The goal of this concurrent session will be to provide clinicians with tools and tactics to address systemic abuses in police stations, including the denial of counsel. The presenters will share lessons learned from their advocacy in #LetusBreathe Collective et al. v. City of Chicago, a mandamus suit challenging the Chicago Police Department’s decades-long practice of holding people “incommunicado”—without lawyers or access to telephones. The case resulted in a consent decree which we are currently monitoring.
During the session, we will discuss how clinicians and students can use multi-pronged strategies—litigation, FOIA and transparency work, lobbying, surveying and data analysis, media work, and coalition-building—to ensure that the rights of people arrested by police are protected, particularly during interrogations. We will explore whether and how the #Letusbreathe advocacy can be replicated in other jurisdictions, using both constitutional law and state law analogues. While the practice of “incommunicado detention” has deep roots in Chicago, it remains a problem nationwide. People under arrest continue to be systematically cut off from their friends and family and denied effective legal assistance when they are at their most vulnerable. By the end of this session, attendees should take away ideas on strategies for systemic change, including advocacy to make the promise of Miranda a reality in our nation’s police stations.