From The Sentencing Project:
First Congregational Church of Oakland, a progressive California church, and dozens of its members have vowed to never call the police again except for a shooting or other life-threatening violence, reports the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio. After the church began displaying a Black Lives Matter sign in response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Vanessa Riles, an African American congregant, asked members: “How can we say black lives matter, and be a church that calls the police on people, especially black people, poor disenfranchised black men?”
The church, half of whose congregants are white, recognized that the rare instances in which it called the police were in regard to homeless black men. Rather than relying on police, church leaders secured a $10,000 grant to train its members and other community groups on de-escalation tactics and self-defense. For burglaries, the church will file a report at the police station to satisfy property insurance requirements, rather than have the police come to its neighborhood. While some churches have scoffed at this strategy and conservative media has called it “anti-police,” another church in Oakland and one in San Jose and Iowa City, Iowa have made similar vows and local houses of worship and residents have expressed interest in participating.
|
|
|
|
