News & Commentary

The Charleston Police Department (CPD) seeks City of Charleston tax dollars to expand its body camera program. The Charleston City Council must ensure strong policies governing the use of body cameras by CPD before providing CPD with additional revenue for its body camera program. Without strong policies, body cameras become just another tool to hide law enforcement abuses. Specifically, the Charleston City Council must ensure CPD’s body camera policy includes the following mandates:

Hello! My name is Alexandra Bailey (she/her/hers) and I am honored to be joining the ACLU of South Carolina’s team as a National Organizing Specialist focusing on the Charleston County Sheriff Race. I was raised in a city of the haves and have-nots, more commonly known as the District of Columbia, and have been a part of its story; family members with drug addictions, sky-high living costs, insufficient wages, racially motivated treatment, policing, education, and the list goes on. I found my calling to organize through my personal experience with homelessness. My family, like many others, lost nearly everything in the 2008 financial crisis. I was forced to resign a hard-won seat at the University of London and return home to help my family. I was 20 years old, and the bright future I had fought for was suddenly in doubt. Unable to regain financial footing after years of struggle, and in the face of losing the one-bedroom apartment my family shared, a friend took me in as a live-in house/pet sitter in 2013. This turn of events was wholly life changing; it not only offered a solution to a terrifying problem but pivoted the focus of my life. I was now going to spend all my time fighting the social and governmental engines that attack personal dignity, civil liberties, and that create inequity and inaccessibility in our society. It was during this time that I was given the space and safety to further my education through Harvard Distance Learning. I have since gone on to study organizing with Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School and guest lecture on organizing theory and practice at Ryerson University.I have come far in my work, but my career began simply. I ran and cooked meals for the Homeless Ministry of First United Methodist Church. During that time, I became painfully aware that the work around poverty and criminal justice reform is often disjointed; it either focuses on immediate needs or trying to change the laws for tomorrow. I found/find this approach flawed. It isn’t holistic, and it doesn’t create a movement; it doesn’t create people power, and it doesn't come from the community. No one issue exists in a silo, and far too commonly these approaches tend to treat those impacted like political pawns, burdens, or paperwork to be processed. I honed my organizing and lobbying techniques, and I got to work! I have worked to gain access to voting for people experiencing homelessness, fought to raise the minimum wage in Cook County, Illinois and beyond, lobbied for the passage HB40 to renew the commitment to abortion access in Illinois, led efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in Illinois, fought racialized policing, elected and held new officials accountable, and more.   From the moment I joined the ACLU of SC, I knew I had found a group of people who believe, as I do, that policy and budgets are moral documents and that we must stand in radical solidarity with those impacted by harmful practices that are antithetical to civil liberties. This incredible organization has launched a campaign for safe and just communities, and their demands live up to that name. Fighting to end the racist war on drugs, the use of 287G agreements that rip apart immigrant families, blatant discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons, racialized policing practices that strip citizens of their First Amendment rights, fighting voter suppression, and reforming a legal system that offers justice based on resources and race. 

Along with our partners at South Carolina for Criminal Justice Reform (SC4CJR), today we sent a letter expressing concerns about the city of Charleston’s assessment of its response to the uprising in Charleston on May 30 and 31, 2020. In a letter to Mayor Tecklenburg, Charleston Police Chief Reynolds, and Charleston City Council, we provided an analysis of objections to the city’s assessment and reiterated our opposition to mass police violence in and around Marion Square on the afternoon and evening of Sunday, May 31, 2020. 

Along with our partners Arnold & Porter, today we announced a resolution in Voltz-Loomis, et. al, v. McMaster, et. al., our federal  lawsuit filed on behalf of people incarcerated by the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC). The suit sought immediate relief to protect incarcerated people during COVID-19. Today’s resolution requires SCDC to follow newly adopted procedures to reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 for all people who are incarcerated in state prisons. As a result of the resolution, SCDC has produced a COVID-19 response policy implementing procedures based on CDC guidelines, including sanitation and medical guidelines. Additional policy provisions include: 

This op-ed was published by Charleston City Paper on September 23, 2020. Read the full piece here. 

David Cole, ACLU Legal Director With

Ria Tabacco Mar, Director, Women’s Rights Project Ruth

This week, Governor McMaster signed into law legislation that will better protect voters in the November general election during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Governor’s action takes away one of the two hurdles to safe voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, and comes after a federal lawsuit brought by us and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.Until this week, eligible voters in South Carolina faced two hurdles to safe voting. First, people who wished to vote absentee faced an “excuse” requirement that failed to provide an accommodation to allow all eligible voters to vote absentee during the pandemic. Second, people who vote absentee are required to have a third-party witness signature on their ballot envelope.Requiring voters to be physically present at their traditional polling places during the COVID-19 outbreak — where they will be congregating and waiting in line with others in order to vote — is contrary to the advice of public health experts. In addition, in the midst of a pandemic, the witness requirement also puts people’s health at risk.Thanks to the legislature’s and Governor McMaster’s actions, eligible South Carolina voters will now be allowed to cite COVID-19 as a valid reason for voting absentee. But, the legislation signed into law does not address the witness requirement, which makes voting from a safe social distance impossible for those who live alone.We are asking the courts to remove this remaining hurdle to safe voting in South Carolina so that no South Carolina voter will need to choose between their health and their vote.Stay tuned. As soon as we have clarity from the court around the witness requirement, we will send out voting rights education materials so that all South Carolinanians will understand the process for voting absentee in November. 

This past weekend, people protesting in Charleston for racial justice and against police violence were again met with police violence. This has become a disturbing pattern.This recent police escalation comes nearly three months after Charleston area law enforcement departments, including the Charleston Police Department, participated in mass police violence on May 31 in Marion Square, deploying potentially lethal weapons against people peacefully protesting. And, later that night area law enforcement continued their violence against Eastside community members.Our city leaders must not allow this police brutality to continue. Our repeated calls (here and here) for accountability have been met with silence from Charleston Police Chief Reynolds and other local and statewide law enforcement leaders whose officers have repeatedly executed this violence against protestors. It is unconscionable that law enforcement have chosen to respond to community concerns about police violence with silence.It has been over eight months since the publication of the CPD racial bias audit, which found, among other things, that Black community members were 2.8 times more likely to face the use of force from CPD officers. Despite these serious concerns documented in the audit, 2020 CPD data continues to paint a disturbing picture. For example, while Black and white people use marijuana at roughly the same rate, so far this year Black people are approximately 8 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession and 10 times more likely to be cited in Charleston. And, these disparities have increased over the 2019 disparity rates.The recent police violence coupled with the continued massive racial disparities in the enforcement of our laws is a contradiction of city leaders’ claims to be invested in racial justice.Over the past several years, the City of Charleston has taken steps to demonstrate to the community a concern for racial justice, including apologizing for its role in slavery, commissioning a racial bias audit of the police department, establishing the “Special Commission on Equity Inclusion and Racial Reconciliation,” and removing the Calhoun monument from Marion Square.Now is the time to follow these gestures with concrete actions to reduce harms enacted on Black people in Charleston. In the birthplace of America’s first police force which was originally established as a slave patrol, this expansion of policing is a direct dismissal of the outcries of Black people who continue to be oppressed by the racist foundation and structure of policing in Charleston.Law enforcement’s perpetuation of these violent attempts to silence their critics serves as an important reminder that our policing system isn't broken — it's working as it was designed. Police actions this past weekend made another great case for why we must drastically reduce the role of policing in our society, especially in communities of color that historically have been over-policed.