³ÉÈËXÕ¾

There have been movements across the country to defund police departments, including in Seattle, and to perhaps fund an alternative that might be different and better.

Many of these alternatives are in their infancy, but Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross checked in with Roxanne Anderson , which stands for “Relationships Evolving Possibilities.”

Current, future Seattle mayors critique council’s plan to cut $10M from police budget

REP is made up of volunteers, and each member has made a 10-year commitment to helping their communities by taking certain kinds of emergency calls. They want their neighbors to call whenever there is trouble that doesn’t require an armed officer’s response.

“One of the calls we took recently was a resident who was very concerned about a house on their block in which the residents of that house had been evicted,” Anderson explained as an example of the type of calls they take. “They saw movement in the house, they saw lights on in the house, and they knew that nobody was supposed to be in that house.”

“They were concerned that their neighbors had returned to the home and were squatting in the home and they wanted somebody to respond to connect with them as a concerned resident about resources that might be available for them and for their neighbors, and to maybe try to make contact with the people that were in the home,” she continued. “So we did. We went to that house that was boarded up and tried to make contact. We left information so that the folks that were inside might have some other resources for the folks that were squatting in the house, and resources for the folks that called our line initially.”

Anderson says we’ve been conditioned to call 911 and have a response greater than what is needed in many cases, or that doesn’t actually give a resource to the person that’s calling.

“We’re calling 911 because we don’t know what else to do,” she said.

The situation that led to the death of George Floyd, Anderson says is an example of a time when REP could have been called as opposed to the police.

“If the clerk, for example, that was working at that corner store would have called REP, is that a response that we could have intervened in? Absolutely,” she said. “We could have talked to the clerk about what resources, reassured the clerk that actually the laws and the ways that money exchange happens with businesses, when you incur a counterfeit bill at a business, do you have a responsibility to check that bill? Also to turn that bill in, that does not require a 911 call. You can turn that bill into your bank, for example.”

“So those are resources that maybe, in the moment, that young person — we all saw the tape, it was a young person — who is afraid of having that money taken out of their paycheck, that feels like labor, that feels like employee relation, that does not feel like I need to call the police over a $20 mistake,” she said. “Somebody lost their life because another person was afraid that they were going to get in trouble at work. That’s really what that’s about, right? That’s about poverty.”

Anderson did acknowledge that there are situations and incidents where there is still a role for police, and in which “a regular, everyday human is not able to control or respond to.”

“We don’t have that system built yet,” she said. “That takes a lot of community education, that takes a lot of resources. People resort to violence often because they don’t have access to any other resources, they are at their kind of wit end.”

Beyond the defund debate: Will new SPD budget deliver on promise of reform?

After the murder of George Floyd, Anderson points out that communities across the globe connected.

“People met their neighbors when they’ve lived on a block for 10 years and they didn’t know the people on their block. Now they do,” she said. “There are groups, and groups, and texting groups, and neighborhood watch groups that didn’t exist before this tragedy happened. This is a tragedy that comes from a lack of resources.”

REP is really trying to do this and, as Dave explained, it’s not about forcibly defunding the police, but rather making them not as necessary in every situation. Anderson also said the Minneapolis Police Department supports REP and the work they’re doing.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.