Before last year’s City Council elections, County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith published an op ed that she recently republished on her re-election social media account looking ahead to the June 2 primary:
Before casting your vote, please consider whether a candidate has ever called for defunding or abolishing the police or for policies that do under the guise of something else. Ask them if they plan to freeze police department spending and what role they believe law enforcement should have in keeping our communities safe. Ask them if they support our Community Violence Intervention Program,which has already made our community safer from gun violence. And, finally, if they understate our officers’ and deputies’ role in protecting people from harm, ask them the last time they went for a ride-along or had a meaningful conversation with the officers they seek to oversee.
Let’s recast this, shall we?
Before casting your vote, please consider whether a candidate has ever called for defending the status quo of our carceral punishment system. Ask them if they plan for police accountability and what role they believe prevention and diversion should have in keeping our communities safe. Ask them if they support factually supported interventions with trackable metrics. And, finally, if they question non-law enforcement community safety interventions’ role in protecting people from harm, ask them the last time they spent time in a marginalized community or had a meaningful conversation with the incarcerated people they seek to oversee.