Community Safety, Eugene Oregon

Dear Eugene City Council,

RE: Community Safety Initiative

We’ll be discussing the so-called “Community Safety Initiative.” Let’s review. You instituted a payroll tax that disproportionately taxed workers, to raise funds for “community safety.” You conducted a poll to see what the community wanted in regard to safety and the overwhelming reply was that the community wanted more humanitarian services and NOT more policing.

You would not accept that and began the hard sell of more policing, led by our Police Chief Chris Skinner. In the meantime, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. He was murdered just as Eliborio Rodriguez, a local man in our community, was murdered, except that Mr. Floyd was murdered in a protracted way by asphyxiation and video taped. A police officer escalated Eliborio Rodriguez and murdered him by shooting him. Nationally, people are recognizing that having police, trained in the “use of force” to address and answer non-emergency, economically driven, social issues, leads to violence against an underclass.

However, more policing, and particularly policing of an underclass, is what serves your campaign donors interests, and by that I mean the so-called “stakeholders,” landowners, real estate professionals, and developers who all make money at the local level by inflating the land values of this city.

Interestingly, while it can be somewhat costly to “improve” land and increase its value, it is cost effective to “clean up” an area through the forced dislocation and then the relocation of human beings. This has been a key real estate strategy in many cities, including my hometown of New York City. It is classically called “gentrification” and has its base in violent dislocation. And that is where policing comes in.

The way you accomplish this dislocation is by instituting a “complaint system” otherwise known as non-emergency 911. You institute a malicious propaganda campaign against the underclass through “behavior” ordinances that also leads to profiling. You then have a certain segment of the population inform on another segment of the population, calling in police.

As gentrification takes place, more are dislocated, and in their turn are scapegoated. The population is “replaced” by a richer and generally whiter version.

Within this economic system, the population’s use of police to punish others in their community is an extraordinary problem in itself. It is a system that mirrors the famous Milgram experiment. We’ve been conditioned to feel a sense of relief and “safety” through the torture, punishment, and even in the violent deaths of others. I have produced a YouTube video that further details this connection in cultural conditioning.

We must end this vicious cycle. You must break with your campaign donors and the so-called stakeholders. Their concern for their land values should not outweigh our communities concern with human values.

Do not provide more funds to police. Provide funds toward non-violent interventions and assistance. Thank you for your attention to this crucial matter of our community morality.

Otis Haschemeyer