Cleo! 🌻
LightNews LightNews
cleaurpatraa.bsky.social
Cleo! 🌻
@cleaurpatraa.bsky.social
34 followers 68 following 0 posts
Victoria BC
she/her
Trans.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Cleo! 🌻
stephenharrison.bsky.social
#yyj is asking if people want to spend 23% of the budget on police. A city where libraries are open on Sundays, people are housed, and VicPD doesn’t get more $ to police protests and poverty, as one of the most expensive forces in the country, is possible. Submit here: engage.victoria.ca/2025budget
Pie graph of Victoria 2025 draft budget, “Operating Expenditures by Function” 23% Victoria Police Department 13% Underground Utilities 9% Parks, Recreation and Facilities 9% General Government 8% Transfer to Reserves 8% Engineering and Public Works 7% Victoria Fire Department 5% Support Functions 5% Transfers to Capital Budget 4% Sustainable Planning and Community Development 3% Business and Community Relations 3% Parking Services 2% Debt 2% Greater Victoria Public Library 1% Bylaw Services
November 26, 2024 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Cleo! 🌻
stephenharrison.bsky.social
As a reminder, this is a police force that assaults and kills people in distress; beats people in handcuffs; uses police cars to hit people on foot and on bikes; injures someone every 2.5 days; displaces and arrests homeless people; and targets Black and Indigenous people across all their policing.
VicPD Use of Force Reports 2018-2021 VicPD filed 3,392 use of force reports in four years (over two a day) 2018: 845 reports 2019: 792 reports 2020: 835 reports 2021: 920 reports VicPD Use of Force on People in Crisis 2018-2021. VicPD filed 1,056 reports where they said the person they chose to use force on was in crisis. In 258 reports, the VicPD officer said before using force they knew the person was “reported to be suicidal.” In 214 reports, VicPD said they injured someone they believed was in crisis “They could have killed the man”: Police cars as weapons In 2017, after a VicPD officer saw a cyclist without a helmet, they “drove recklessly” after them. The officer cut them off with “a sharp and sudden turn into [their] path,” forcing the cyclist — who the officer said they initially wanted to stop for a helmet violation — to crash into their police car and fall off their bike. VicPD now says that using a police car “as a use of force carries risk and potential serious harm to individuals, and should only be reserved … to prevent death or serious bodily harm.” Despite that policy, FOI records show VicPD still has a low threshold for hitting people. Since January 2018, VicPD officers have intentionally hit at least nine people using their police cars or car doors, including people on foot, bikes, and a scooter. Based on the officers’ notes, none of these cases appear to have stopped anyone from being killed or seriously harmed. On the contrary, by using their cars as weapons, VicPD injured multiple people. Screenshot of spreadsheet showing the ethnicity of people in VicPD general occurrence report role descriptions, 2016 to 2021. Black people were 1.85, 2.35, 2.25, and 1.87 times as likely as a white person to be listed as “charged,” “of interest,” “suspect,” or “suspect chargeable in a VicPD report. Indigenous people were 3.23, 2.17, 2.58, and 4.27 times as likely as a white person to be listed as “charged,” “of interest,” “suspect,” or “suspect chargeable in a VicPD report.
November 26, 2024 at 1:36 AM