Organizer Any Huamani, right, greets a colleague during a Treatment Not Trauma campaign summit at First Presbyterian Church in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood, July 22, 2023. between 2019 and 2022 to settle more than 1,000 cases of alleged police misconduct. This is reflective of a Police Department, long relied upon by lawmakers as a catch-all agency for responding to mental health, social and economic crises, that has built ato institute meaningful reforms.
based on relationships. The program is thus designed around hiring, training and properly compensating nonprofessional care workers from within communities to work inPrevent crises by providing supportive everyday care to their neighbors who are at greatest risk of mental health and social crises, violence, police contact and hospitalization.
We should stop using police as scapegoats for the fallout of politicians’ choices to defund public care systems. Police reform is too important and too difficult to leave to police alone. Meaningful reform requires investing in supportive systems to shrink the outsize footprint of police and punishment. City Hall should follow the evidence and build the infrastructure that we all — police officers included — need to live safely together rather than in fear and isolation.