1,000 signatures reached
To: D.C. City Council
Protect DC's Black Communities from Police Violence: Say NO to Mayor Bowser's Crime Bill
D.C. City Council, we want you to reject D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal, B21-0357 - Public Safety and Criminal Code Revisions Amendment Act of 2015. We demand that you advance measures that alleviate social degradation, address unrelenting emotional trauma, and end economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement that plague the residents of D.C. Stop positioning the police as an occupying army in the District’s Black communities.
Why is this important?
Bill 21-0357 will effectively criminalize entire Black neighborhoods in the District. It seeks to flood communities with police endowed with the power to conduct illegal aggressive and dangerous searches and seizures, and to incarcerate people almost at will for minor and non-violent offenses.
Without the support of any data, the Mayor places the blame on returning citizens for the District’s recent spike in crime and seeks to target people on parole probation or supervised release for surveillance and broken windows policing.
The Mayor does not understand the issues that affect the District’s most underserved areas. Instead of responding with knee-jerk proposals that will only increase the rates of arrests and incarceration without reducing crime, the Mayor and the DC Council should invest resources in creating jobs with living wages, support “ban the box” measures to help eliminate obstacles to employment and housing for Returning Citizens, create and protect truly affordable housing, prohibit displacement, significantly improve access to healthy and affordable food and other services that make our community safer.
In Solidarity,
Black Lives Matter DMV and Stop Police Terror Project
#TakeBackOurStreetsDC
Without the support of any data, the Mayor places the blame on returning citizens for the District’s recent spike in crime and seeks to target people on parole probation or supervised release for surveillance and broken windows policing.
The Mayor does not understand the issues that affect the District’s most underserved areas. Instead of responding with knee-jerk proposals that will only increase the rates of arrests and incarceration without reducing crime, the Mayor and the DC Council should invest resources in creating jobs with living wages, support “ban the box” measures to help eliminate obstacles to employment and housing for Returning Citizens, create and protect truly affordable housing, prohibit displacement, significantly improve access to healthy and affordable food and other services that make our community safer.
In Solidarity,
Black Lives Matter DMV and Stop Police Terror Project
#TakeBackOurStreetsDC