Churches make a drastic pledge in the name of social justice: To stop calling the police

[DonViejo]

By Julie Zauzmer April 19 at 6:00 AM

First Congregational Church of Oakland shares a neighborhood with many homeless people who often come to the church in times of mental health crises. Sometimes church members feel unequipped to deal with the erratic behavior: The most heart-wrenching scenes, volunteer leader Nichola Torbett says, are the times when the church is closing for the day, and a person with nowhere else to go absolutely refuses to leave the building.

At least once or twice a month, at their wits’ end, the church members call 911.

Now, the church has joined a small handful of like-minded congregations with a radical goal: to stop calling the police. Not for mental health crises, not for graffiti on their buildings, not even for acts of violence. These churches believe the American police system, criticized for its impact especially on people of color, is such a problem that they should wash their hands of it entirely.

“Can this actually be reformed, when it was actually created for the unjust distribution of resources or to police black and brown bodies?” Torbett asked. For her and for her fellow church members, the answer is no — the police don’t just need reform. The police need to be abandoned altogether.

The churches call their drastic approach “divesting” from policing. They say that one headline after another about policing around the country shows that it’s necessary — most recently, events include a notorious call to police about two African American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks and the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark, shot eight times as he was holding an iPhone, not a gun.

The project of divesting is organized by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a nationwide organization that tries to get white Americans working on behalf of racial justice. The four Unitarian and Protestant churches that have joined so far include three in the Bay Area and one in Iowa City. The Northern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ has signed on to recruit from among its member churches, and the Bay Area churches are talking to more congregations in their area, from denominations including the Disciples of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/19/churches-make-a-drastic-pledge-in-the-name-of-social-justice-to-stop-calling-the-police

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[PatSeg]

2. That's very impressive

[Dawson Leery]

3. The police did this to themselves.

They cannot just kill people because they feel threatened.

[flibbitygiblets]

5. Agreed, and...if there weren't so many guns there would be less to be afraid of

I know it doesn't do anything to address this country's racism problem. But the thought that everyone out there possibly has a gun puts the police in the position of being fearful of everyone they're supposed to be "serving and protecting". Add in racism and you have the current situation.

[eggplant]

7. They're not fearful of everyone. Just the black and brown folks.

They have no difficulty not killing violent criminals who happen to be white.

[3Hotdogs]

6. on the same day we read about two deputies in Florida, killed in ambush.

What is the middle ground?

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. So it comes to this

Police used to scoff that people hate the police unless they need them.

Well guess what happened?

[pecosbob]

8. If the police in this country could have ever been considered actual servants of the people

that time is long since past. Calling the police is like calling in an air strike...you have no idea what will happen and who will be hurt. They're entirely detached from the communities they're supposed to serve. They're trained with an 'us against them' mentality. We've ended up with police acting like soldiers in a foreign country where they cannot tell friend from foe and treat everyone as an enemy. High speed car pursuits are a great example of police presenting a larger threat to the community than that presented by suspects at large. Add local police agencies that have designed their budgets around fines, citations and asset forfeitures and we end up with police that prey upon the citizens they're supposed to serve and a modern-day debtor's prison system. Throw in a large ration of racism and it's pretty much telling the entire minority community FU.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. "That time is long since past." I would say it never was. What we now understand as a modern police

force was founded for two reasons: To protect property and to find people escaping slavery. 'Twas ever thus.