To:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Premier MPP Doug Ford
Leader of the Official Opposition MPP Andrea Horwath
Leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario Steven Del Duca
Hamilton City Council

I am signing onto this letter in support of the demands released by organizers across Hamilton Ontario:

We are here because police continue to murder Black and Indigenous people. We are here because state sanctioned anti-Blackness continues to be a threat. Because Black and Indigenous people are not safe in cities, including the city of Hamilton.

We struggle in solidarity with Indigenous communities. We are angry and saddened by the news of Eishia Hudson, Jason Collins, and Kevin Andrews, 3 Indigenous people killed in Winnipeg. When we envision futures for Black people, futures where we are free, it is just as important for us to imagine a future where Indigenous people are free. We believe that in order to achieve Black liberation and win in the fight against white supremacy, we must also fight for the independence and sovereignty of Indigenous people and continue to resist ongoing colonialism. We are gathering from all across Turtle Island, and we fight together for Indigenous resurgence and Black liberation and freedom.

We stand in solidarity with all those in Minneapolis and across the US calling to de-fund the police and calling for the abolition of prisons, because that is the only way forward to ensure that our communities are not broken up and divided; that people are not taken away from those that love and protect them; that people are not used as a means to cheap and exploitative labour. Prisons do nothing to heal. They serve only the interests of the state, interests that are fundamentally anti-Black and -Indigenous.

There are alternate ways of creating safe communities that we have already seen, both with the COVID-19 outbreak and the riots happening across the States. Black communities can and have been showing up for one another by keeping each other safe, sharing resources, space, time and energy.

To give some context as to why we’re coming for the HPS: in June of 2019, white supremacists showed up at Hamilton Pride. The Pride board had asked uniformed officers not to be present at Pride, and yet cops were present. When white supremacists showed up to violently attack members of the queer community, the police stood by and did nothing, then turned around and blamed the queer community for not inviting them. This event sparked months of weekly demonstrations by white supremacists (the Yellow Vesters) at City Hall that were unmonitored and even encouraged by the Hamilton Police Services. Despite an imminent threat to the safety of Black, Indigenous, and racialized people in Hamilton, the HPS did nothing about the Yellow Vesters, while simultaneously spending thousands to surveil protests and actions against white supremacy by Black and Indigenous organizers. The HPS has a long history of watching and targeting Black and Indigenous organizers in this city.

A 2018 carding consultation in Hamilton highlighted that Black youth in the city are being carded at their schools, in the streets, and being kicked out of Hamilton libraries without just cause by Hamilton police and security services.

Even during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, police have continued to unjustly target people for existing in the streets. Police have issued expensive fines (upwards of $800) to houseless people, many of whom cannot afford to pay them off. These tickets have been issued under the guise of enforcing social distancing, but have only served to further entrench people in poverty and target those who cannot access housing.

The violent act of state and municipal oppression must end. It is time for the institutions that have oversight of the police and residents to ask why we spend $171 million on policing but only $158 million on social services. The breakdown of the social services budget is $81 million on Transit, $25 million on Healthy and Safe communities, and $52 million on boards and agencies.

The Hamilton Police (on a city approved budget) will spend $78,806 on ammunition, $95,000 on surveillance and $61,409 on tasers in 2020 but only $28,000 on food for prisoners.

We are spending $171 million on a police service that terrorizes and murders Black and Indigenous people in our streets, schools, places of education, and homes. This is unacceptable.

Demands:

We call on the city of Hamilton to defund the Hamilton police.

We call on the city of Hamilton to invest the tax dollars that would have otherwise gone to the police towards initiatives fighting against food insecurity, racism and towards more affordable housing.

We call on the City of Hamilton to ensure that HPS are not ticketing houseless people for existing in public.

We demand that the Hamilton Police Services halt all purchases with tax dollars of weapons (guns, rifles, etc).

We demand that the Hamilton Police Services cease the ticketing and surveilling of homeless and disabled people in Hamilton, and that there be a moratorium on the hiring of police constables in Hamilton given the documented over-surveilling of homeless people during the pandemic.

We demand that the Hamilton Police Services stop surveilling communities, and that they halt the expenditure of tax dollars on high tech surveillance equipment.

We demand that the Hamilton Police Services stop targeting and criminalizing activists and communities pushing back against Yellow Vesters and other forms of white supremacy.

We call on McMaster University (President & Board of Governors) to immediately terminate Glenn De Caire’s contract. De Caire was forced to resign from Hamilton police after he was caught saying incredibly racist things to other police officers. De Caire also has a history of violent policing that targets houseless people as well as Black people.

In line with the demands of the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board Kids Need Help Coalition, we demand that the HWDSB immediately remove School Resource Officers (SROs) out of all schools and fully fund a public review of police violence that occurred in their schools.

We demand that the school board refrain from calling the cops on kids.

We demand that the school board collect and release data that documents the disciplinary action against students by race and gender.

We demand that the school board implement a community run alternative to disciplinary action based on the principles of restorative justice.

We demand that the provincial police act be rewritten to give municipalities full control over police boards. Currently, in Hamilton, the Hamilton Police Services operates as an autonomous body, giving municipalities little to no oversight in terms of what they invest in and the ways that they militarize themselves.

We demand that the province of Ontario work with grassroots groups to divest taxpayer money across the Province (Hamilton - $171M, Ottawa - $319M, Waterloo - $182M, Halton Region - $162M, London $123M, Niagara - $154M, Sudbury - $63M) from policing and invest it towards community initiatives with the goal of moving completely toward transformative justice practices.

We demand that the Special Investigations Unit, which has a provincial mandate, needs to be 100% composed of people living in the city with which the investigation is being conducted.

We demand that the Special Investigations Unit needs to be composed completely of Black, racialized and Indigenous peoples with no current or former ties to the policing sector.

The SIU must begin collecting and publicly releasing race-based statistics on all fatalistic encounters between police officers and civilians.  No more inquiries-- direct action needs to be taken as a result of the investigation into anti-Black racism that occurred in the 90's and again in 2014 with the establishment and subsequent defunding of the Anti-Racism Directorate.

In light of COVID-19, We demand that all prisoners being held and who are awaiting trial at the Barton Jail facility be released immediately, and that the outrageous costs of ankle monitors and other means of surveilling those who are released be waived.