A World Beyond Policing

Montclair Beyond Policing is an organization dedicated to and built by the people of Montclair. While the violence work of incarceration and policing has deep roots in US society, we know that real safety and accountability come from within our communities and our relationships with each other. The responsibility lies with all of us to tear down this system and build a world in which we can all flourish.

We are committed to the abolition of the prison industrial complex (PIC), including prisons and jails, policing, parole and probation, surveillance, and other repressive state institutions.

We assert that the PIC is not “broken,” but fundamentally a violent instrument of white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism, imperialism, ableism, and patriarchy. To oppose the PIC, we must also oppose the systems in which it is rooted.

We are opposed to reformist reforms that increase funding for the police, reinforce their legitimacy, and expand their powers and presence in vulnerable communities. [Reformist reforms include professionalization measures like de-escalation and anti-bias training, diversity in hiring, body cameras, community review boards, and community outreach programs.]

We are opposed to using the carceral system to attempt to seek justice, including against police. We assert that we cannot use the system against itself, and attempts to do so only legitimize it while leaving repressive power structures intact.

We are committed to defunding the police as a local abolitionist tactic.

We are committed to working in solidarity with other organizers for racial and economic justice locally and farther afield.

We are committed to building non-policing resources and practices that promote safety, accountability, and flourishing in our communities.

We are committed to building our own analysis and organizing through continued study in the history, theory, and practice of abolition and other liberatory movements.

We are committed to maintaining a non-hierarchical meeting space grounded in critical thinking, mutual care, and equitable division of labor.

We are committed to addressing internal conflicts and disagreements without shaming tactics, through supportive communication that fosters growth and strengthens our connections with each other.

Montclair-specific concerns:

● Residents are quick to call police to resolve minor conflicts and inconveniences;

● Residents are largely affluent and white, and in favor of reformist measures that reinforce existing, oppressive systems;

● Residents and elected officials claim Montclair's police department is "exceptional" despite data to the contrary (see below);

● Heavily-funded police department, receiving 17% of the 2020 municipal budget (the largest share of any single department);

● Disparate policing of Black neighborhoods and individuals, including in schools;

● Black people in Montclair are 300% likelier to have force used on them by police than white people, according to police records from 2017 - April 2020;

● People experiencing a mental-health crisis make up 1/3 of victims of police force, with Black people making up 78% of that number;

● Police maintain a database of people who may be struggling with addiction and may conduct follow-up questioning if they are called to deploy NARCAN, in contravention of harm-reduction practices;

● Underfunded essential services: healthcare, including mental health resources; housing; food access; harm-reduction programs for people who use drugs; schools, LGBTQ services; youth services/recreation;

● Little to no public critique of mass incarceration through Indigenous/anti-settler-colonial analytical framework.

● Support protests for racial and economic justice and for PIC abolition.

● Redistribute funds from the Montclair Police Department budget to social programs and services.

● Build Transformative Justice programs in Montclair to provide as an alternative to the criminal legal system.

● Build non-coercive, compassionate safety & crisis intervention programs that do not create further harm.

• Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), including prisons, jails, detention centers, cash bail, parole, probation, policing, surveillance, carceral logic within communities and interpersonal relationships

  • • through decarceration; decriminalization; reallocation of carceral and policing institutions and redistribution of public funds to public programs and services; development of Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice programs & practices; development of non-coercive, compassionate safety & crisis intervention programs & practices

• Organize fundraising, mutual aid, and other forms of support for incarcerated people and criminalized/structurally vulnerable people

• Educate the public about the history and current role of the PIC in systemic injustices and offer training in alternative approaches to community safety and harm reduction

• Oppose the building of new prisons and jails

• Advocate the abolition, defunding, and disarming of PIC institutions rather than reformist measures that funnel more funding to them, such as body cameras, de-escalation training, diversity training, “state-of-the-art” prison facilities, taxpayer-funded community outreach programs, community policing