NYers Say: Dismantle Bratton's Army!

'We have, for the first time in a number of years, become a “wartime” police department. We will act accordingly.'

- Patrolman's Benevolent Association of NYC (December 20, 2014)

Our communities are safer and stronger when we have access to stable and supportive housing, quality healthcare and food, empowering education and employment, and freedom. So why is NYPD Commissioner William Bratton wasting resources on militarization that deepens inequality and divides our communities at the expense of meeting our most basic needs? The time has come to end the NYPD's build-up for war, and develop community solutions for safety and our common well-being.

Sign and share this petition calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to defund Bratton's army!

The War Resisters League's campaign to Demilitarize Health and Security condemns Commissioner Bratton's plan for a 900-officer counterterrorism and special operations overhaul, announced to the Police Foundation last week. Bratton stated that both units are designed to strengthen “the department’s capability to bring large numbers of officers in to deal with...terrorism issues, crime issues, demonstration issues". The controversial 350-member counterterrorist auxiliary unit - equipped with "long rifles and machine guns" and designed for "disorder control and counterterrorism protection capabilities" - and the 500-officer Strategic Response Group (SRG) mandated to monitor protests and “sudden rises in crime” is scheduled to roll out in the Summer of 2015.

This new City and Department of Homeland Security funded counterterrorism unit is particularly glaring in NYC, where the NYPD's growing budget exceeds $4.5 billion (15% of NYC's Annual Budget), while programs and services that provide vital support for many New Yorkers face cuts. With nearly 35,000 uniformed officers, the NYPD is by far the largest and wealthiest police department in the country. The NYPD already has a heavily-armed paramilitary unit called the Hercules Teams, and its influence reaches internationally with officers stationed in Tel Aviv and Hamburg, and travelling to Afghanistan and Yemen to coordinate repression around the globe.

We situate this recent effort to build the NYPD's arsenal within a continuum of racism and the suppression of dissent in the U.S. and worldwide. Further, placing SRG units in every borough is an extension of the logic of police occupation in poor neighborhoods and communities of color. When Bratton states that they will be “trained in ways our normal officers are not”, we look toward other Department of Homeland Security funded programs like Urban Shield - which also equates protesters with terrorists, uses heavily racialized scenarios to practice "emergency response", and sparked a powerful movement against police militarization in Oakland this past year.

Resistance to state violence continues to draw people into the streets, determined to end ongoing murder and brutalization by police. In 2014, an uprising led by a community in mourning and rage in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited a nation-wide movement under the slogan of “Black Lives Matter”.

We, the undersigned, demand the immediate dismantling of the new NYPD counterterrorism auxiliary unit and Strategic Response Group, which will only deepen the crisis of police violence and repression faced by our communities. Instead of building the NYPD's power to criminalize, control, and kill people, we need resources that keep communities healthy, whole and free to flourish. We will not stop until we have them!

AF3IRM

Arab American Association of New York

BAYAN USA

CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities

Civilian-Soldier Alliance

C.O.D.E.: Communities Organizing to Demilitarize Enforcement

CODEPINK NYC

Critical Resistance NYC

DRUM: South Asian Organizing Center

Families for Freedom

FIERCE

Iraq Veterans Against the War, NYC Chapter