Dear Next President:

Failure in law enforcement has been the main reason why the Black Lives Matter movement began. Currently, the only educational requirement for police officers is a minimum of a high school diploma or a GED. This needs to be changed. Police officers should have the minimum of a bachelor's degree in some type of social work, criminal justice, or law enforcement background. Too many times has the situation been about an officer shooting at an unarmed African American man or women. For example, the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, including several other cases in the Black Lives Matter movement, have been of unarmed human beings killed for inexplicable reasons.

The protocol that the police officers have been taught has proven to be ineffective. As citizens we trust law enforcement to do the correct thing and protect us.  Instead we live in a society where trained police officers can act on impulse, and panic, but untrained civilians must remain calm while having a gun in their face. Police officers are made to go through several types of training, but these  obviously haven’t been enough. Law enforcement needs to reform their training so that they teach officers how to have different approaches to different situations. There needs to be a higher level of standard and protocol that law enforcement needs to follow, because without these higher standards, it is leading to too many unjustified deaths not only in the Black community. Better training needs to occur to protect the citizens of our ycountry, your people.

Future President, we are not asking you just to consider these reforms.  As your country's citizens, we need you to make these reforms happen. As your people, we cannot live in fear of police officers and law enforcement.   Instead, we need to be protected and work together with one another to make society a safer place.

Sincerely,

Andrea Venegas