FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:Howie Hawkins, howie@howiehawkins.us
HAWKINS BLASTS DEMOCRATS’ REJECTION OF “DEFUND THE POLICE”
(Syracuse, NY – June 10, 2020) –
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party presidential candidate with a commanding
lead in the party’s primaries, blasted Democratic Party leaders today
for rejecting the popular demand “Defund the Police” that is being
raised by the nationwide protests against police brutality and racism.
“Democratic leaders have no
convictions and no backbone. A nationwide uprising for racial justice
demands defund the police. Trump calls it the demand of ‘Radical Left
Democrats.’ So Democratic leaders cave and join Trump in rejecting it.
It’s just like their retreat from popular demands for Medicare for All
and a Green New Deal because Trump called them ‘socialist’,” Hawkins
said.
Joe Biden said this week he
opposes defunding the police and wants to increase federal funding for
them by $300 million. James Clyburn (D-SC), House Majority Whip, said
demonstrators making this demand were trying to “hijack” the movement.
Karen Bass (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, called the
demand a “distraction.”
“Defunding the police means to
stop paying police to harass, exploit, and control poor communities of
color over non-criminal behavior and low-level offenses like
homelessness, drug possession, and mental health crises. It means
scaling back policing to dealing with serious crimes of violence and
theft. It means investing the savings in real solutions, like homes for
the homeless, legalizing marijuana, and medical treatment for the
addicted and mentally ill,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins noted that an analysis of FBI and national survey data by the Vera Institute for Justice found
that violent offenses make up less than 5% of arrests and property
crimes less than 13% of arrests by police. The study also found that
about 60% of crime victims do not report their experience to the police
and that the police clear less than 25% of reported crimes with arrests.
“The police are doing a terrible
job solving serious crimes because they spend most of their time
harassing people, particularly Black people, for non-criminal or minor
violations,” Hawkins said.
“Defunding the police is just a
start,” Hawkins said. “We could cut local police budgets down to the
less than 20% now devoted to dealing with violent and property crimes
and there still won’t be nearly enough money in savings to repair
damages of the discrimination, exclusion, poverty, and economic despair
that low-income communities of color have long suffered. We must demand a
Marshall Plan for the Cities and an Economic Bill of Rights.”
Hawkins called for a sustained
multi-trillion dollar federal investment in affordable public housing,
community schools with wrap-around services, neighborhood health
clinics, grocery stores in food deserts, more convenient and affordable
public transit, parks and recreation programs, a job guarantee, and a
guaranteed income above poverty. Hawkins’ budget for an ecosocialist Green New Deal is
a 10-year, $42 trillion program to create 38 million new jobs providing
these community needs as well as climate safety by rebuilding all
productive systems in the economy for zero-to-negative carbon emissions
and 100% clean energy by 2030.
Hawkins reiterated his support
for reparations for African-Americans. He called on Congress to use the
current outcry against police brutality and racism to enact the
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for
African-Americans Act (H.R. 40; S. 1083).
Congressional Democrats have
unfurled a Justice in Policing Act that would boost law enforcement
accountability and change policing practices. Among its measures are a
ban on chokeholds, money for racial bias training, ending the qualified
immunity that shields police officers from personal liability in civil
lawsuits, a federal registry for misconduct complaints and disciplinary
actions against police, and limits on the transfer of military-grade
equipment to state and local police departments.
“These reforms are good as far as
they go, but they do not go nearly far enough,” Hawkins said. “Police
harassment and brutality persist because we allow the police to police
themselves. The Justice in Policing Act does nothing to change that.”
Hawkins renewed his call for community control of the police in
which elected police commissioners hire and fire police chiefs,
independently investigate and punish police misconduct, oversee police
budgets, and negotiate police union contracts.
“We have to democratize who
governs the police so that the police work for the community instead of
just themselves and the power structure’s elites,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said the Justice in
Policing Act’s grants for state Attorneys General to independently
investigate and prosecute police brutality cases are a weak remedy.
Hawkins has long called for a Jonny Gammage Law that
would require a federal investigation and prosecution in all cases
where the civil rights of a person are violated by police, including
bodily injury and death.
Jonny Gammage was suffocated to
death by police in October 1995 years ago just as George Floyd was on
May 25. Gammage was a resident of Hawkins’ home town of Syracuse, New
York. He died at the hands of suburban Pittsburgh police in a routine
traffic stop while visiting his cousin, Ray Seals, who played football
for the Steelers. None of the officers were convicted of any crimes. The
Clinton Justice Department declined a civil rights action against them.
Hawkins said local District
Attorneys are too close to local police they work with on a daily basis
to have the distance and independence for impartial investigations. He
said the Justice for Policing Act’s funding for voluntary investigations
by state Attorneys General was too weak.
“We need mandatory federal
investigations in these cases in order to break through the shielding of
police misconduct by local prosecutors,” Hawkins said.
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