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Update 7.19.16: The Republican National Convention kicked off this week in Cleveland, OH, a city that houses a police department that is infamous for exerting excessive force and killing Black people, including 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Yet, Cleveland PD has received $50 million of federal funding for equipment to amp up their militarization forces. With police brutality and lack of accountability already being heavily ingrained in CPD culture, this is a huge safety risk for Black folks living in Cleveland and anti-Trump protesters visiting during the RNC.

This month, we've witnessed several brutal Black killings at the hands of police--Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Delrawn Smalls, Alva Braziel, and the list goes on. Yet, the federal government continues to give millions of dollars in grants to the very same police departments that are killing and over-incarcerating Black people.

Baton Rouge PD, the very police department that killed Alton Sterling, has been under investigation by the Department of Justice for civil rights violations TWICE—including for its harassment of Black people following Hurricane Katrina. Yet, federal officials continue to give them money--in fact, Baton Rouge PD has received 3 million dollars from the DOJ over the past five years. There are simple reforms these police departments can make to protect Black lives--yet they have failed to over and over again.

Politicians can’t keep promising the change we need in local police departments and quietly maintain the status quo by failing to take real action. Pres. Obama and Congress have real power to hold police departments accountable with their funding—if they are really about stopping police terror in Black communities, this is how they show it.

It's time for our political leaders to step up and insist on real accountability.