Community Safety
Promoting community safety requires a fundamental shift away from policing, incarceration, and top-down coercive “security.” Unite Oregon works across the state to reduce the harms of police and prisons from policies and practices that make our communities less safe. We see a future where Oregon divests from punitive policies and police and reinvests in jobs, education, childcare, and all the social and economic support needed for mental, physical, and spiritual health and well-being.
Current Projects:
Defund the Police: We need investment in the well-being of our communities, not in unaccountable police departments. We demand that cities redirect police budgets toward programs that reimagine community safety from the ground up and limit our communities’ contact with the police. And as we learn and build new ways of building safety, we will continue to push toward an eventual full defunding of the police. In the summer of 2020, we partnered with Imagine Black and generated emails from more than 38,000 community members to the Portland City Council to echo our demands around defunding police, as well as thousands of direct phone calls to City Council offices; testimony from over 700 people almost unanimously echoed these demands, as well, resulting in a total of $15 million in cuts from the Portland Police Bureau budget.
Community-Centered Portland Police Association Contract: Beginning in 2021, the City of Portland started its current round of negotiations with the Portland Police Association over the labor contract covering sworn police officers. Amid a historic uprising against police brutality in the streets of Portland and across the country, we, along with dozens of other organizations, call upon the City to keep the needs of grassroots Portlanders at the center of the bargaining process.
Portland Out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force: Before 2005, the City of Portland was an active participant in the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), collaborations between local law enforcement, the FBI, ICE, and other federal law enforcement agencies. Joint Terrorism Task Forces were created to investigate "terrorism," but in practice have been used to crack down on people exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech or religion. Instead of preventing terrorism, the task forces are instead used to surveil and harass Muslims, people of color, and others who speak out against government policies.
In 2005, Portland became the first city in the US to withdraw from participation in our local JTTF, thanks to the hard work of activists and organizations like Unite Oregon. Unfortunately, in 2015, Portland City Council voted to rejoin the Task Force, assigning Portland Police officers to work with the FBI and ICE on a full-time basis. But the fundamental issues in this debate never changed. In early 2019, Unite Oregon and our partners worked with Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty to, once again, withdraw Portland from the JTTF. And on February 13th, Portland City Council voted to do just that. Now that the City has voted to withdraw from the JTTF, we'll be tracking how that withdrawal is implemented, and ensure that Portland remains OUT of the JTTF!
End Profiling: In 2015, after a multi-year campaign, Unite Oregon and our partners won passage of a landmark bill banning profiling by law enforcement in Oregon (HB 2002, the End Profiling Act). Subsequently, the Oregon Attorney General established the Work Group on the Prevention of Profiling by Law Enforcement, a task force charged with recommendations for implementation. As a member of this task force and a leader on the issue, Unite Oregon passed House Bill 2355, the End Profiling Act, which contained two changes that are pivotal to the success of the profiling ban: (1) robust collection of data on police stops, complaints, and complaint outcomes, and (2) development of an accountability structure that empowers the Civil Rights Division of the Oregon Department of Justice to examine the data for patterns or practices of profiling and push for remediation by local law enforcement bodies.
Unite Oregon commemorated Black August 2023, a month dedicated to honoring the Black community's legacy of resistance against police repression.
In this webinar, we reflected on the profound historical significance of Black August and its contemporary relevance in our ongoing fight for justice. We will explore the origins of Black August and its transformation from a prison-based observance to a global movement of solidarity and activism. We will pay tribute to the contributions of iconic Black activists and leaders who shaped history through their unwavering dedication to justice and equality. Additionally, we will examine the connection between Black August and the prison abolition movement, acknowledging the impact of mass incarceration on Black lives.
The webinar was presented by Reimagining Community Safety Manager, Je Amaechi.