mahrer
commented
4 years ago Thank you for submitting your city to defund12.org! Your request is now in the queue for review and publishing. We’ll reply here if we have any questions.
Open nonukes opened 4 years ago
mahrer
commented
4 years ago Thank you for submitting your city to defund12.org! Your request is now in the queue for review and publishing. We’ll reply here if we have any questions.
erinb223
commented
4 years ago Hi @nonukes! Thanks for your interest in adding Crystal Lake to the site.
defund12.org is primarily focused on contacting officials about defunding and abolition, not police reform. Body cameras, data publishing, and internal investigations are all reform demands. We're strictly limiting site content to defunding and abolition messages, like the ones you have included about reallocating funds and community autonomy.
If you adjust the email copy to align with those values and remove reformist messaging, we'd be happy to publish it. See our email style guide for suggestions.
Thank you!
nonukes
commented
4 years ago Can absolutely do, thank you for the help!
Updated email below:
SUBJECT: [ INSERT UNIQUE SUBJECT LINE ]
Message: [MAKE SURE YOU FILL IN BRACKETS. ALSO ADD/REMOVE/REWORD A LINE OR TWO SO THEY HAVE TO READ EACH MESSAGE]
EMAILS: comments@crystallake.org, jblack@crystallake.org
EMAIL TEXT: Dear Mayor, City Council Members, and Chief of Police, My name is [YOUR NAME] and I am a resident of Crystal Lake. I am contacting you to ask what you are doing to protect black and brown lives in our city. Specifically, I am asking which, if any, of these policy solutions you are working to implement:
Establishing alternative responses to mental health crises and issues like substance abuse and suicide attempts, including by deploying first responder teams of mental health providers and community intervention workers to the scene to handle these issues instead of police officers.
Strengthening the right to film police and providing legal assistance for individuals to sue law enforcement if they take or destroy recording devices.
Establishing an Early Intervention System that identifies officers with high rates of use of force, racial disparities, and misconduct complaints and intervenes to address these practices through termination.
Creating a police misconduct database and prohibit officers who are fired or resign under investigation for serious misconduct from being rehired. I am urging you to publicly condemn police brutality, racial profiling, and the use of excessive force by police.
I am likewise urging you to work towards defunding our police department and reallocating funds to non-police systems of public safety. The largest appropriation in Crystal Lake’s fiscal 2020 budget by far is for police. Meaningful reallocation of the City's expenditures toward the needs of Crystal Lake residents (social programs and resources that support housing, jobs, education, health care, child care, and other critical community needs) is necessary for the 2021 budget. Ending the enforcement of low-level offenses (and redistributing these funds into community-based alternatives) is a necessary step in reducing the police budget, as is establishing a cap on the amount of revenue that can be raised through municipal fines and fees, prohibiting police from seizing cash and property from civilians who haven’t been convicted of a crime, prohibiting police from participating in the federal Equitable Sharing program to seize these assets, and requiring police departments to pay misconduct settlements from their own budgets (rather than taking this money from programs that support communities).
This is particularly relevant now during the pandemic when citizens are being impacted by both public health issues and economic recession. In the coming months and years, investments in social programs will be critical in helping our community recover. Please show that the City of Crystal Lake is committed to a vision of true public safety, one that reduces and eliminates harm for everyone.
If you fail to do so I will not be voting for you should any of you eventually run for re-election or for another office. I will be encouraging my Crystal Lake friends, family, and colleagues to do the same.
Thanks very much for your time, [YOUR NAME] [YOUR ADDRESS] [YOUR PHONE] [YOUR EMAIL]
SOURCES: https://www.joincampaignzero.org https://www.crystallake.org/home/showdocument?id=17649
SUBJECT: [ INSERT UNIQUE SUBJECT LINE ]
Message: [MAKE SURE YOU FILL IN BRACKETS. ALSO ADD/REMOVE/REWORD A LINE OR TWO SO THEY HAVE TO READ EACH MESSAGE]
EMAILS: comments@crystallake.org, jblack@crystallake.org
EMAIL TEXT: Dear Mayor, City Council Members, and Chief of Police, My name is [YOUR NAME] and I am a resident of Crystal Lake. I am contacting you to ask what you are doing to protect black and brown lives in our city. Specifically, I am asking which, if any, of these policy solutions you are working to implement:
The Crystal Lake police department does not currently use body cameras. Body cameras are critical for ensuring the safety of our citizens and officers. I demand that you begin testing and eventually fully implement body cameras in the 2021 budget year. I likewise demand that you establish policies governing the use of body cameras that ensure public access to footage, prevent storage of non-essential footage, require officers to record while on-duty, include specific disciplinary consequences for violations, and prohibit the cameras from being used with biometric scanning and other surveillance technologies
Establishing alternative responses to mental health crises and issues like substance abuse and suicide attempts, including by deploying first responder teams of mental health providers and community intervention workers to the scene to handle these issues instead of police officers
Strengthening the right to film police and providing legal assistance for individuals to sue law enforcement if they take or destroy recording devices
Requiring our police department report and publish online data on all uses of force, including when they point guns at people, as well as any misconduct complaints and disciplinary consequences resulting from these incidents
Establishing an Early Intervention System that identifies officers with high rates of use of force, racial disparities, and misconduct complaints and intervenes to address these practices up to and including through termination.
Creating a police misconduct database and prohibit officers who are fired or resign under investigation for serious misconduct from being rehired
Requiring independent investigations and prosecutions of police officers
Establishing empowered community oversight structures to hold police accountable and set police department policy
I am urging you to publicly condemn police brutality, racial profiling, and the use of excessive force by police.
I am likewise urging you to work towards defunding our police department and reallocating funds to non-police systems of public safety. The largest appropriation in Crystal Lake’s fiscal 2020 budget by far is for police. Meaningful reallocation of the City's expenditures toward the needs of Crystal Lake residents (social programs and resources that support housing, jobs, education, health care, child care, and other critical community needs) is necessary for the 2021 budget. Ending the enforcement of low-level offenses (and redistributing these funds into community-based alternatives) is a necessary step in reducing the police budget, as is establishing a cap on the amount of revenue that can be raised through municipal fines and fees, prohibiting police from seizing cash and property from civilians who haven’t been convicted of a crime, prohibiting police from participating in the federal Equitable Sharing program to seize these assets, and requiring police departments to pay misconduct settlements from their own budgets (rather than taking this money from programs that support communities).
This is particularly relevant now during the pandemic when citizens are being impacted by both public health issues and economic recession. In the coming months and years, investments in social programs will be critical in helping our community recover. Please show that the City of Crystal Lake is committed to a vision of true public safety, one that reduces and eliminates harm for everyone.
If you fail to do so I will not be voting for you should any of you eventually run for re-election or for another office. I will be encouraging my Crystal Lake friends, family, and colleagues to do the same.
Thanks very much for your time, [YOUR NAME] [YOUR ADDRESS] [YOUR PHONE] [YOUR EMAIL]
SOURCES: https://www.joincampaignzero.org https://www.crystallake.org/home/showdocument?id=17649