Jeff Shantz
On Saturday, January 26, 2019, Anti-Police Power Surrey
(APPS) held a roundtable discussion on police domination in Surrey and community
organizing to challenge police power in our communities. The event, “Challenging
Police Power,” took place at the Progressive Education Center in Newton on the
invitation of the East Indian Defence Committee. About 60 people turned out to
discuss impacts of policing, how police uphold systems of racism, oppression,
and exploitation, and ways to create alternatives to policing that actually develop
and sustain community care and service.
Speakers highlighted a range of issues, including the
infiltration of police into postsecondary campuses in Surrey, including their using
Kwantlen Polytechnic University as a recruitment center for police and for
intelligence gathering (snitch networks) against our communities; cops in
schools and gang panics; the criminalization of youth and blaming of parents
for structural inequalities; the targeting of homeless people on behalf of
business interests; and the involvement of police in community groups as means
to gain new resources and further surveil populations.
Almost everyone in the room spoke up to discuss their
negative experiences with police in Surrey and to give detail to the oppressive
and exploitative nature of policing in Surrey, and in class divided societies more
broadly.
Many ideas were put forward for alternatives, including but
not limited to community spaces for youth free from cops, health care resources
free from police, real supports for parents that do not guilt trip them into
becoming snitches on the children to cops while still addressing concerns they
might have about their activities, supportive programs for youth after school,
and making schools available during non-school hours for youth to use with mentorship.
Jeff Shantz is a full-time faculty member in the Department
of Criminology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey. He is a Surrey
resident.
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