Reducing the Police Budget
With the City of Portland prioritizing policing rather than community needs and life-sustaining resources , people of color, people with mental health needs, and others who are most targeted by policing are punished or criminalized. This often further escalates, leading to imprisonment, physical or emotional harm, or death. Policing, surveillance, and imprisonment exacerbate poverty and forcefully removes people from our communities, creating more severe long term problems, rather than providing the care we need.
Since 2017, the Care Not Cops campaign has fought successfully for reductions in the Portland Police Bureau budget with particular focus on preventing increases in police officers, technology, and community policing programs. We have demanded the city end the use of police as first responders, invest in voluntary user-led mental health care centered in the hands of community, and dismantle the gang policing unit of the PPB. We continue to call for a reduction in police spending towards ultimately disarming and defunding the police.
Care Not Cops achieved multiple victories in budget impact from 2017 to 2019, including cutting the proposed PPB budget increase in half in 2018, reducing the creation of new police positions, and building widespread community support for abolishing the gang policing unit in 2019. What's more, due to the work of Care Not Cops, which has successfully mobilized hundreds of people to budget hearings, the political culture has shifted in Portland to include a strong presence of concrete strategies that work towards the abolition of policing.
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