Note: if the above links do not work for you, copy and paste the below into your email and send!

Make sure to fill in YOUR NAME & subject line

Please include your address (or work address) if you feel at all comfortable as Supervisors will often filter out emails if they do not have an address. If you don’t have a SF address to use, don’t worry about it and send the email anyway.

Message: (Don't forget to replace the [x]'s with your information! We encourage you to CUSTOMIZE the message, even a little, as it will make it more difficult to filter out.

To: MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org, Sandra.Fewer@sfgov.org, Catherine.Stefani@sfgov.org, Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org, Gordon.Mar@sfgov.org, Dean.Preston@sfgov.org, Norman.Yee@sfgov.org, Rafael.Mandelman@sfgov.org, Hillary.Ronen@sfgov.org, Shamann.Walton@sfgov.org, Ahsha.Safai@sfgov.org, Matt.Haney@sfgov.org, BoS-Supervisors@sfgov.org, BoS-Legislative_Aides@sfgov.org

Bcc: defundsfpdnow+emailcampaign@gmail.com

Subject Line: [*** INSERT UNIQUE SUBJECT LINE HERE PLEASE OR YOUR EMAIL GETS FILTERED OUT ***]

Message:

Hi my name is [NAME] and I live [OR WORK] in San Francisco.

I am writing to demand public safety for all.

We must defund SFPD in this year’s budget cycle and redirect those funds to investments which make us ALL safe, including public health, housing, reparations for communities most targeted by policing and imprisonment such as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, trans communities, and our unhoused neighbors.

Let me reiterate -- we demand that you vote to reject any budget that does not fire 200 officers THIS BUDGET CYCLE. You can still do this by introducing budget amendments to the budget that came out of the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

Those who tell us to wait are telling our most marginalized communities that their lives do not matter. That brutalization, suffering, and oppression does not deserve an urgent response. That equity and justice is not a right, but a privilege.

Police don’t keep us safe.

American policing began with slave patrols. Modern day policing was a response to the rise of labor unions. Today, approximately 99% of SFPD calls for service are in response to non-violent issues. Most calls are related to public health, unhoused people, traffic/parking, and noise complaints.

Worse than that, police harm our communities.

When the police talk about “public safety”, they’re speaking in code. The word “public” is not referring to marginalized communities. It’s not referring to Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, Jessica Williams, or Luis Góngora Pat. It’s referring to the people the system of policing was designed for. The slave owner. The union buster. The wealthy homeowner.

This is reflected not just in the lived experiences of BIPOC, trans people, and unhoused people. It’s also reflected in the numbers.

- Black San Franciscans make up only 5% of the city’s population, but account for 40% of police searches, 54% of our jail population, and 40% of people killed by police.

- In the fourth quarter of 2019, 76% of all uses of force by SFPD were against people of color.

- In 2019, SFPD officers pointed a gun at San Franciscans an average of 2.4 times PER DAY. Only 14 of the 868 incidents were in defense of self or others.

- After 4 years of DOJ mandated reforms, non-gun related SFPD uses of force have only decreased from 1,142 to 1,110.

Policing can’t be reformed because it’s working as intended.

SFPD is a violent, racist, and explicitly anti-Black institution. Cal DOJ and the SFPD's implicit bias trainer recently described the level of anti-Black bias in SFPD as “extreme.” This presents a clear and imminent danger to our most marginalized communities. The first step towards public safety for all is disbanding SFPD and eliminating that danger.

Disbanding SFPD is an act of harm reduction. It is just one step on the way towards achieving public safety for all. We can’t be safe until EVERYONE has access to fundamental human rights -- housing, food, education, healthcare, opportunity.

DefundSFPDNow, a multi-racial campaign in San Francisco, has identified at least $295 million in SFPD line item budget cuts as a step towards reducing the threat to public safety and reinvesting in solutions that begin building public safety.

What can you do as my elected official? Defund SFPD, reinvest in our communities, and reimagine the path to public safety that uplifts ALL San Franciscans by

1. Refusing to pass any budget that does not fire 200 officers or Sheriff’s deputies

2. Leveraging the rights of Supervisors to amend the BUDGET that came out of Budget and Appropriations this cycle

3. Ensuring that more than $120 million of budget cuts are reinvested back into predominantly Black communities

4. Ensuring that the city closes all jails in the Hall of Justice building and ends the use of holding cells there for all purposes, including short term or overnight stays.

We are not asking for chaos.

Chaos is responding to someone experiencing a mental health crisis with a gun and combat training instead of care and services.

Chaos is stopping a Black driver for a broken tail light to threaten and harass them instead of offering to replace the light.

Chaos is spending $23 million a year on police units that criminalize poverty instead of providing housing and opportunity.

We are not asking for chaos. We are asking that you be reasonable.

Defund SFPD, Defund Sheriffs, refund our communities, and reimagine the path to public safety.

Thank you for your time,

[YOUR NAME]

[YOUR ADDRESS- work or home if possible, apparently Supervisors will ignore/filter emails without it]

[YOUR PHONE NUMBER- optional]