👋👋Calling all Boulder social justice champions! Boulder is on the cusp of creating a STAR program, and we need you to push to make this a reality. STAR programs send mental health professionals to respond to appropriate 911 calls instaed of police. 🧵/1 These programs are much more cost-effective than police responses, and are shown to have way better results. But they aren't without controversy. Police orgs don't want to cede budget to non-police responses, or support the idea that public safety isn't tied to more policing. /2

Attention #Boulder - a study just released by the Boulder DA's office and @verainstitute confirms that Boulder's criminal justice system is far more racist against Black and Brown people than most other states, and even for Colorado, we're far worse than the state avg. 1/8 Here's data, for example, on Boulder's Latino rates of imprisonment compared to Boulder whites. "If Boulder County were a state it would rank 4th in the nation for" imprisonment disparities between whites and Latinos. 2/8