How to Talk to Friends and Family DEFUND the Police By 50%
Use Compassion, Patience, and Care
When starting a conversation, it’s important to find points of common ground to start from. For example, something that is shared across different individuals and groups: we all want to be safe in our communities and have our needs meet.
Move Beyond Individual Police Officers to the Institutional System
An individual police officer may have been helpful or kind, and may even be a family member or friend, but the institution of the police force fosters and reinforces racism that leads to the criminalization and killing of Black and Indigenous peoples. Between 2013 and 2017, a Black person was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by the Toronto Police. Ask, how might a good cop’s helping skills be put to better use? And can one good meaning person stop years of institutional racism?
Recognize that Experiences Are Not Universal
In the area commonly referred to as Canada, policing was established to control Indigenous peoples and land, and then to enforce Black slavery and criminalize newcomers and other racialized folks. Police and policing services are largely constructed on the notion that Black and Indigenous people are threats, and consequently people’s experiences of police vary widely across different groups. How do you imagine it might feel to be automatically judged as a threat? Can you think of ways to keep you protected without jeopardizing the lives of others?
Safety for Whom?
Defunding the police service by 50% does not mean accepting a more dangerous world, or that our safety is compromised. The demand to defund is rooted in the documented and researched reality that police have failed in creating safety or addressing social problems. We need direct investments in community services that have proven to be more effective at addressing social and community needs. Consider, what specifically is it about the police makes you feel safe? How might your idea of safety differ from someone else’s? Are police really creating safe communities for Black and Indigenous people?
Toronto Police Services is Overfunded, and Policing Levels are Unacceptable. Did you know that the 2020 Toronto Police Service budget is approximately $1.08 billion!
Policing is the single largest expense in Toronto. Policing is more than the budget for Toronto Community Housing; shelters, support and housing services; transportation; employment and social services; and libraries combined. Many policing resources in Toronto are spent on victimless crimes resulting from poverty and systemic injustice, i.e., transit fare evasion. In Toronto there is an unacceptable level of policing and use. It’s time to question, if armed, highly paid officers are the right resource for a community need or function?
Main Talking Points
The call to defund the police by 50% and reinvest the funds into community services was issued by Black Lives Matter Toronto’s 2020 public demands, and I am asking you to join me to show your solidarity and call on City councillors to prioritize the well-being of our neighbours and community members who disproportionately bear the brunt of systemic racism, ongoing surveillance, criminalization, and violence in policing.
Policing levels are unacceptable. This messaging is rooted in a moral argument to acknowledge that police services are often used in situations that cause more harm than good. Police are not social workers, nurses, or educators yet police are often called to respond to fill in those roles. Would Regis Korchinski-Paquet still be alive if a mental health nurse had turned up when her family called 911?
Police services are overfunded and community services are underfunded. The experiences of Black, Indigenous, racialized, mad, disabled, homeless, migrant, sex worker, queer and trans communities who are targeted by police, along with the data, prove that police are unwilling and unprepared to keep residents safe.
To create real and meaningful change we must act collectively and advocate. If you agree that the systemic oppression, criminalization, brutalization, and senseless death of Black, Indigenous, and other targeted communities at the hands of police is an emergency then use your voice/power to demand change and lobby councillors.