Please click here for our statement on Defund The Police, and why we will no longer produce this beer.
Continue to read on for the initial post.
The statistics are staggering. And impossible to ignore.
- Black men and boys are 2.5 times more likely to be killed in an encounter with the police than white men and boys.
- Black men are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white men; twice for Black women compared to white women.
- 1 in 1,000 Black men and boys can expect to die because of a police encounter.
- The US accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, but 21 percent of the world’s prison population. The prison population has risen by more than 700 percent over the last 40 years.
- Black men represent 6.5 percent of the US population, but 40.2 percent of the prison population.
- Spending on prisons and jails has increased at three times the rate of spending on Pre‐K‐12th grade public education in the last thirty years.
These numbers point to a systemic form of oppression embedded in American law enforcement, dating back to the slave patrols of centuries ago.
And as the events of the past few weeks have further demonstrated, change is needed to dismantle the systems of racism that have long oppressed people of color here in The Bronx, in NYC and across this country.
We stand with protesters’ calls to Defund The Police. In July, we will brew a beer with that name, with $1,000 pledged to support Communities United For Police Reform.
As the Atlantic writes, “The country needs to shift financing away from surveillance and punishment, and toward fostering equitable, healthy, and safe communities.”
WHAT WE MEAN BY ‘DEFUND THE POLICE’
– We support re-allocating a significant portion of police budgets — in NYC, and across this country — toward programs that work toward building up communities and the people inside them.
– We believe there are areas and issues within our communities that are better left to experts in the fields of mental health, poverty and homelesness than to armed police.
– A reduction in policing does not necessarily correlate with an uptick in crime. In a now-famous study, the NYPD ‘Slowdown’ of 2014-15 — in which officers stopped proactive policing — saw a reduction in major crime reports. During last summer’s slowdown, the numbers dropped again.
– We believe that divesting money from policing and reinvesting it in initiatives benefiting the community will create long-lasting, sustainable improvements in communities that richly need it.
– Our Black and Latinx communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with Black Americans hospitalized at more than 4.5 times the rate of White Americans for pandemic-related emergencies, per the CDC. In order to correct this imbalance, investment is deeply needed.
– Reforms such as body cameras and inclusiveness, bias and de-escalation training have proven unsuccessful.
– Drastic, revolutionary, positive change in policing is possible. The story of Camden, NJ — where a dismantled and rebuilt (and less aggressive) police force brought about a 42% reduction in violent crimes over the past seven years — is one for the rest of the country to study and understand.
As we have educated ourselves over the past few weeks, we have found many of the resources below helpful. And as we learn of new resources, ideas and organizations pushing this initiative — a reduction in police budget to fund a flourishing of community-based growth efforts and a general rethinking of how we police ourselves as a society — we will continue to add them below.
Defund The Police. Fund The Bronx.
RESOURCES
Communities United For Police Reform | changethenypd.org
Communities United: How To Defund the NYPC, Invest In Communities and Make NYC Safer: https://www.changethenypd.org/sites/default/files/cpr_budget_justice_report_final_v3.pdf –
Defund12: How to Email Officials To Re-Allocate Budgets – https://defund12.org/
Indivisible.Org: Defund the Police & Invest In Black Communities:
Mapping Police Violence: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Black Lives Matter: https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice/
Civil Rights Toolkit: https://civilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/Toolkit.pdf