Envisioning and Enacting a Better Future for Ottawa

We need to defund, disarm, and eventually dismantle the OPS so that more resources can be given to education, public health, and community building. Above all, please know that police do not make people in Ottawa feel safe. Especially Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour as well as those apart of the LGBTQ+ community and low income people.

Get rid of School Resource Officers (SROs) in all Ottawa schools. In my own experience, my school's SRO was found to be a perpetrator of sexual abuse. Moreover, I remember that when my SROs would visits, kids would just be awestruck by their guns. They didn't listen to anything they said. Only what they represented. Violence. These visits would often result in students acting more violent and glorifying the violence that the police carry out and the guns they brandish. Invest instead in Indigenous healers, counsellors, rehabilitative programming. Make students feel safe in their own schools.

Rent and real estate in Ottawa is rapidly becoming exuberant. We are living through a time when people are dealing with unemployment. Reallocate some of the money from policing to cover rent and mortgage payments. The police cannot adequate address crimes of poverty. Only by addressing the systematic oppression that so often leads people to commit crimes can this be dealt with.

We have arrived at an urgent, decisive moment. I would hate to see Ottawa do what Toronto recently did. That is, increase funding for police and demands for better regulated body cams. BODY CAMS DO NOT WORK!! Ottawa, do better. We CAN do better.