Testimony on DC Council Police Reform Bills
Today I joined nearly 100 others in giving video testimony to the DC Council urging them to go beyond pending police reform bills to ban abusive practices, ensure real accountability, and defund MPD. My testimony is informed by the local leadership and recommendations of Black Lives Matter DC, ACLU-DC, DC Justice Lab, HIPS, and many others, and to a lesser extent my own federal and local policy work on over the years.
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Thank you Chairman and Councilmembers for listening and for taking on this work. My name is Harper Jean Tobin and I live in Ward 4. Like Breonna Taylor I hail from Louisville, Kentucky. Like Alonzo Smith, I studied social work. For the last twelve years, I’ve called DC home and used my law and social work training to advocate for transgender people across the country, and was pleased to be honored by the Mayor for it last year.
In that work I’ve met so many folks who’ve been stopped for “walking while trans,” extorted for sex, who’ve faced transphobic violence from strangers but fear police the most. In a national survey, 57% of all trans people said they’d be uncomfortable seeking police assistance. In DC, it was 63%. For Black trans folks, 67%.
I’ve also had the chance to work with federal and local law enforcement in our city, region, and around the country. One of the most common things I’ve heard from them is that they’re asked to solve problems that would be better addressed by social workers, nurses, schools, and housing programs. I couldn’t agree more, but if we take that seriously it means we need more of those things and less of MPD.
When we invest billions of dollars over so many years in MPD and we see the violence in our city—the violence MPD are supposed to prevent, and that they cause—we have to ask some pointed questions:
Is MPD giving us a good return on investment in public safety?
Are we getting better results than we could get from investing those funds in health, housing, and education?
Is maintaining an officer-per-capita ratio 2, 3, 4x that of other major cities making us safer?
At minimum, can we be confident that MPD’s activities, especially its paramilitary units, are actually preventing more assaults and killings than they’re causing?
Looking at the evidence, we have to answer no, no, no, and no.
Those are sobering answers that must guide us.
To start, and as others have so eloquently explained, these bills ought to end:
Jump-outs
No-knock warrants
So-called “consent” searches
Armed and unaccountable special police
Police in schools and interrogating children
Mass surveillance
What’s more, we need to replace:
Armed police with clinically trained civilians for most emergency response
Armed police with ordinary civil servants for most traffic enforcement
Paramilitary units with violence interrupters and trauma-informed prevention
Immunity and impunity with real accountability
Laws that criminalize sex work, poverty, and addiction with more investments in opportunity and treatment
In sum, the three bills before this Committee (B23-0723, the “Rioting Modernization Amendment Act of 2020,” B23-0771, the “Internationally Banned Chemical Weapon Prohibition Amendment Act of 2020,” and B23-0882, the “Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2020”) can be seen as a modest but urgent down payment on transformative change—but to be even that, they can and must be strengthened.
I support the recommendations made by Black Lives Matter DC, ACLU, DC Justice Lab, HIPS, and others, and urge the Council to adopt them.
Thank you.