The Agenda for this Thursday’s Police Board meeting has been released. Our team has combed through it and there are key things that need to be highlighted. #thread 1/x #DefundThePolice #AbolishPolice

These agendas are intentionally long, and difficult to navigate. There are important concerns that people are bringing forward through correspondence and it's important that we highlight them. 2/x

On page 50, @HHHamilton sent a correspondence highlighting a conflict of interest on the police board. Chad Collins has stated that his sister works for HPS. We have the same question that Graham is asking. Why is it appropriate for Chad Collins to sit on the HPS board? 3/x

In June, Chad Collins put forward a motion to review the implications of a 20% reduction in the Police Budget. The “report” has been released and is on the table for the upcoming police board meeting. This report can be found on page 127 of the agenda. 4/x

This report is under two pages, inadequately informed, and quite frankly, does nothing to address the concerns that community members are bringing forth. The report states that a 20% reduction will amount to a 34.3 million dollar service cut. 5/x

Every social service sector in the city continues to be defunded. Why are there no concerns about the lack of supports for unhoused people? Or people accessing ODSP and OW? Or lack of funding towards mental health services in the city? Or the underfunding of public transit? 6/x

This report mentions that a 20% budget cut would mean that police can’t effectively run their service. It mentions that “frontline patrolling” would be one of the services impacted by this cut. What is the actual use of frontline patrolling?
7/x

Police do not come out to intervene in the root causes of violence taking place, they escalate violence and criminalize those who are implicated. So let’s see how frontline patrolling has affected Hamilton:
8/x

- During this pandemic, @HamiltonPolice were ticketing unhoused people in downtown Hamilton, for “not physically distancing”
- Former police chief, Glenn De Caire introduced the ACTION team in which they were involved in openly practicing racial profiling. 9/x

The ACTION team has a history of falsely targeting unhoused and racialized people which was never acknowledged even after the ticket scandal of 2015. 10/x

On page 95, it discusses the Body Camera and a review of a potential pilot for Hamilton Police. In the past, the #HPS have voted against body cameras because they “considered the financial impact of cameras”, and there wasn’t any conclusive evidence to prove their efficacy 11/x

Hamilton police hit the nail on the head with this. Body cameras do not prevent police violence, it requires the HPS to increase their budget. To prevent police violence you have to #DefundThePolice. To build strong communities we have to invest in strong communities.12/x

Strong communities are key here. We keep ourselves safe using models of support, safety and care without using state models of policing and violence.
13/x

Police and prisons have served to break up and destabilize communities, taking people out of their communities and and compromising support systems. By taking funds from policing, we could pour those funds back into strong, self sufficient communities. 14/x

By taking funds from policing, we could pour funds into building strong communities. This call for body cameras is, allegedly, an attempt to “rebuild strained relationships with the community”. Policing is inherently violent. Body cameras have not served as accountability. 15/x

The only accountability is putting power in the hands of communities, and defunding the police. Body-worn cameras only collect evidence of police violence and misconduct after people have already been harmed. That is not enough for our community. 16/x

On page 118 of the Agenda - the proposed Body-Worn Pilot program for Hamilton would include 610 cameras and license an additional 265 members to support the Digital Evidence Management System to allow for “management and analysis of collected video." 17/x

Beyond just being a faulty accountability measure, these cameras would be used to surveil vulnerable people in the city. Body cameras only collect evidence of police violence and misconduct after people have already been harmed. That is not enough for our community. 18/x

The cost of this pilot program will be $491,488.51. This money could be better used to support the myriad of issues we are dealing with in our city, including food insecurity, COVID deficit, affordable housing, mental health supports, public transportation etc. 19/x

On page 28 of the agenda is the Coroner’s Inquest into the Death of Anthony Divers. Divers was murdered by HPS Officer Nicholas Cercone in 2016, and he was not charged by the SIU for shooting Anthony to death. 20/x

Of the 5 recommendations from the coroner’s jury, 4 are focused on providing de-escalation training to officers. The HPS responded to these recommendations saying that the protocols recommended are already in place. 21/x

If the recommended protocols are already in place, then it’s evident that they are ineffective and exist so that the HPS can claim they do training on use of force. The 6th recommendation was that the officers involved should debrief the incident. 22/x

This debrief occurred on June 8th, 2020 - but there are no public minutes or records that it ever occurred. We want these minutes to be released to the public, or at the very least to Anthony’s family. 23/x

De-escalation training is not the end goal . We are highlighting the inefficacy of trainings, because policing is an inherently racist institution that must target Black and Indigenous people to function. No amount of training can change the violent nature of policing. 24/x

The Hamilton police accessed a database with COVID health information more than 10,000 times over a three month period. This was according to provincial data and the Hamilton Police ranked fifth among police services for the amount of times they used the database. 25/x

On page 61 of the agenda, a joint letter between the @ALS_NSWACT , the Black Legal Action Centre, the @cancivlib the @AIDSLAW was sent to @FredEisenberger regarding the Hamilton Police access to and use of COVID-19 personal health data. 26/x

We would like to echo the demands in this joint letter, there is a clear ask to immediately delete ALL the personal health information that was collected through this database. 27/x

A correspondence from the Hamilton Center for Civic Inclusion was also sent asking key questions. The questions are as follows: 27/x

This ask is legitimate and entirely possible. Throughout the past couple of weeks, many community members have been sending in their delegations asking for the police to be defunded by 20%. If the community speaks, they should be heard. 28/x

We are hosting a teach-in this Thursday at 1pm outside city Hall. This is an opportunity for the city of Hamilton to imagine what kind of city we want to live in. Please join us at the kid-friendly event! Event page can be found below: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/community-teach-in-why-we-shou/2760598240886240/?ti=ia /end