cities across America have reported police violence to raheem.org. The traditional process of reporting police misconduct is unnecessarily difficult, intimidating, and results in less than five percent of people reporting police violence. This leads to a lack of transparency about officer behavior and dangerously shortsighted policies that govern police, as it is hard to write comprehensive policies meant to fix experiences that are never documented.
Report police violence to Raheem, and we will connect you with a free lawyer, file a complaint against the officer on your behalf, and unite you with a local advocacy organization — helping you move from a victim of police violence to an advocate for accountability.
Raheem is a national nonprofit based in Oakland, CA with a team of mostly Black and Brown data scientists, policy experts, and organizers working to end police terror against Black people by making police behavior visible and accountable. To that end, Raheem is building the world’s largest, searchable repository of police conduct to support a more democratic approach to policymaking — one that rests firmly on the lived experiences of the people most harmed by police. Our plan is to leverage community-driven reports about police to advance policy that shrinks the role of police and invests in Black people.
Making police behavior visible and accountable has never been more urgent. As protestors continue to flood streets across the country in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and too many others, there is an urgent demand for an end to police terror, and an opportunity to reimagine what safe communities look like. Accountability still remains a challenge to seeking justice, and changing policy, which is why Raheem’s work is so important. About a year ago, our platform received several complaints on Derek Chauvin, the officer with a history of misconduct who killed George Floyd.
With financial support from Slack for Good, Raheem will be able to recruit and hire an engineer to expand our product infrastructure. Additionally, more than one hundred Slack employees have already volunteered their time and expertise.
“Events in recent months, like the senseless killing of George Floyd, the shooting of Jacob Blake and the police response to subsequent protests, have highlighted the structural inequities and racism inherent in many institutions, including those that are meant to keep all Americans safe,” said Slack CEO and co-founder, Stewart Butterfield. “Slack was built on shared values like empathy and solidarity. As part of our efforts to support the Black community and help combat police violence, we’re proud to support Raheem with their efforts to make police behavior more visible and accountable.”
“In addition to fully funding a new engineering position on their team, we’re also excited to continue the partnership between Raheem and our own team. Slack’s employees are our greatest asset and we hope their support will help further Raheem’s efforts to make reporting police behavior easier and increase access to justice for people abused by police.”
In the coming months, Slack employees will continue to help Raheem on projects to increase our customer support capacity, expand our product technology with UX research and design support, and grow our marketing and sales capabilities. These volunteer efforts are coordinated in real-time via Slack Connect, a secure communications environment that lets you move external conversations and collaborations directly into Slack. This combination of funding with skilled volunteer time serves as a powerful model for companies’ impactful corporate philanthropy.
Slack joins Omidyar Network, Luminate Group, Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Rippleworks, and the Kresge Foundation in supporting Raheem’s mission.
This is just the beginning. Raheem is making reporting police behavior easier, and increasing access to healing justice for victims, while building a new mobile app—the first voice-activated app for recording police. The patent-pending mobile app will allow communities to build defense networks of witnesses and report police in real-time. Watch the video below to learn more.
For more information, visit our website, or support by donating here.
