Mike Horne

ENC 3331 (0001)

4/29/15

Plan of Action
If there's going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way
from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change
happens.
-Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States
The issue of corruption and abuse of power in Law Enforcement is a deep seeded issue in
American society and it is not one that will change overnight. Although it will be a long arduous march
toward reform it doesn't mean that it isn't attainable. In the original introduction to my project back in
the beginning of the semester I spoke of the necessity of a grassroots movement to bring change to this
aspect of American society. In fact, the bulk of my plan of action revolves around grassroots
organization. So considering this, the burning question is this; What exactly does grassroots
organization entail?
In it's simplest and broadest definition, grassroots action is action taken by ordinary people at
the most local levels of society; towns, cities and counties. It involves people at these levels of society
taking to their streets to spread the word about a cause, spark discussion among other civilians and to
network and organize with like minded individuals. But most importantly, these civilians do all that
they can to make their voices heard within their localities government. This can be achieved through
staging public demonstrations, attending local government meetings to make your issue part of the
agenda or bringing petitions to local politicians. All of this is descriptive of what my plan of action
would include. But let me be more specific in how it applies to my issue.
The assault on corruption and abuse of power in law enforcement will take a number of steps to
remedy the problem. Three main goals must be achieved: The mandatory usage of police body
cameras, the abolishment of self investigation/the replacement of the Internal Affairs Bureau with a

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
federal investigatory agency and the changing of judicial policy to require federal prosecutors rather
than local district attorneys or state prosecutors to handle criminal cases involving police misconduct.
Considering that this is a multi-step solution that could require years upon year of work, it is best to
start small. Considering this, I will start my explanation of my plan of action in the context of starting
with the goal of achieving mandatory police body cameras within a local jurisdiction.
So we have the goal, getting a local government to institute a policy which requires local police
department to use body cameras on patrol officers. But how do we get there? In my opinion, it all starts
with organization and networking of like-minded individuals. This is achieved chiefly through
engaging in intellectual discourse with other members of the public. Although there are a number of
venues to engage in intellectual discourse, I would personally choose to do so at a University. This is
my preference because of the advantages that a University has over other public venues in regards to
ease of finding interested individuals. Since universities are broken down into colleges focusing on
different academic subjects, it wouldn't be hard to find the part of campus in which you would find
individuals who are interested in law, public policy or social change. Considering this, I would focus on
the political science and writing/rhetoric colleges.
But even within those specific portions of campus, you could narrow your search even further
by locating organizations on campus who might share your interests in regards to your topic. Say that
you find a handful of organizations who are interested in your cause. Great, now you have an initial
audience. It would make sense from that point to attend the meetings of these organizations and attempt
to talk to the members about your cause. Begin by discussing the issue, getting them interested in the
cause and then telling them, what you believe to be, the focal points of the problem. This is where a
prepared presentation of the facts and visual rhetoric exemplifying the issue would come in handy.
Once you have their attention, tell them that you are looking for dedicated individuals to help create a

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
new public organization dedicated to the cause of reforming accountability of law enforcement.
Ideally, you would have at least a handful of individuals who would express their interest and
get in contact with you for further collaboration. Once this has been achieved, it's time to organize and
discuss the plan of action. The plan of action could include a lot of things, but the end goal is the same
for every avenue; To get local governments to require the use of body cameras for all patrol officers.
The best way, in my opinion, to achieve this is to make the voice of the people heard at the local level
of government. Petition drives are usually the best way to get a response from government, especially
local government. Thus, I'll be discussing the plan of action in terms of staging a petition drive with the
hope of putting pressure on government to enact change. But as I mentioned before, it's best to start
small. Therefore, it would make the most sense for the organization to focus their efforts on a local
level rather than heading straight for State or Federal government.
So let's say the aim of the organization is to change the policy of the government of the city of
Orlando and the first step for the plan of action is to gather petitions. Furthermore, the goal is to get
30,000 signatures, an amount which represents over 10 percent of Orlando's population. So where do
we start? Well, there are a number of ways to do this. The first, most logical place to start would be
where the birthplace of the organization itself; the public university (in the context of this example, let's
say it's UCF.) So the organization takes to the UCF grounds with blank petitions, a bunch of free
standing signs that say talk to me about police brutality and attempts to solicit students for their
signatures. In order to get people interested and educate them about the issue, pamphlets could be
handed out with brief statistics regarding police brutality, focal points of the issue and proposed
solutions by the organization.
Another place to do this would be in local coffee shops that host open mic nights, where an
organization representative could take to the stage, briefly discuss the cause with the audience and

