Care Not Cops

Care Not Cops

Portland continues to anchor Care Not Cops, a Mental Health Care Not Policing campaign that is fighting for a reduction in the 2018-2019 Portland Police Bureau budget. We are demanding that mental health care be centered in the hands of community, and are calling for a reduction in police spending towards ultimately disarming and defunding the police. We unequivocally reject the Portland Police request for a budget increase of $12.7 million in order to hire for 93 new police positions! Read our 2018 budget analysis here.

With the City of Portland prioritizing policing rather than trained community-based mental health first responders, people experiencing mental health episodes are punished or criminalized, often leading to imprisonment, injury, or death. Policing and imprisonment forcefully removes people from our communities and creates more severe long term problems, rather than providing the care we need.

A May 17th, 2018 update on this work can be found here.

We invite you to get involved with this campaign through attending our monthly volunteer sessions. Email us to get involved and find out when the next session will be. crpdx@criticalresistance.org

Suggested Replacement:

Critical Resistance Portland founded Care Not Cops Portland (CNC) in 2017 to reduce the violence of policing and build up community care. CNC has worked to reduce the Portland Police Bureau budget and advocate for redirecting public resources to community alternatives and programs that address harm and build strong and healthy communities.

Care Not Cops is working to end the inherently violent and racist anti-gang policing occurring in Portland’s communities of color. Our work is rooted in the belief that policing endangers the health and well-being of communities. CNC understands the role of policing in enforcing forms of social control which fuel gentrification, displacement, repression, and disempowerment of Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.

We invite those directly impacted by policing and all who want to support Portland’s obligation to shift our reliance and resources to community self-determined care resources and alternatives to join CARE NOT COPS in demanding a city prioritization of the resources we know our communities need.