Message from Advocacy Group Against Police Violence in New York City
CCITNYC Members and friends:
It has been a while since we communicated with you. CCITNYC has been undergoing some change. CCITNYC changed our name, our logo, and our mission statement to reflect that CCITNYC is now moving to replace a police response to those in crisis with a health team response. We are now known as Correct Crisis Intervention Today in NYC: Fighting to Transform Responses to Mental Health Crises.
We will also start regular coalition wide meetings once we get back to our offices and gatherings can happen. Please see our new mission statement which outlines our vision.Please sign onto the coalition if you have not already signed on, by sending us your name, organizational name, title, and email and/or telephone number.
Unfortunately, CCITNYC’s first statement in a while is a message of sorrow and outrage. Please see below our statement in response to the recent killing of George Floyd. CCITNYC stands with Black Lives Matter and other organizations led by people of color mourning and mobilizing after the killing of George Floyd.
The senseless killing of George Floyd is yet another wake up call to the fact that there is something terribly wrong with the way police interact with Black people and other people of color. Society will no longer tolerate criminalizing Black people, including those experiencing mental health crises.
In a vicious cycle, racism exacerbates stress, causing a public health crisis. Police often respond to calls involving a mental health crisis, already viewing the person in crisis as someone with no rights.
Sending police to respond to mental health crises ,when NYPD’s job is to investigate crime and arrest people, not provide health care, results in excessive force and the deaths and injury of far too many people – sixteen alone in New York City in the last three years, the majority of whom were Black.
We need health care responses to health care crises, which means specially trained EMTs and counselors. We need an end to criminalization of people in mental health crises and people who are Black and Brown. The City must cease deploying police in response to mental health crises. Now!
Stay safe everyone, until we meet again.
NOTE: Carla Rabinowitz can be reached via [email protected]
