A new report out from Black Lives Matter Toronto calls for defunding the police to 25 percent, which would be $340 million of the total police budget of $1.209 billion.
Black Lives Matter Toronto claims that defunding the Toronto Police Service by 25 percent and sending civilians to respond to non-serious calls would end the "over policing" of black and indigenous communities and reduce overall social cost.
The report, led by BLM Toronto and 22 other social justice organizations called "In Rethinking Community Safety, a way forward for Toronto," says that police should only be called in "extreme situations" and should be kept out of drug, mental health, and homelessness calls. They claim that this would lead to better outcomes, CP24 reports.
"More appropriate interventions are available—at a lower cost, with better outcomes—when we send support workers to address issues with vulnerable people instead of sending police," says the report.
This reports comes after a summer of mass BLM protest following the death of George Floyd in the United States. In Canada, there are proportionally twice as many blacks people in prison compared to whites, and five times more Indigenous people than white people.
The report proposes to have civilian services respond the majority of homelessness, drug use and mental health crises calls. It was also found police have around 360,000 interactions with the homeless and issues them 16,000 tickets.
BLM says that reducing policing and replacing it with civilian based work has already been done in some major US cities, and that Toronto should follow suit. It is important to note that those cities, including Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles, have since seen major crime increases causing many people to leave those cities to live elsewhere.
BLM and the other organizations behind the report also want a triage system to determine if 911 calls warrant a police response. It is important to note that a police response was not required for 60 percent of 911 calls in 2018.
BLM activists and left-wing city councillors tried to defund Toronto's police earlier this year, but were unsuccessful following opposition from the mayor and most of city council. Toronto is currently dealing with high crime rates and some say more police is needed.
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