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
attempt to solicit the signatures of the coffee shop patrons. Yet another venue would be to go to
downtown Orlando itself on a busy intersection during a busy weekend night and solicit signatures
from passersby. All this could be done in addition to the establishment of an online E-petition which is
advertised through various social media. One very important part of this process would be to attempt to
establish an E-Bank of all the petition signers. Ask the for their email to keep them up to speed with
the efforts of the organization and to keep them up to date with future efforts which they could help
with (this will be very important later on.) Even though there are probably many other avenues through
which a petition drive could be accomplished, but ideally these would be enough to achieve the desired
goal of 30,000 signatures.
Once the organization has reached it's goal, the next step would be to get in contact with
members of the local government. This would include local members of city council, the chamber of
commerce, the mayor, etc. Schedule one on one meetings with those individuals, attempt to gain their
support in proposing a change in policy. Attend city council meetings and try to force a change. Get in
touch with local media and tell them about your organization and what you're doing to promote your
issue. Tell them that you'll be attending city hall to voice the concerns of the public, have them attend
the meeting as well. Whatever it takes; Put the pressure on, make you voice heard. Ideally, this would
be enough to change the policy at the local level.
Once a change has been made at the local level of city or county government, it's time to take
spread the movement. Repeat the process in neighboring cities or counties; Start chapters of the
organization on different campuses, gather manpower in that locality, gather petition signatures,
pressure local government into enacting change, rinse and repeat until a large portion of the state has
changed their policies to address the concerns of the public over public accountability of law
enforcement. When enough of the state has changed their policies at the local level and have begun

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
requiring police body cameras, it's time to take the fight to the state level. Hopefully the amount of
counties and cities that have adopted your policy change will pressure the sate into easily passing a law
which would change the policy at the state level. But in the event that the government is resistant to
change, you would do the same thing that you did at the local level just on a larger scale-- gather
petitions. Lets say that you wish to gather around 10 percent of the states population in signatures. That
means gathering around 1.9 million signatures, quite a lot more than the 30,000 that it took at the local
level but still entirely possible, especially given your sprawling network of smaller organizations
around the state. In addition to that you can make use of the data base I mentioned earlier. I stated how
it would be very important to keep a data base of past petition signators for future efforts and here is
where this comes into play: In addition to going back to the streets for fresh signators, send the new
petition to previous signators to recruit their support as well. Aside from this, it would also be worth
putting extra effort into exposure for the petition for the sake of reaching the large goal of 1.9 million
signators. I would recommend that ad space be taken out in local papers of every major county in the
state in order to better expose the organization, the petition drive and the cause as a whole. It would
also be worth having representatives from the organization go to campuses around the state to speak to
students about the issue of public accountability of law enforcement and why they should sign a
petition, contact the heads of the state government and help change the current policy.
Furthermore, enlisting the support of state senators could go a very long way for achieving a lot
of exposure. Consider this; After a meeting with Senator Bill Nelson, the senator decides to send an
email to all of the constituents who are registered electronically with his office. That would ensure that
the petition would be exposed to at least that many more people who previously might have been
unaware of the organization or the cause. Furthermore, having a state senator express his support for a
policy change could help put some additional pressure on the state legislature and governor to support

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
the cause. Ideally, this would all be enough to reach the signature goal. Once this step has been
completed the signatures would be taken to Tallahassee, where they'd be sent to to the state legislature
and the governor's office. From there the organization would then put the pressure on the heads of the
state government to create a policy change. Hopefully, it would be enough pressure to create a piece of
legislation which would create a state wide policy change in support of mandatory use of police body
cameras in Florida. However, if the state politicians are reluctant to change, public demonstrations and
having the public express their concerns to the offices of the heads of the state government could go a
long way.
Once the organization has succeeded in it's efforts in the state of Florida, it would be time to
move on to another state, then another state, then one more, and so on and so forth. Just as I stated
earlier, it would be a long and arduous process. But it would be crucial, especially if the organization
would hope to eventually influence federal politics-- something that would be necessary in order to
replace Internal Affairs with a federal agency and to require the use of federal prosecutors for police
misconduct cases. Both of these goals would require a nationwide network and a nationwide effort, all
stemming from grassroots organization at the local levels of every state in the country. Grandiose,
maybe. But certainly achievable, it would just take many years and a great deal of hard work to
accomplish.
This type of grassroots action, this domino effect so to speak, might seem very grandiose.
And to be fair, it just might be. To the average person it would appear to be the concoction of a naive
dreamer, especially when this plan is put to action to influence federal politics a task which seems
impossible to the majority of people. But I believe this to be no different than the efforts of other
grassroots organizations in American history: The Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee, the
NAACP, the ACLU... All of these organizations had modest beginnings and only achieved their

Mike Horne
ENC 3331 (0001)
4/29/15
seemingly grandiose goals through the hard work and dedication of many individuals. In their time,
their ideas seemed just as idealistic and naive as what I am proposing now. But as we look back on
those ideas today, after decades have passed since their victory, we see their ideas as both revolutionary
and entirely inevitable. Thus, I hope that one day, once this fight has also been won, we will look back
on it with the same sentiments.