My name is Alyssa Jacoby ,a concerned citizen of Toronto , and I speak here today, Demanding the immediate defunding of the Toronto Police Services, not a 10% cut, not a audits, and certainty not body cameras. It is now clear to me that I and countless other abused woman were not the only ones seeking change from your systems and officers. In my ally ship with the BIPOC community I am standing with them ,while they stand with me asking defund the police and save countless life’s. I was 23 years old when my then husband first l physically assaulted me, choked me up against the window in our kitchen. A few months later police were called to our home because neighbor’s heard screaming. When the police showed up I was left to defend my actions, and my husband to defend his, I was made to feel it could been either one of us. When it was very obviously who was the abuser. The officers left. That night they left me in the hands of my abuser. I was made to feel like I wasn’t a good mother , cps was sent to my home a few days later, we had to prove to them we were fit parents. The same system that walks away from abused woman is the same one is also destroy the lives of the BIPOC community. If you cannot help everyone you certainly shouldn’t have the single largest line item in Toronto’s operating budget. An amount has grown from about $888 million in 2010 to now 1.1 billion in 2020. While The presence of police in Toronto is actively contributing to violence against vulnerable residents, specifically Black, and Indigenous resident. I have personally watched and been affected by the police over police while they under-resource every other part of the community it’s supposed to be serving and protecting. I am here to call for the Defunding, Demilitarizing, Disarming ,and Dismantling the Police. Without police intervention D'Andre Campbell and countless others would be alive today. Why should a mental health crisis become a death sentence? Why should militarized police be called out when they have little to no mental health training. Why did they pull a gun on man that called for there help? Defunding the police will mean investing heavily in community organizations, and giving social works a larger role. A little of our demands include: • Immediately redirecting a minimum of 50 percent of the $1.1 billion TPS budget toward the communities they have devastated by investing in secure, long-term housing for street-involved and unhoused communities, food security programs, public transit, public health, public libraries, and community-led anti-violence programs. DEMILITARIZE THE POLICE • End Emergency Task Force (ETF) and Emergency Response Teams (ERT) (similar to the US-based SWAT teams), tactical squads, military grade weapons, and surveillance equipment. • Remove all weaponry from police and other law enforcement, including tasers, batons, firearms, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and sound canons. • End the mass surveillance of our communities through the use of technologies such as stingray, facial recognition, and predictive policing technologies, drones, robots, and G20 surveillance technology that remained in Toronto. REMOVE COPS IN SCHOOLS • Remove police and school resource officers (SROs) in all schools (Public, Catholic, Private, and Post-Secondary) in Toronto. • Remove police and school resource officers (SROs) in all schools, at all levels, across Canada. REDUCE SCOPE OF POLICE • End all special constable programs and all policing on campuses. • End the policing of public transportation. • End the policing of minor bylaw infractions and noise complaints. • End paid-duty policing program (officers for hire by developers, street festivals, etc.). • End police collaboration with the CBSA. • Eliminate all stealth police cars and plainclothes operations. • Eliminate community policing patrols in highly racialized communities. • End Carding DOCUMENT POLICE VIOLENCE • Mandate the public collection of data regarding police killing, and incidents of police brutality for all local, regional, provincial, and Federal police or law enforcement agency disaggregated by race, gender, age and citizenship. DECRIMINALIZE POVERTY, DRUGS, HIV & SEX WORK • Release and expunge record for all poverty-related charges (including bylaw infractions, solicitation, sleeping outside, public urination, loitering, solicitation). • Decriminalize drugs, sex work, and HIV status. • Release and expunge records of all drug-related and sex work charges. CREATE ALTERNATIVES • Create Crisis Intervention and Mad co-lead support teams; work with communities to develop models that work for them. • Create police-free, community-led, trauma-informed emergency service for mental health/psychiatric distress and other forms of crisis. • Invest in community support for shelters, drop-ins, after-school programming in low-income, Black, and Indigenous neighborhoods. • Create restorative services, mental health services, and community-run health centres • Invest in harm reduction, including safe supply, safe injection/inhalation sites, and harm-reduction outreach workers. • Establish a community-based and trauma-informed emergency service for people who have experienced gender-based violence. • Implement of civilian transportation safety service and better/safer road infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists and public transit • Create a civilian conflict resolution resolution service to replace policing of minor bylaw infractions/noise complaints • Provide permanent, secure housing options for all people who need housing.” Some status : 1. 2013 and 2017, a Black person in Toronto was nearly 20 times more likely than a White person to be involved in a fatal shooting by the Toronto Police Service (TPS).  2. Indigenous people comprise 5% of the population in Canada, but comprise 38% of the last 100 deaths by police.  I truly believe that Black communities, and all communities, deserve better. As We are working toward the abolition of the police and toward a society where we can all be safe. While this is focused on law enforcement, we are also calling to defund jails, prisons, immigration detention centres, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA). We are calling for a reinvestment into Black, Indigenous, racialized, impoverished, & other targeted communities. A list of city that have defunded are Edmonton,Baltimore ,Portland ,Philadelphia,Hartford,Seattle In conclusion The Toronto Police Services (TPS) budget is over $1.1 billion dollars, which is more than public funding allotted to libraries, housing, shelters combined, the time for this to change is now. Respected elected officials you need to open your minds , if you cannot see why the community is in an outcry it’s because these issues do not effect you . I pray no one ever assaults your daughters and leaves her trying to pick up the pieces for herself and her child, fight for a daycare spot and adorable houses just so she can continue to follow her dreams. I pray the system never fails you like it does to woman like me and the Countless others in the BIPOC community. I pray you actively do your research on how you can help and how you can change , how can defund. The time is now before anyone else is killed. We will not stop until justice is serviced and change happens.