The GR Chamber of Commerce equates people who challenge policing as anti-public safety activists

The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce writes up a summary after the Grand Rapids and Kent County commission meetings in a section called – LOCAL GOVERNMENT: WHAT’S HAPPENING.

In their August 28th post they wrote a summary of the Public Safety Committee meeting held by the City of Grand Rapids. I wrote an article about that meeting as well, which you can read here,  but compare it to what the GR Chamber writes:

“The presentation and discussion led to a commitment from GRPD to begin reporting on its use of Flock to the Public Safety Committee. Unfortunately, this topic (as in other cities) has reignited anti-public safety activist groups. They attended the meeting and made hours of public comments at the night meeting.”

What the Chamber wrote about the Flock presentation completely omits the fact that the GRPD attempted to present their use of Flock cameras as a crime prevention tool, along with the fact that there were two Flock Corporation reps there who presented a narrative was driven by the fact that they sell their technology to communities in order to make money, not keep people safe.

However, the comment that followed was most instructive, where the GR Chamber states: “Unfortunately, this topic (as in other cities) has reignited anti-public safety activist groups. They attended the meeting and made hours of public comments at the night meeting.”

Here the GR Chamber of Commerce clearly wants to paint community members and community-based groups that are against mass surveillance technology as anti-public safety activists. Now, it could be that the GR Chamber views anti-Public Safety groups as anti-policing. If this is the case then that would generally be an accurate statement. However, by calling people who question policing as anti-public safety groups the GR Chamber is attempting to frame people as against public safety. On the contrary, whether we are talking about the Movement for Black Lives, DSA, Movimiento Cosecha or GR Rapid Response to ICE, these groups are not against public safety, they are against defining public safety as cops. Read the amazing document – A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice, if you real want to know what public safety really is.

Real public safety is when everyone feels safe, in their home or in public, safe from violence, safe from discrimination and when their basic needs are being met – housing, health care, nutrition, relaxation and acceptance in the community. In addition, public safety would be fundamentally improved if the millions that the GRPD receives every year would be used to meet community needs.

Equally important is the fact that cops do not keep people safe. In a report from the group Interrupting Criminalization entitled, Cops Don’t Stop Violence: Combating Narratives used to defend police instead of defunding them, they state:

Police are facing one of the greatest crises of legitimacy in a generation. In the wake of the largest uprisings in U.S. history, sparked by police violence, bloated police budgets, and the deadly impacts of a failure to invest in community health and safety laid bare by the pandemic, pro-police forces are on the defensive. So they are reaching for one of their most reliable weapons — fear.

This is nothing new — cops and policymakers have always used fearmongering to push “law and order” agendas and pour more and more money into police departments. Now, with police budgets under scrutiny by campaigns to defund the police and refund our communities all across the country, lawmakers and the media are once again recycling old talking points about increasing violence and crime, claiming that campaigns to defund police are responsible.

The Cops Don’t Stop Violence report is well researched and full of data, that is presented in a very readable fashion. The report concludes with the following statement:

It’s time to recognize that decades of pouring more money, resources, and legitimacy into policing in an effort to increase safety have failed — because policing is functioning as it is intended to: to contain, control, and criminalize Black and Brown communities rather than to prevent and reduce violence. It’s time to invest in meeting community needs and building non-police community safety strategies. It’s time to invest in just recovery.

For the GR Chamber of Commerce to say that people challenging the function of the GRPD are anti-public safety is simply absurd. Of course the GR Chamber of Commerce loves the GRPD, since they protect the interests of the Capitalist Class, just like the GR Chamber of Commerce.