Earlier this month, Cambridge City Manager Louis A. De Pasquale set up a new task force made up of local officials and residents to take a fresh look at public safety in the city after nationwide debates about policing.
Leading the group will be Cambridge City Council members E. Denise Simmons and Marc C. Mc Govern. The team includes 14 people from various backgrounds like activists, faith leaders, and mental health professionals, according to a January 7 press release from the City of Cambridge. They’ll be advising both the City Council and the city manager on suggestions that could influence how the city’s budget gets decided, De Pasquale mentioned during an interview.
This task force came about following a tense summer between police and community members across the U. S. In Cambridge specifically, local law enforcement faced criticism back in 2020 over officers’ questionable social media posts and an equipment inventory leak showing items like an armored vehicle, sniper rifles, 64 M4 assault rifles, and tear gas were part of their gear. That’s despite Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard, Jr previously stating CPD had “no military equipment.”
Since then, many Cambridge residents have called for cutting funds to their police department and scaling back its militarization. After George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis cops in June 2020, around 2,000 people marched to Cambridge City Hall demanding cuts to CPD’s budget.
With growing pressure from voters and council members alike, De Pasquale put together this public safety task force. Their goal is to reduce how often police respond directly by shifting more responsibility toward social service workers when it comes to meeting community needs, as detailed in the press release.
One member of the group is Chandra Banks – a mediator working with Cambridge Public Schools who’s lived here for five generations – bringing her expertise in restorative justice practices. She explained that restorative justice focuses on proactive efforts like education and resolving conflicts early instead of relying on typical criminal justice tactics such as arrests or punishments by police.
Banks graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Education and said she sees her role as helping build mediation strategies throughout everyday life for folks in Cambridge so that calling police becomes less necessary.
De Pasquale told me that this effort isn’t about defunding the police but about “reallocation of services” instead.
He pointed out that CPD has already been shifting focus away from punishment towards rehabilitation by employing psychiatrists and social workers alongside traditional officers.
“The Cambridge Police Department is an example of how policing should be done,” he said. “We understand that it’s not just about enforcement. I always say that in Cambridge, we’re not about arrests. We’re about finding help for people. So I think from that point of view, we have really been ahead of the game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do more.”
Still, one councilor pushing hard for defunding CPD – Quinton Y. Zondervan – called De Pasquale’s focus on “reallocation” just semantics.
“I’m not sure there’s a meaningful distinction,” Zondervan said during our talk. “Defunding the police to me just means reducing the amount of money we spend on policing and allocating money towards other community safety priorities instead.”
An imam here named Khalil Abdur-Rashid who also serves as Harvard Muslim Chaplain shared his thoughts via email saying he feels most encounters with police don’t need any use of force at all.
“As a Harvard Chaplain, and especially as a Muslim Chaplain with African American Southern roots, I have significant concerns about police use of force, profiling, and the militarization of law enforcement in all communities, and especially communities of color,” Abdur-Rashid wrote.
He hopes this task force will push forward more progressive policing styles “that specifically takes into consideration the realities of a post-George Floyd Era America where major problems such as institutional and systemic racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-immigrant sentiments , and hate crimes have unfortunately become more prominent in the last few years.”
The group plans to meet online twice each month starting later this month.
-Staff writer Raquel Coronell Uribe can be reached at rcoronell@thecrimson. com. Follow her on Twitter @raquelco15.
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