Divest from Carceral Approaches to Public Safety

Police and prisons represent the largest chunk of Philadelphia’s budget. The current mayoral administration favors throwing huge sums of money to surveilling our communities and untested programs that will steer our most vulnerable neighbors to jail if they are not ready for drug treatment.

We demand:

• No increases to police budget 

• • • Cut police budget before cutting any other city services
      • Police budgets for decades have continued to climb at rates much higher than those for housing, health, and other vital services–even when during the past 5 years almost 20% of positions in the PD have been unfilled; with major (perhaps total) federal funding cuts to these services coming over the next couple of years, we need to start trimming the police budget and redistribute money to other human services
    • Cut money going to 1,000 police vacancies 
      • Philadelphia has seen its largest ever drop in violent crime over the past 2.5 years, despite the PD having over 1,000 vacancies. Instead of recognizing that fact last year, Mayor Parker’s 2025 budget allotted money to hire 1,000 new police officers and spend $148M more on cop salaries than in 2021. The recent crime drop has shown that the city is going drastically in the wrong direction with police hires–not only do we not need 1000 new officers, we also need to cancel the previously scheduled hiring of the other 1000+ officers. This would free up at least $200m for reinvestment
    • Reduce overtime spending 
      • Despite the constant decline in people employed by the PPD, the proposed number of positions and the actual amount of our tax dollars compensating the police goes up every year. One of the major reasons for this is overtime spending–in 2024, $195 million (22.4% of total budget) was allotted to overtime. 
  • No funding for racist & harmful surveillance technology 
    • Prohibit new investments in surveillance technologies, including:
      • GPS tracking
      • Automated license plate readers
      • Drone technology
  • No funding for the criminalization of drug users & unhoused people 
    • No funding for neighborhood wellness courts
    • No additional funding for wellness village without transparency; Last year, the Parker administration asked for a massive $100M expenditure for this facility with very limited information. We need clarity on why this is the best use of very scarce public health dollars in Philly, and many many questions remain about who will fill beds and how, what the quality of treatment will be.

• No PPD collaboration with ICE 

• • Philadelphia must affirm its status as a welcoming/sanctuary city and pledge to not share information or resources with ICE  

Invest in Public Health and Community Safety

The city can divert its overspending away from the bloated police budget and use the cost savings to support life-affirming public health and community-based services that will bring about true public safety. We demand:

• Increase funding to Mobile Crisis Units to $20M
• $25M for Community-based violence prevention 
• $4M for restorative justice grants
• $1.35M to fully fund the Citizens Police Oversight Commission (CPOC) to perform independent investigations and produce an annual report on the PPD’s use of technology
• Restore $1M to the safe syringe program that was cut last year
• Support for victims of police violence
• Invest in equitable tax policy, dignity for immigrant communities, safe and equitable work, safe healthy homes, public spaces and higher education, in accordance with the demands of the Alliance for a Just Philadelphia

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