John,

The weekend before last, I came home from an event to discover that my unhoused neighbor, Tad Crane, had been shot twice by an off-duty FBI agent who failed to identify himself until after firing his weapon. Tad had intervened to help a friend assaulted by the officer, and while he thankfully is recovering from the shooting, he was handcuffed to his bed for four days afterwards, and his family was not notified by authorities.

Americans cumulatively lost over 57,000 years to police violence in 2016. Nearly 1,000 Americans are shot and killed by police every year. These harrowing statistics are emblematic of a deeply broken system.

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Our city recently elected a new District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, who has committed himself to police accountability at the local level. We need a voice at the federal level willing to match that commitment, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not publicly mentioned the shooting, even once.

Meanwhile, we’ve attended two community meetings in the past ten days, and helped organize a third this weekend to connect concerned community members to networks organizing in response. In Congress, I’m committed to ending mass incarceration and fundamentally transforming policing.

Can you help me unseat an architect of mass incarceration to help defend civil rights in Congress?

I will work to restrict the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers, by legislating changes to the law to make deadly force justifiable only when objectively necessary to prevent imminent bodily injury or death, not whenever potentially reasonable.

Authorities still have not released the name of the FBI officer who shot my neighbor Tad. I support reforms to ensure transparent and timely investigations into uses of force, and facilitate the prosecution of officers who violate civil rights. Former officers dismissed due to use of force should be tracked in a national database to prevent their future hiring in law enforcement elsewhere.

Beyond police violence, I’ve worked to challenge FBI abuses for well over a decade. While my concerns have historically been rooted in FBI surveillance of activist groups and faith institutions, the spectre of FBI shootings is only more overtly dystopian. I’ve heard elected representatives of our community decry the shooting, but none of them can do anything about it.

Police violence affects thousands of Americans every year, while unaccountable civil rights violations by the FBI have continued to mount for decades. You can help us end this cycle once and for all. Donate $25 today!

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Thank you for your support! I’ve long stood in solidarity with communities enduring state violence, and appreciate your solidarity with our campaign.

Yours,

Shahid