I wrote this to be submitted as written testimony from Our Revolution NJ to the New Jersey Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee as they considered A5326. Brady Rivera, Chair of Our Revolution Trenton Mercer, was able to attend the Committee Hearing in person and was kind enough to read my testimony into the record.

Committee Chair, Vice Chair, members, and staff:

I'm writing to express the support of Our Revolution NJ and Our Revolution Essex County for A5326.

Just in the last few years, the murders of Hasani Best, Amir Johnson, Gulia Dale III, Bernard Placide, Jr, and Najee Seabrooks by NJ police officers have demonstrated, time and time again, that the police have no business being involved in mental health responses, especially when the person in crisis is Black. Data and evidence regularly show that the criminalization of substances negatively affects communities, makes it less likely people will seek treatment, and ultimately causes more deaths. Studies have also shown for years that the police do not prevent crime. Yet budget after budget we invest more and more money into a failed system of policing at the expense of every other community program and support.

That clearly represents bad practice from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, but we also continue to increase funding in the very systems that have been shown to hold up systemic racism, as well documented in the bill language of A5326. We have an obligation to do the right thing, whether that be ethical, moral, an obligation to good governance, or just the obligation to ensure that when our neighbors call for help, they don't end up dead.

The programs already operating in the models proposed in A5326, Paterson Healing Collective, Newark Community Street Team, and Trenton Restorative Street Team have proven that what the evidence and research suggests works in other parts of the country also works in NJ. These groups run the spectrum of programs and activities, violence interruption, mental health crisis response, overdose response, harm reduction, youth programming, food distribution, community fridges, school supply distributions, and so much more. These programs have been demonstrated to work in our historically marginalized communities that have been subjected to the worst police abuse and police violence, addressing problems more funding for police has never solved. Such a clear data point for funding community over policing.

It's important that the commission that is created doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. We know what works. We know groups having success doing the work. We don't need law enforcement or prosecutorial members trying to turn this into funding or policies that further entrench the misguided ideas that more police will make us safer. Our communities know that's not true. You know that's not true. If that's not clear to you yet, read the bill, it lays it out in black and white. The key to the success these groups have produced is that they're not law enforcement. They are trusted messengers, community led, community staffed, community supported. Rather than responding to every problem with an aggressive, escalatory, violent assertion of power and privilege these groups respond with compassion, empathy, care and love. It is those values, those behaviors, and those individuals that this bill needs to support, fund, and spread throughout our state. Therefore it's critical that this commission represent the groups doing the work and the communities affected by our racist systems.

There's more work to do, but this bill is a solid step in the right direction.

Please vote YES on A5326.