Our Mission
Our History
The Richmond Transparency & Accountability Project builds safer, healthier communities by disrupting mass incarceration at its source: police policies and procedures. We organize Black and brown people, legal experts, and policy analysts to achieve policing practices that reduce physical, economic, and emotional trauma on the most policed neighborhoods in the city.”
In 2016, RTAP was formed by community members, the Legal Aid Justice Center, New Virginia Majority, and Southerners on New Ground to increase police accountability in Richmond. At community meetings organized by RTAP, people shared their experiences of police abuse. When these stories were shared with RPD and City Council, city leaders did not act. Since then, RTAP has engaged and won campaigns to obtain police data, successfully advocated for statewide legislation to empower community control of police in Virginia, and forced City Council to start the process of community control of RPD. These wins represent initial steps toward the goal of promoting racial justice and the thriving of Richmond's Black and brown residents.