Community Shares encourages city to shift some police funding to social services
JUNE 22, 2020 - Community Shares of Greater Cincinnati is a federation of 28 charities as diverse as the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, the Winton Place Youth Center and MUSE, the Cincinnati Women's Choir. What all our member groups share is a desire to serve the needs of individuals and our community. Among other support, we offer these groups funds, which really matter, as most of them address needs far greater than their budgets.
Recently, we went on the record to express sadness at the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and solidarity with people of color who demand change, justice and equity under the law. We called upon leaders like Cincinnati City Council to heed the voices of anguish, examine the systems of institutional racial oppression and dismantle them. What happened in Minneapolis could have just as easily happened here.
Like Cincinnati, Minneapolis reacted to public outrage over the death of a black man by police five years ago with a slew of reforms, including implicit bias training, mindfulness, de-escalation, and crisis intervention. They diversified the department’s leadership, created tighter use-of-force standards, adopted body cameras, initiated a series of police-community dialogues; and enhanced early-warning systems to identify problem officers. Just like we did. All these reforms were in place the day George Floyd lost his life and ignited a global movement whose birth pangs we now observe.
Minneapolis' city council has now recognized that reform falls far short of the measures needed to improve outcomes for people of color and others among the policed population. This includes people with mental illness, people with addictions, people suffering domestic violence or homelessness and people left behind by our educational and economic systems. Police are not trained to help and support this population, they're trained to control it, often with military style tactics and equipment. Yet police around the nation are deployed to manage situations involving these people. Just as one should not send a social worker into armed combat, one should not send militarized police to solve social problems. Minneapolis is looking to find another way. We at Community Shares urge Cincinnati City Council to follow suit.
What we propose is an alternate approach to public safety. Practically speaking, that means shrinking both the scope and budget of the police department and reallocating resources to the underfunded social service agencies that can more appropriately and effectively prevent crime, public disturbance and individual tragedy without the collateral damage we are seeing right now. At this time, we would like to specifically amplify certain demands of Mass Action for Black Liberation (formerly Black Lives Matter Cincinnati) who call for:
• Immediate demilitarization of the Cincinnati Police Department.
• Replacing police response to wellness checks and domestic violence calls with a wraparound social work response.
• Full funding of five (non-active or retired police) investigators at the Citizen’s Complaint Authority
• Application of laws and policies fairly to ALL people. Eliminating racial disparity in the criminal-legal system including in arrests, convictions, and sentencing.
• Reallocation of police divestment monies into social programs including the affordable housing trust fund; with a commitment to housing ALL Cincinnatians.
• Reparations to families of victims of police violence.
• Initiating or reopening criminal cases of police brutality/police killings, including but not limited to: Melvin Murray, Dontez O’Neal, Paul Gaston, Jawari Porter and Quandavier Hicks.
• Investment in cooperatively-owned, black-led economic initiatives.
• Protecting and expanding current City of Cincinnati investment in community-led health, education, and safety strategies.
• Immediately removing all Cincinnati police officers from our schools.
• Immediately ceasing all contracts between CPS and the Cincinnati Police Department.
We know that investing in the community works. We know that people of color are the experts on what their communities need to be successful, healthy and productive. We urge you as city leaders to listen to them and take this bold step to find a better way.
