Tri-Cities group issues ‘list of demands’ to slash police funding, ban shooting fleeing suspects

A Tri-Cities group seeking the liberation of all people has issued a “list of demands,” including cutting local police funding by at least half and a ban on shooting people who are running away or not confronting officers.

Unbound Tri-Cities describes police as “the most oppressive apparatus of the United States.”

“The police are the domestic enforcers of the state’s monopoly on violence,” said the newly formed group.

“To reduce immediate harm, they must become transparent, accountable and reformed through defunding, oversight and the continual search for local, community-led restorative justice.”

They held a news conference Thursday in Richland’s John Dam Plaza to release its official list, which they say is based on multiple meetings with community members.

It is part of the national discussion on defunding police in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, along with the call to end systemic racism and a “culture of corruption” in law enforcement.

In order to enforce the full list of demands, Unbound’s leaders say they are forming “Accountability, Restorative Justice & Liberation,” or ARJL, for structure and oversight.

“Our demands are well researched, crafted with community input, and were ratified unanimously by the attendees of our public meetings,” said Antha Hansen, Unbound’s director of operations. “We look forward to sharing them in full with the Tri-Cities, and welcome the discourse to follow.”

The group said the community should start with an audit of all officers and deputies who either work in or with Tri-Cities agencies, and of all agency budgets and spending records, standards, protocols and completed training.

Unbound says it is a waste of public money and a privacy violation to use body cameras and patrol car dashboard cameras.

Instead, police should put “geolocational trackers on their cars, active at all times, ... providing live data,” said the demands list.

“If turned off, an immediate alarm will ensue on the database, and members of the (Police Oversight Committee) will be dispatched to the last known location of the officer and their vehicle,” they said.

All data collected will go into an accessible, searchable, public database, maintained by money directed away from police departments.

In reducing police department funding by at least 50 percent, that money can be redirected to “beneficial community services ... (that have a) social impact on the human condition of those in the Tri-Cities.”

That money cannot go into other criminal justice institutions like jails, detention centers, militarization or school resource officers, according to the list. However, a portion must provide for preventative measures in crime reduction and the school-to-prison pipeline.

The group says “arrest and imprisonment should be considered a drain on community resources and, as such, a last resort.”

And, when dealing with people, Tri-City officers should immediately stop the use of chokeholds or strangleholds, and use potentially deadly force only after “all other options are provably exhausted” and with warnings before, the list says.

Unbound Tri-Cities will be standing in solidarity with the nationwide “Strike for Black Lives” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, July 20, at Gage Boulevard and Steptoe Street in west Kennewick.

The organization also plans a “Critical Mass for BLM” — or a protest on wheels, such as bicycles — on Columbia Park Trail in Kennewick from 7-9 p.m. July 25.