Good morning, Day 4!
THREAD: The City Manager seems to believe police reform is the right way to go. But studies show that all that does is give cops more funding and oversight.

#defundthepolice #OccupyCityHall #releasethereports #norfolk #cityhall #blacklivesmatter

City of Norfolk is only pushing for us to leave because they want their Phase 3 holiday weekend to look good for tourists. But we're NOWHERE near ready to open up more if you look at the numbers.

This business owner is gonna see a LOT more of this bullshit. Nobody likes closing down for two weeks - but our lives are more valuable.

http://www.wtkr.com/news/beach-business-owner-frustrated-at-non-mask-wearers

City Manager spoke to us today and namedropped two companies for police reform: Microsoft Criminal Justice Reform and Center for Policing Equity. Let's take a look at both of those and why they suck, shall we?

https://policingequity.org/ 

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/03/03/microsoft-criminal-justice-reform-initiative/

#DefundThePolice

Let's start with CPE.

This is what these cities are calling for right now:
Minneapolis: demanding defund & dismantle
Seattle: demanding defund & dismantle
Baltimore: defund
Pittsburgh: defund

You get the picture.
https://www.publicsource.org/activists-call-for-defunding-the-police-here-are-6-key-stats-about-the-115-million-pittsburgh-police-budget/

#defundthepolice #norfolkcityhall #VA

CPE is using a handbook from 2015.
Their data in above tweet doesn't have dates listed but it seems pretty useless if that's all they've "accomplished" since 2015 and those citizens clearly feel it isn't working.

#defundthepolice

Hi, Norfolk PD. We are out here talking. Your city leaders aren't. Police reform simply doesn't work.

Let's look at Minneapolis again, where George Floyd was murdered by cops using excessive force on May 25, 2020.

#defundthepolice

This article about Minneapolis is great. Here's some highlights below, but read the whole thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/31/the-answer-to-police-violence-is-not-reform-its-defunding-heres-why

#defundnorfolkpolice #defundthepolice #releasethereports

2015: MPD started a ~$5M multi-year police reform project incl. tighter use-of-force standards.
2018: patted themselves on the back, published a report
2020: killed a man by crushing his neck; not 1 intervention by cops.

Transformative? No. Lucrative? Yes.

Defund the police.

Time to move on to Microsoft's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative.

They talk a lot about LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) in Seattle and how it's "helped". Here's a screenshot from PDF here: https://www.leadbureau.org/resources 

We're asking for transparency too.

Microsoft believes we should focus on policing, not on the needs of our communities.

June 2020: Microsoft's own EMPLOYEES believe they should divest from Seattle PD.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/09/250-microsoft-employees-urge-ceo-to-end-police-contracts/

None of these things seem unreasonable. Seattle citizens are asking the same thing - defund, demilitarize, dismantle.

#defundnorfolkpolice #defundthepolice