Street Law focuses on practical, direct survival knowledge for people interacting with police, ICE, or other federal law enforcement, especially during stops and frisks. It provides basic but critical baseline information for communities most likely to be targeted.

In D.C.’s Black and brown neighborhoods, there is the law on the books, and then there is street law: how policing actually happens on the street, in real time.

When police approach, question, detain, search, or pat you down, what so-called constitutional rights are you supposed to have? What should you do in the moment? If police lie and you are arrested, what do you need to know? How can we document, report, and share what is happening in our communities, and identify the officers responsible?

In addition to addressing these questions, the training highlights the contradictions between what the law and official policies say and the tactics law enforcement actually uses on the street.