Abolish, Defund, many words have been put into the public conversation about how policing in this country has to change. The reality though, is that slight adjustments and conversations about reform just won’t suffice anymore; not in view of all that we are seeing and many in our communities continue to experience.

The word we are using is re-imagine. We need to re-imagine what policing, public safety and law enforcement should and could look like in our communities.

These posts provide information and education about important issues facing our communities and opportunities to be involved in action and advocacy; this week police and law enforcement.

The NYPD recently organized some Zoom listening tours to hear the questions and concerns of the community. One of our Trellis Crew attended two of them and shared her thoughts…

The night before I had gone to my very first NYPD Reform Zoom meeting that was for the Bronx, and I was very disappointed with how the meeting was conducted.

To sum up what had happened…

I had so many questions and I was specifically told I would have a chance to ask these questions in the open forum but they lied to myself and a majority of other people in the zoom chat. The police commissioner said how he wanted more of the youth to speak and be present at these meetings but also kept letting some of the same people who were there in person ask questions that (I found) were irrelevant up until the point where the time for the meeting had run out and it finished. So, the next night I once again joined the NYPD Reform Zoom meeting (because they wouldn't disclose the location of the in person meeting) and after I had edited my question the night before I asked it in the zoom chat again. Once again one of the NYPD zoom chat responders reached out to me privately and said that I had a great question and would have the time to ask it during the open forum. I doubted I would be given the chance to speak and thought it would end up exactly like the night before. I waited and waited and waited up until the point where I was so sure that they weren't going to let me un-mute myself and speak that I barely heard them as they repeated “Marwa Ellis, are you still with us?” I was so excited, confused, and shocked at the same time that I was super tense as I was speaking and fumbled over my words. I had planned on saying,

“I am a Muslim who was born in Africa and raised in South Brooklyn. I grew up in this area of Brooklyn that is very diverse and is such a family type of community. People came in all shapes, sizes, colors, languages, backgrounds, cultures and etc. Why is it that I had to go through middle school with my friends being too scared to hang out at night because they are not white and were afraid they would be bothered by the police? Question: Does the NYPD take into account how traumatizing they can be when they rush through communities or walking around in a very scary demeanor? These kids are too scared to go out. That should be the least of their problems at their age.”

However, since I was on my phone in a car full of my family and not at home with my computer, I ended up saying bits and pieces of what I could remember from that paragraph. I also remembered to mention my thoughts and feelings about the previous meeting just so they know what people are thinking about it. I think they got the point/jist of what I was saying all in all. After I spoke, instead of the commissioner answering my question, NYPDs Chief of Collaborative Policing, Jaunita N. Holmes, answered by deflecting the question and basically repeated what had already been said that the NYPD is trying to listen to more of what the community thinks needs to be changed within the NYPD. I found it so ridiculous that I waited for such a long period of time (in my opinion) to ask my question just to get that type of no care response. It made me feel like although the commissioner wants to hear what we have to say, they aren't really serious about it and aren't taking action. It seemed as though the NYPD “Reform” Meeting was just for the NYPD to put on a good face during all of the tragic events that are currently happening or happened. That's what I learned.

Marwa Ellis

Why the need for re-imaging? What could this re-imagining look like?

“As precincts adopted neighborhood policing, neighborhood policing did not influence either property or violent crime at a statistically significant level at any time point,” they wrote. “Overall, our analyses suggest neighborhood policing did not influence crime.” READ MORE

(In Minneapolis, in response to years of police abuse and after George Floyd) Council members who supported the "Safety for All" plan argued the city could no longer tolerate what they described as a broken system of policing and a department that has been resistant to reform. READ MORE

Public mental health episodes are another area that need radical re-imagining as we think about first responders. Here what’s been going on in Oregon.

“31 years ago the City of Eugene, Oregon developed an innovative community-based public safety system to provide mental health first response for crises involving mental illness, homelessness, and addiction.” READ MORE

“One Brooklyn community’s experiment to deal with a longstanding crime hot-spot in a busy commercial corridor took a new approach last month: They pulled back on policing. (to show that this can work)
Cops from Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct withdrew from their regular posts on Mother Gaston Boulevard for parts of a five-day stretch in early December, while violence interrupter and crisis management groups watched over the two-block zone between Pitkin and Sutter avenues.
“This was ‘defund the police’ in actuality,” said Assemblymember Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn), who grew up in the nearby Glenmore Plaza Houses.” READ MORE

What can you do?

Attend a CCRB monthly meeting - this is the public meeting of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, “It is empowered to receive, investigate, mediate, hear, make findings, and recommend action on complaints against New York City police officers alleging the use of excessive or unnecessary force, abuse of authority, discourtesy, or the use of offensive language.” Recently the board has been handed increased power and there are calls to take this further.
Attend your local precinct meeting
Contact your local elected officials to find out where they stand on the NYPD budget
Connect your faith institution to the Bring the Heat campaign, a national, multi-faith campaign calling for the radical re-imagining of policing in our country